Spring Exam - Moses

Jane Addams

(1860-1935) co founder of the social settlement Hull House and a social conscience of Chicago, talks with a group of young people visiting the settlement house. Addams and her friend Ellen Gates Starr co founded Hull House in 1889. A center of the community Hull house provided classes for adults and children and was a theater, coffee house, art gallery, gym, and a book bindery. Addams was the first American woman awarded the Nobel Peace prize

North: Emergence of the Peace Democrats

(Copperheads) that believed the South should be allowed to secede. Lincoln exiled their leader, Ohio congressman Clement Vallandigham to the Confederacy.

Strengthened Fugitive Slave Law

(as promised in the Compromise of 1850)

Uncle Tom's Cabin

An influential and controversial novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe that inflamed sectional passions prior to the outbreak of the Civil War. When Abraham Lincoln met Mrs. Stowe, he reportedly said, "So, you're the little lady who started the great war" (or something to that effect).

The American Socialist Party

The Socialist Party of America was a multi-tendency democratic-socialist and social-democratic political party in the United States, formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party which had split from the main organization in 1899.[1] In the first decades of the 20th century, it drew significant support from many different groups, including trade unionists, progressive social reformers, populist farmers, and immigrants. However it refused to form coalitions with other parties, or even to allow its members to vote for other parties. Eugene V. Debs twice won over 900,000 votes in presidential elections (1912 and 1920), while the party also elected two United States Representatives (Victor L. Berger and Meyer London), dozens of state legislators, more than a hundred mayors, and countless lesser officials.[2] The party's staunch opposition to American involvement in World War I, although welcomed by many, also led to prominent defections, official repression and vigilante persecution. The organization was further shattered by a factional war over how to respond to the October Revolution in Russia in 1917 and the establishment of the Communist International in 1919: many members left the party in favor of the Communist Party. After endorsing Robert La Follette Sr.'s presidential campaign in 1924, the party returned to independent action at the presidential level. It had modest growth in the early 1930s behind presidential candidate Norman Thomas. The party's appeal was weakened by the popularity of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, the organization and flexibility of the Communist Party under Earl Browder, and the resurgent labor movement's desire to support sympathetic Democratic Party politicians. A divisive and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to broaden the party by admitting followers of Leon Trotsky and Jay Lovestone caused the traditional "Old Guard" to leave and form the Social Democratic Federation. While the party was always strongly anti-Fascist, as well as anti-Stalinist, its opposition to American entry in World War II cost it both internal and external support. The party stopped running presidential candidates after 1956, when its nominee Darlington Hoopes won fewer than 6,000 votes. In the party's last decades, its members, many of them prominent in the labor, peace, civil rights and civil liberties movements, fundamentally disagreed about the socialist movement's relationship to the labor movement and the Democratic Party, and about how best to advance democracy abroad. In 1970-1973, these strategic differences had become so acute that the Socialist Party changed its name to Social Democrats, USA. Leaders of two of its caucuses formed separate socialist organizations, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee and the Socialist Party USA. In 2017, the Socialist Party of America was reconstituted, its purpose being to unite all socialists under a single banner. It is now in the process of forming state-based affiliates. As of May, 2017, the Party has several hundred members and two state organizations, the Oklahoma Socialist Party and the Wasatch Socialist Party (Utah.)

Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890)

during the Gilded Age that Congress passed the Sherman Anti-Trust Act to break up monopolistic business combinations,

southern advantages

geographically compact, defensive war, outstanding military leaders (Lee, Stonewall Jackson) souther soldiers better suited for hardship, possibility of foreign alliance (UK?)

Carrie Chapman Catt and NAWSA v Alice Paul and the National Women's Party

the struggle for women's suffrage is passed to a new generation

compromise of 1850

Early on the evening of January 21, 1850, Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky trudged through the Washington, D.C. snow to visit Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts. Clay, 73 years old, was a sick man, wracked by a severe cough. But he braved the snowstorm because he feared for the Union's future. For four years Congress had bitterly and futilely debated the question of the expansion of slavery. Ever since David Wilmot had proposed that slavery be prohibited from any territory acquired from Mexico, opponents of slavery had argued that Congress possessed the power to regulate slavery in all of the territories. Ardent proslavery Southerners vigorously disagreed. Politicians had repeatedly but unsuccessfully tried to work out a compromise. One simple proposal had been to extend the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific Ocean. Thus, slavery would have been forbidden north of 36 30' north latitude but permitted south of that line. This proposal attracted the support of moderate Southerners but generated little support outside the region. Another proposal, supported by two key Democratic senators, Lewis Cass of Michigan and Stephen Douglas of Illinois, was known as "popular sovereignty." It declared that the people actually living in a territory should decide whether or not to allow slavery. But neither suggestion offered a solution to the whole range of issues dividing the North and South. It was up to Henry Clay, who had just returned to Congress after a seven-year absence, to work out a formula that balanced competing sectional concerns. For an hour, Clay outlined to Webster a complex plan to save the Union. A compromise could only be effective, he stated, if it addressed all the issues dividing North and South. He proposed that: California be admitted as a free state; there be no restriction on slavery in New Mexico and Utah; Texas relinquish its claim to land in New Mexico in exchange for federal assumption of Texas's unpaid debts; Congress enact a stringent and enforceable fugitive slave law; and the slave trade--but not slavery--be abolished in the District of Columbia. A week later, Clay presented his proposal to the Senate. The aging statesman was known as the "Great Compromiser" for his efforts on behalf of the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise Tariff of 1832 (which resolved the nullification crisis). Once again, he appealed to Northerners and Southerners to place national patriotism ahead of sectional loyalties. Clay's proposal ignited an eight-month debate in Congress and led John C. Calhoun to threaten Southern secession. Daniel Webster, the North's most spellbinding orator, threw his support behind Clay's compromise. "Mr. President," he began, "I wish to speak today not as a Massachusetts man, nor as Northern man, but as an American ... I speak today for the preservation of the Union. Hear me for my cause." He concluded by warning his listeners that "there can be no such thing as a peaceable secession." Webster's speech provoked outrage from Northern opponents of compromise. Senator William H. Seward of New York called Webster a "traitor to the cause of freedom." But Webster's speech reassured moderate Southerners that powerful interests in the North were committed to compromise. Still, opposition to compromise was fierce. Whig President Zachary Taylor argued that California, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, and Minnesota should all be admitted to statehood before the question of slavery was addressed, a proposal that would have given the North a ten-vote majority in the Senate. William H. Seward denounced the compromise as conceding too much to the South and declared that there was a "higher law" than the Constitution, a law that demanded an end to slavery. In July, Northern and Southern senators opposed to the very idea of compromise joined ranks to defeat a bill that would have admitted California to the Union and organized New Mexico and Utah without reference to slavery. Compromise appeared to be dead. A bitterly disappointed and exhausted Henry Clay dejectedly left the Capitol, his efforts apparently for naught. Then with unexpected suddenness the outlook abruptly changed. On the evening of July 9, 1850, President Taylor died of gastroenteritis, five days after taking part in a Fourth of July celebration dedicated to the building of the still unfinished Washington Monument. Taylor's successor was Millard Fillmore, a 50-year-old New Yorker, who was an ardent supporter of compromise. In Congress, leadership in the fight for a compromise passed to Stephen Douglas, a Democratic senator from Illinois. An arrogant and dynamic leader, 5 foot 4 inches in height, with stubby legs, a massive head, bushy eyebrows, and a booming voice, Douglas was known as the "Little Giant." Douglas abandoned Clay's strategy of gathering all issues dividing the sections into a single bill. Instead, he introduced Clay's proposals one at a time. In this way, he was able to gather support from varying coalitions of Whigs and Democrats and Northerners and Southerners on each issue. At the same time, banking and business interests as well as speculators in Texas bonds lobbied and even bribed congressmen to support compromise. Despite these manipulations, the compromise proposals never succeeded in gathering solid congressional support. In the end, only 4 senators and 28 representatives voted for every one of the measures. Nevertheless, they all passed. As finally approved, the Compromise: admitted California as a free state; allowed the territorial legislatures of New Mexico and Utah to settle the question of slavery in those areas; set up a stringent federal law for the return of runaway slaves; abolished the slave trade in the District of Columbia; and gave Texas $10 million to abandon its claims to territory in New Mexico east of the Rio Grande. The compromise created the illusion that the territorial issue had been resolved once and for all. "There is rejoicing over the land," wrote one Northerner, "the bone of contention is removed; disunion, fanaticism, violence, insurrection are defeated." Sectional hostility had been defused; calm had returned. But, as one Southern editor correctly noted, it was "the calm of preparation, and not of peace."

Nativism and Immigration Restriction

Emergency Quota Bill; National Origins Act

FERA

Federal Emergency Relief Administration

Know-Nothing Party

a prominent United States political party during the late 1840s and the early 1850s. The American Party originated in 1849. Its members strongly opposed immigrants and followers of the Catholic Church.

HOLC

Home Owners Loan Corporation

Emancipation proclamation

In July 1862, about two months before President Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, Congress adopted a second Confiscation Act calling for the seizure of the property of slaveholders who were actively engaged in the rebellion. It seems unlikely that this act would have freed any slaves, since the federal government would have to prove that individual slaveholders were traitors. (In fact, one of the largest slaveholders in South Carolina was a Baltimore Unionist). Lincoln felt that Congress lacked the legal authority to emancipate slaves; he believed that only the President acting as commander-in-chief had the authority to abolish slavery. On September 22, 1862, less than a week after the Battle of Antietam, President Lincoln met with his cabinet. As one cabinet member, Samuel P. Chase, recorded in his diary, the President told them that he had "thought a great deal about the relation of this war to Slavery": You all remember that, several weeks ago, I read to you an Order I had prepared on this subject, which, since then, my mind has been much occupied with this subject, and I have thought all along that the time for acting on it might very probably come. I think the time has come now. I wish it were a better time. I wish that we were in a better condition. The action of the army against the rebels has not been quite what I should have best liked. But they have been driven out of Maryland, and Pennsylvania is no longer in danger of invasion. When the rebel army was at Frederick, I determined, as soon as it should be driven out of Maryland, to issue a Proclamation of Emancipation such as I thought most likely to be useful. I said nothing to any one; but I made the promise to myself, and (hesitating a little)--to my Maker. The rebel army is now driven out, and I am going to fulfill that promise. The preliminary Emancipation Proclamation that President Lincoln issued on September 22 stated that all slaves in designated parts of the South on January 1, 1863, would be freed. The President hoped that slave emancipation would undermine the Confederacy from within. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles reported that the President told him that freeing the slaves was "a military necessity, absolutely essential to the preservation of the Union....The slaves [are] undeniably an element of strength to those who [have] their service, and we must decide whether that element should be with us or against us." Fear of foreign intervention in the war also influenced Lincoln to consider emancipation. The Confederacy had assumed, mistakenly, that demand for cotton from textile mills would lead Britain to break the Union naval blockade. Nevertheless, there was a real danger of European involvement in the war. By redefining the war as a war against slavery, Lincoln hoped to generate support from European liberals. Even before Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, Postmaster General Montgomery Blair (1813-1883), a former Democrat from Maryland, had warned the President that this decision might stimulate antiwar protests among northern Democrats and cost the administration the fall 1862 elections. In fact, Peace Democrats did protest against the proclamation and Lincoln's assumption of powers not specifically granted by the Constitution. Among the "abuses" they denounced were his unilateral decision to call out the militia to suppress the "insurrection," impose a blockade of southern ports, expand the army beyond the limits set by law, spend federal funds without prior congressional authorization, and suspend the writ of habeas corpus (the right of persons under arrest to have their case heard in court). The Lincoln administration imprisoned about 13,000 people without trial during the war, and shut Democratic newspapers in New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago for varying amounts of time. The Democrats failed to gain control of the House of Representatives in the Fall 1862 election, in part because the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation gave a higher moral purpose to the northern cause.

Second New Deal

1935-1939

CWA

Civil Works Administration

Railroads

Along with the development of the atomic bomb, the digging of the Panama Canal, and landing the first men on the moon, the construction of a transcontinental railroad was one of the United States' greatest technological achievements. Railroad track had to be laid over 2,000 miles of rugged terrain, including mountains of solid granite. Before the transcontinental railroad was completed, travel overland by stagecoach cost $1,000, took five or six months, and involved crossing rugged mountains and arid desert. The alternatives were to travel by sea around the tip of South America, a distance of 18,000 miles; or to cross the Isthmus of Panama, then travel north by ship to California. Each route took months and was dangerous and expensive. The transcontinental railroad would make it possible to complete the trip in five days at a cost of $150 for a first-class sleeper. The first spikes were driven in 1863, in the midst of the Civil War. Two companies competed to lay as much track as possible. The Central Pacific built east from Sacramento, Calif., while the Union Pacific built west from Omaha, Neb. The government gave the companies rights of way of 200 feet on each side of the track and financial aid of $16,000 to $48,000 for each mile of track laid. At first, the Union Pacific, which had flat terrain, raced ahead. The Central Pacific had to run train track through the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Working three shifts around the clock, Chinese immigrants hand drilled holes into which they packed black powder and later nitroglycerine. The progress in the tunnels through the mountains was agonizingly slow, an average of a foot a day. Stung by the Union Pacific's record of eight miles of track laid in a single day, the Central Pacific concocted a plan to lay 10 miles in a day. Eight Irish tracklayers put down 3,520 rails, while other workers laid 25,800 ties and drove 28,160 spikes in a single day. On May 10, 1869, at Promontory Summit, Utah, a golden spike was hammered into the final tie. The transcontinental railroad was built in six years almost entirely by hand. Workers drove spikes into mountains, filled the holes with black powder, and blasted through the rock inch by inch. Handcarts moved the drift from cuts to fills. Bridges, including one 700 feet long and 126 feet in the air, had to be constructed to ford streams. Thousands of workers, including Irish and German immigrants, former Union and Confederate soldiers, freed slaves, and especially Chinese immigrants played a part in the construction. Chinese laborers first went to work for the Central Pacific as it began crossing California's Sierra Nevada Mountains in 1865. At one point, 8,000 of the 10,000 men toiling for the Central Pacific were Chinese. At one point, Chinese workers were lowered in hand-woven reed baskets to drill blasting holes in the rock. They placed explosives in each hole, lit the fuses, and were, hopefully, pulled up before the powder was detonated. Explosions, freezing temperatures, and avalanches in the High Sierras killed hundreds. When Chinese workers struck for higher pay, a Central Pacific executive withheld their food supplies until they agreed to go back to work. An English-Chinese phrase book from 1867 translated the following phrases into Chinese: Can you get me a good boy? He wants $8 a month? He ought to be satisfied with $6.... Come at 7 every morning. Go home at 8 every night. Light the fire. Sweep the rooms. Wash the clothes. Wash the windows. Sweep the stairs. Trim the lamps. I want to cut his wages. Many of the railroad's builders viewed the Plains Indians as obstacles to be removed. General William Tecumseh Sherman wrote in 1867: "The more we can kill this year, the less will have to be killed the next year, for the more I see of these Indians the more convinced I am that they all have to be killed or be maintained as a species of paupers." Construction of the railroad provided many opportunities for financial chicanery, corruption, graft, and bribery. The greatest financial scandal of the 19th century grew out of the railroad's construction. The president of the Union Pacific helped found a construction company, called Credit Mobilier, which allowed investors, including several members of Congress, to grant lucrative construction contracts to themselves, while nearly bankrupting the railroad. The railroad had profound effects on American life. New phrases entered the American vocabulary such as "time's up," "time's a wasting," and "the train is leaving the station." It also led to the division of the nation into four standard time zones. In addition, the railroads founded many of the towns on the Great Plains on land grants they were awarded by the federal government, and then sold the land to settlers. The completion of the transcontinental railroad changed the nation. Western agricultural products, coal, and minerals could move freely to the east coast. Just as the Civil War united North and South, the transcontinental railroad united East and West. Passengers and freight could reach the west coast in a matter of days instead of months at one-tenth the cost. Settlers rushed into what was previously considered a desert wasteland. The 1890 Census would declare that the American frontier had disappeared. The railroad was a major cause. Equally important, the success of the transcontinental railroad encouraged an American faith that with money, determination, and organization anything can be accomplished. The construction of railroad demonstrated the effectiveness of complex military-like organization and assembly-line processes.

immigration

Around the turn of the twentieth century, mass immigration from eastern and southern Europe dramatically altered the population's ethnic and religious composition. Unlike earlier immigrants, who had come from Britain, Canada, Germany, Ireland, and Scandinavia, the "new immigrants" came increasingly from Hungary, Italy, Poland, and Russia. The newcomers were often Catholic or Jewish and two-thirds of them settled in cities.

womens suffrage

At the outset of the century, women could not vote or hold office in any state, they had no access to higher education, and they were excluded from professional occupations. American law accepted the principle that a wife had no legal identity apart from her husband. She could not be sued, nor could she bring a legal suit; she could not make a contract, nor could she own property. She was not permitted to control her own wages or gain custody of her children in case of separation or divorce. Broad social and economic changes, such as the development of a market economy and a decline in the birthrate, opened employment opportunities for women. Instead of bearing children at two-year intervals after marriage, as was the general case throughout the colonial era, during the early 19th century women bore fewer children and ceased childbearing at younger ages. During these decades the first women's college was established, and some men's colleges first opened their doors to women students. More women were postponing marriage or not marrying at all; unmarried women gained new employment opportunities as "mill girls" and elementary school teachers; and a growing number of women achieved prominence as novelists, editors, teachers, and leaders of church and philanthropic societies. Although there were many improvements in the status of women during the first half of the century, women still lacked political and economic status when compared with men. As the franchise was extended to larger and larger numbers of white males, including large groups of recent immigrants, the gap in political power between women and men widened. Even though women made up a core of supporters for many reform movements, men excluded them from positions of decision making and relegated them to separate female auxiliaries. Additionally, women lost economic status as production shifted away from the household to the factory and workshop. During the late 18th century, the need for a cash income led women and older children to engage in a variety of household industries, such as weaving and spinning. Increasingly, in the 19th century, these tasks were performed in factories and mills, where the workforce was largely male. The fact that changes in the economy tended to confine women to a sphere separate from men had important implications for reform. Since women were believed to be uncontaminated by the competitive struggle for wealth and power, many argued that they had a duty--and the capacity--to exert an uplifting moral influence on American society. Catharine Beecher (1800-1878) and Sarah J. Hale (1788-1879) helped lead the effort to expand women's roles through moral influence. Beecher, the eldest sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe, was one of the nation's most prominent educators before the Civil War. A woman of many talents and strong leadership, she wrote a highly regarded book on domestic science and spearheaded the campaign to convince school boards that women were suited to serve as schoolteachers. Hale edited the nation's most popular women's magazines, the Ladies Magazine and Godey's Ladies Book. She led the successful campaign to make Thanksgiving a national holiday (during Lincoln's administration), and she also composed the famous nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb." Both Beecher and Hale worked tirelessly for women's education (Hale helped found Vassar College). They gave voice to the grievances of women--abysmally low wages paid to women in the needle trades (12.5 cents a day), the physical hardships endured by female operatives in the nation's shops and mills (where women worked 14 hours a day), and the minimizing of women's intellectual aspirations. Even though neither woman supported full equal rights for women, they were important transitional figures in the emergence of feminism. Each significantly broadened society's definition of "women's sphere" and assigned women vital social responsibilities: to shape their children's character, morally to uplift their husbands, and to promote causes of "practical benevolence." Other women broke down old barriers and forged new opportunities in a more dramatic fashion. Frances Wright (1795-1852), a Scottish-born reformer and lecturer, received the nickname "The Great Red Harlot of Infidelity" because of her radical ideas about birth control, liberalized divorce laws, and legal rights for married women. In 1849 Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910) became the first American woman to receive a degree in medicine. A number of women became active as revivalists. Perhaps the most notable was Phoebe Palmer (1807-1874), a Methodist preacher who ignited religious fervor among thousands of Americans and Canadians. Catalyst for Women's Rights A public debate over the proper role of women in the antislavery movement, especially their right to lecture to audiences composed of both sexes, led to the first organized movement for women's rights. By the mid-1830s more than a hundred female antislavery societies had been created, and women abolitionists were circulating petitions, editing abolitionist tracts, and organizing antislavery conventions. A key question was whether women abolitionists would be permitted to lecture to "mixed" audiences of men and women. In 1837 a national women's antislavery convention resolved that women should overcome this taboo: "The time has come for women to move in that sphere which providence has assigned her, and no longer remain satisfied with the circumscribed limits which corrupt custom and a perverted application of Scripture have encircled her." Angelina Grimké (1805-1879) and her sister Sarah (1792-1873)--two sisters from a wealthy Charleston, South Carolina, slaveholding family--were the first women to break the restrictions and widen women's sphere through their writings and lectures before mixed audiences. In 1837 Angelina gained national notoriety by lecturing against slavery to audiences that included men as well as women. Shocked by this breach of the separate sexual spheres ordained by God, ministers in Massachusetts called on their fellow clergy to forbid women the right to speak from church pulpits. Sarah Grimké in 1840 responded with a pamphlet entitled Letters on the Condition of Women and the Equality of the Sexes, one of the first modern statements of feminist principles. She denounced the injustice of lower pay and denial of equal educational opportunities for women. Her pamphlet expressed outrage that women were "regarded by men, as pretty toys or as mere instruments of pleasure" and were taught to believe that marriage is "the sine qua non [indispensable element] of human happiness and human existence." Men and women, she concluded, should not be treated differently, since both were endowed with innate natural rights. In 1840, after the American Anti-Slavery Society split over the issue of women's rights, the organization named three female delegates to a World Anti-Slavery Convention to be held in London later that year. There, these women were denied the right to participate in the convention on the grounds that their participation would offend British public opinion. The convention relegated them to seats in a balcony. Eight years later, Lucretia Mott (1793-1880), who earlier had been denied the right to serve as a delegate to the World Anti-Slavery Convention, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) organized the first women's rights convention in history. Held in July 1848 at Seneca Falls, New York, the convention drew up a Declaration of Sentiments, modeled on the Declaration of Independence, which opened with the phrase "All men and women are created equal." It named 15 specific inequities suffered by women, and after detailing "a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of men toward woman," the document concluded that "he has endeavored, in every way that he could, to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life." Among the resolutions adopted by the convention, only one was not ratified unanimously--that women be granted the right to vote. Of the 66 women and 34 men who signed the Declaration of Sentiments at the convention (including black abolitionist Frederick Douglass), only two lived to see the ratification of the women's suffrage amendment to the Constitution 72 years later. By mid-century women's rights conventions had been held in every northern state. Despite ridicule from the public press--the Worcester (Massachusetts) Telegraph denounced women's rights advocates as "Amazons"--female reformers contributed to important, if limited, advances against discrimination. They succeeded in gaining adoption of Married Women's Property Laws in a number of states, granting married women control over their own income and property. A New York law passed in 1860 gave women joint custody over children and the right to sue and be sued, and in several states women's rights reformers secured adoption of permissive divorce laws. A Connecticut law, for example, granted divorce for any "misconduct" that "permanently destroys the happiness of the petitioner and defeats the purposes of the marriage relationship." Black women, too, were active in the campaign to extend equal rights to women. One of the most outspoken advocates for both women's rights and abolition was Sojourner Truth, born a slave known as Isabella in New York State's Hudson River Valley around 1797. She escaped from bondage in 1826, taking refuge with a farm family that later bought her freedom. She took the name Sojourner Truth in 1843, convinced that God had called on her to preach the truth throughout the country. Her fame as a preacher, singer, and orator for abolition and women's rights spread rapidly. At a women's rights convention in Akron, Ohio, in 1851, she is reported to have demanded that Americans recognize the African American women's right to equality. "I could work as much and eat as much as a man--when I could get it--and bear de lash as well!" she told the crowd. "And ain't I a woman?" During the Civil War, Truth supported the Union, collecting food and supplies for black troops and struggling to make emancipation a war aim. When the war was over, she traveled across the North, collecting signatures on petitions calling on Congress to set aside western lands for former slaves. At her death in 1883, she could rightly be remembered as one of the nation's most eloquent opponents of discrimination in all forms.

Belle Boyd

Confederate spy

Fireside chats

Fireside chats is the term used to describe a series of 30 evening radio conversations (chats) given by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt between 1933 and 1944.

Garfield-Arthur Administration/Republican (1881-1885)

George Plunkitt, a local leader of New York City's Democratic Party, defended the spoils system. "You can't keep an organization together without patronage," he declared. "Men ain't in politics for nothin'. They want to get somethin' out of it." But in one of the most significant political reforms of the late 19th century, Congress adopted the Pendleton Act, creating a federal civil service system, partly eliminating political patronage. Andrew Jackson introduced the spoils system to the federal government. The practice, epitomized by the saying "to the victory belong the spoils," involved placing party supporters into government positions. An incoming president would dismiss thousands of government workers and replace them with members of his own party. Scandals under the Grant administration generated a mounting demand for reform. Ironically, the president who led the successful campaign for civil service, Chester Arthur, a Republican, was linked to a party faction from New York that was known for its abuse of the spoils of office. In fact, in 1878, Arthur had been fired from his post at New York Federal Custom's Collection for giving away too many patronage jobs. In 1880, Arthur had been elected vice president on a ticket headed by James A. Garfield. Garfield's assassination in 1881 by a mentally disturbed man, Charles J. Guiteau, who thought he deserved appointment to a government job, led to a public outcry for reform. As president, Arthur became an ardent reformer. He insisted that high ranking members of his own party be prosecuted for their part in a Post Office scandal. He vetoed a law to improve rivers and harbors. In 1883, he helped push through the Pendleton Act. Failing to please either machine politicians or reformers, Arthur was the last incumbent president to be denied renomination for a second term by his own party. The Pendleton Act stipulated that government jobs should be awarded on the basis of merit. It provided for selection of government employees through competitive examinations. It also made it unlawful to fire or demote covered employees for political reasons or to require them to give political service or payment, and it set up a Civil Service Commission to enforce the law. When the Pendleton Act went into effect, only 10 percent of the government's 132,000 civilian employees were placed under civil service. The rest remained at the disposal of the party power, which could distribute for patronage, payoffs, or purchase. Today, more than 90 percent of the 2.7 million federal civilian employees are covered by merit systems. In 1884, New York became the first state to adopt a civil service system for state workers. Massachusetts became the second state when it started a merit system in 1885.

Hatch Act (1887)

Hatch activities are broad and includes research on all aspects of agriculture, including soil and water conservation and use; plant and animal production, protection, and health; processing, distribution, safety, marketing, and utilization of food and agricultural products; forestry, including range management and range products; multiple use of forest rangelands, and urban forestry; aquaculture; home economics and family life; human nutrition; rural and community development; sustainable agriculture; molecular biology; and biotechnology. Research may be conducted on problems of local, state, regional, or national concern.

South political issues/conflicts

J.D. not as capable as a war leader (inflexible, intolerant of criticism, unable to motivate the public) but also crippled by the states rights philosophy that limited his executive authority

Republican Party

Northern antislavery groups were shocked by the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Displeased by the wavering stand of both the Whig and Democratic parties, anti-slavery political leaders formed the Republican party.

Venezuela Boundary Dispute (1895)

Olney Interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine

positive good theory of slavery

On the Senate floor in 1837, John C. Calhoun pronounced slavery "a good--a positive good" and set the tone for future southern proslavery arguments. Before the 1830s, southern statements on slavery had been defensive; afterward, they were defiant.

radical republicans

Oppose Johnson Plan because: 1. Infringes on Power of Congress 2. Too Lenient 3. Endangered Republican Influence 4. Abandoned the Blacks

laissez-faire

Progressive Era marked the transition from ___________________ to governmental regulation of the economy

PWA

Public Works AdministrationMore than any other New Deal program, the PWA epitomized the Rooseveltian notion of "priming the pump" to encourage economic growth. Between July 1933 and March 1939, the PWA funded the construction of more than 34,000 projects, including airports, electricity-generating dams, and aircraft carriers; and seventy percent of the new schools and one third of the hospitals built during that time. The PWA spent over $6 billion, but did not succeed in returning the level of industrial activity to pre-depression levels. Nonetheless, the historical legacy of the PWA is important. It provided the federal government with its first systematic network for the distribution of funds to localities, ensured that conservation would remain an element in the national discussion,

Business Consolidation

Railroads Oil Steel Other Industries

General Nathan Bedford Forrest CSA

Responsible for the Fort Pillow Massacre of 1864, in which Confederate troops murdered black Union soldiers after they had surrendered, Lt. General Nathan B. Forrest of the Confederate cavalry later served as Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

Encouraged by his wife, Eleanor, FDR appointed more women to federal posts than any previous president; he also included black Americans in federal job programs (though they remained largely segregated).

did you know?

civil war

The American Civil War was the largest military conflict in the Western world between the Napoleonic Wars and World War I. It cost 600,000 American lives, more than in World War I and World War II combined. Its social consequences were especially far-reaching. The war resulted in the emancipation of four million enslaved African Americans. It also brought vast changes to the nation's financial system, fundamentally altered the relationship between the states and the federal government, and became modern history's first total war. It is truly the central event in American history. This section describes the problems that contributed to the breakup of the Democratic Party in 1860; why Abraham Lincoln's election as president prompted secession; compares and contrasts the strengths and weaknesses of the North and South as the Civil War started as well as the military leaders and strategies of the North and the Confederacy. It also describes the circumstances that led President Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation; the military history of the war; as well as the dramatic political, economic, and social changes that the war produced. Summary: The election of a Republican president opposed to the expansion of slavery into the western territories led seven states in the lower South to secede from the Union and to establish the Confederate States of America. After Lincoln notified South Carolina's governor that he intended to resupply Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, the Confederacy fired on the installation, leading the President to declare that an insurrection existed in the South. Early in the war, the Union succeeded in blockading Confederate harbors, and by mid-July 1862 it had divided the Confederacy in two by wresting control of Kentucky, Missouri, and much of Tennessee, as well as the Mississippi River. In the Eastern Theater in 1861 and 1862, the Confederacy stopped Union attempts to capture its capital in Richmond, Virginia. In September 1862 (at Antietam in Maryland) and July 1863 (at Gettysburg in Pennsylvania), Robert E. Lee tried and failed to provoke European powers intervention in the war by winning a victory on Northern soil. After futile pleas to the border states to free slaves voluntarily, Lincoln in the summer of 1862 decided that emancipation was a military and political necessity. The Emancipation Proclamation transformed the war from a conflict to save the Union to a war to abolish slavery. It also authorized the enlistment of African Americans. During the war Congress enacted the Homestead Act, which offered free public land to western settlers; and land grants, that supported construction of a transcontinental railroad. The government also raised the tariff, enacted the first income tax, and established a system of federally-chartered banks. Consequences: 1. During the war Congress adopted policies that altered American society. The Homestead Act offered free public land to western settlers. Huge land grants supported construction of a transcontinental railroad. The government raised the tariff, imposed new taxes, enacted the first income tax, and established a system of federally-chartered banks. 2. The Union lost about 360,000 troops during the Civil War and the Confederacy about 260,000. This is almost as many soldiers as have died in all other American wars combined. 3. The 13th Amendment, ratified in December 1865, ended slavery in the United States.

The Mexican Revolution 1911

The Mexican Revolution (Spanish: Revolución mexicana) was a major armed struggle c. 1910-1920 radically transforming Mexican culture and government. Although recent research has focused on local and regional aspects of the Revolution, it was a "genuinely national revolution."[2] Its outbreak in 1910 resulted from the failure of the 35-year long regime of Porfirio Díaz to find a managed solution to the presidential succession. This meant there was a political crisis among competing elites and the opportunity for agrarian insurrection.[3] Wealthy landowner Francisco I. Madero challenged Díaz in the 1910 presidential election, and following the rigged results, revolted under the Plan of San Luis Potosí.[4] Armed conflict ousted Díaz from power and a new election was held in 1911, bringing Madero to the presidency. The origins of the conflict were broadly based in opposition to the Díaz regime, with the 1910 election, becoming the sparking point for the outbreak of a political rebellion. Elements of the Mexican elite hostile to Díaz, led by Madero, expanded to the middle class, the peasantry in some regions, and organized labor.[5] In October 1911, Madero was overwhelmingly elected in a free and fair election. Opposition to the Madero regime increased from both the conservatives, who saw him as too weak and too liberal, and from former revolutionary fighters and the dispossessed, who saw him as too conservative. In February 1913 Madero and his vice president Pino Suárez were forced to resign, were assassinated, and the counter-revolutionary regime of General Victoriano Huerta came to power, backed by the U.S., business interests, and other supporters of the old order. Huerta remained in power from February 1913 until July 1914, when he was forced out by a coalition of different regional revolutionary forces. Then the revolutionaries' attempt to come to a political agreement following Huerta's ouster failed, and Mexico was plunged into a civil war (1914-1915). The Constitutionalist faction under wealthy landowner Venustiano Carranza emerged as the victor in 1915, defeating the revolutionary forces of former Constitutionalist Pancho Villa and forcing revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata back to guerrilla warfare. Zapata was assassinated in 1919, by agents of President Carranza. The armed conflict lasted for the better part of a decade, until around 1920, and had several distinct phases.[6] Over time the Revolution changed from a revolt against the established order under Díaz to a multi-sided civil war in particular regions with frequently shifting power struggles among factions in the Mexican Revolution. One major result of the revolution was the disappearance of the Federal Army in 1914 which Francisco Madero had kept intact when he was elected in 1911 and General Victoriano Huerta used to oust Madero. Revolutionary forces unified against Huerta's reactionary regime defeated the Federal forces.[7] Although the conflict was primarily a civil war, foreign powers that had important economic and strategic interests in Mexico figured in the outcome of Mexico's power struggles. The United States played an especially significant role.[8] Out of Mexico's population of 15 million, the losses were high, but numerical estimates vary a great deal. Perhaps 1.5 million people died; nearly 200,000 refugees fled abroad, especially to the United States.[1][9] Politically, the promulgation of the Mexican Constitution of 1917 is seen by many scholars as the end point of the armed conflict. "Economic and social conditions improved in accordance with revolutionary policies, so that the new society took shape within a framework of official revolutionary institutions," with the constitution providing that framework.[10] The period 1920-1940 is often considered to be a phase of the Revolution, during which power was consolidated and the revolutionary constitution of 1917 was implemented.[11] This armed conflict is often categorized as the most important sociopolitical event in Mexico and one of the greatest upheavals of the 20th century;[12] it resulted in an important program of experimentation and reform in social organization.[13]

Election of 1884

The presidential campaign of 1884 was one of the most memorable in American history. The Republican nominee, James G. Blaine of Maine, was nicknamed the "plumed knight," but disgruntled Republican reformers regarded him as a symbol of corruption. He "wallowed in spoils like a rhinoceros in an African pool." These liberal Republicans indicated to Democratic leaders that they would bolt their own party and support a Democrat, provided he was a decent and honorable man. Grover Cleveland seemed to meet these qualifications. He had started his career as sheriff of Erie County where he personally hanged two murderers to spare the sensitivities of his subordinates. He had been known as the "veto" Mayor of Buffalo for rejecting political graft, and as governor he repudiated Tammany Hall. Republicans waved the "bloody flag," harshly attacking Cleveland for avoiding service during the Civil War. He had hired a substitute to take his place. Democrats, in turn, claimed that Blaine had sold his influence in Congress to business interests. They published letters from a Boston bookkeeper which indicated that Blaine had personally benefited from helping a railroad keep a land grant. Democrats chanted: "Blaine! Blaine! James G. Blaine! The Continental Liar from the State of Maine!" Then a Buffalo newspaper dealt Cleveland a devastating blow. Under the headline, "A Terrible Tale," the newspaper revealed that the Democratic candidate had a child out of wedlock. Even worse, Republicans charged, Cleveland had placed the child in an orphanage and the mother in an insane asylum, Republicans wore white ribbons and campaigned under the phrase "home protection." But these moralistic attacks failed to ignite much public indignation against Cleveland. Republicans chanted, "Ma, ma, where's my pa?" Democrats replied: "Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha." Just six days before the election, a group of Protestant clergy were meeting in New York. The clergymen endorsed Cleveland with words that would alter the course of the election: We are Republicans and don't propose to leave our party and identify ourselves with the party whose antecedents are Rum, Romanism and Rebellion. The following Sunday, as Irish Americans filed out of Catholic Churches, they were handed bills containing the phrase "Rum, Romanism and Rebellion," attributed to Blaine himself. Blaine's denials were ineffective and he lost New York by 1,149 votes. In the election, white Southerners, Irish Americans, and German American voters turned out in record numbers. In office, Cleveland pleased conservatives by advocating sound money and reduction of inflation, curbing party patronage, and vetoing government pensions. But he alienated business and labor interests by proposing a lower tariff and was defeated by Republican Benjamin Harrison in 1888, winning the popular vote but losing the electoral vote. In 1892, Cleveland won reelection thanks in part to a third party movement--the Populists--that siphoned off some of the strength of the Republican Party, and by a vigorous campaign against the extravagance of the Republican "Billion Dollar Congress." But his second term was ruined by the economic depression of the mid-1890s, the worst economic crisis that the country had ever seen. Insisting on sound money, he sought to keep the country on the gold standard and helped convince Congress to enact an income tax (which was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court). In 1896, Cleveland's policies were repudiated by his own party.

he Development of a Mass National Culture

The social and cultural features known as the Roaring Twenties began in leading metropolitan centers, especially Chicago, New Orleans, Los Angeles, New York City, and Philadelphia. The spirit of the Roaring Twenties was marked by a general feeling of discontinuity associated with modernity and a break with traditions. At the same time, jazz and dancing rose in popularity and the era is often referred to as the Jazz Age. The media focused on celebrities, especially sports heroes and movie stars, as cities rooted for their home team and filled the new palatial cinemas and gigantic stadiums. Radio, film, and popular magazines brought these new ideas and trends to all Americans, contributing to the development of a mass national culture.

Woodrow Wilson

The split in the Republican ranks in 1912 enabled Democrat Woodrow Wilson to win the presidency. Despite receiving only 42 percent of the popular vote, Wilson steered through Congress the creation of the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Trade Commission, tariff reduction, anti-trust legislation, and a graduated income tax. Wilson began as something of an isolationist in foreign policy. He apologized to Colombia for the U.S. role in Panama's independence; and he appointed the pacifistic William Jennings Bryan as secretary of state. But he would later vow to teach Latin Americans lessons in democracy. Only a week after taking office in 1913, Wilson called upon Mexico's president, Victoriano Huerta, who had seized power after the constitutional president was murdered, to step aside when elections were held. When Huerta refused, Wilson used minor incidents--including the arrest of some American sailors in Tampico and the arrival of a German merchant ship carrying supplies for Huerta--as a pretext for occupying the Mexico port of Veracruz. Within weeks, Huerta was forced to leave his country. During the conflict, the Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa had made a number of raids into U.S. territory near the Mexican border. Wilson responded by ordering Gen. John J. (Black Jack) Pershing to cross into Mexico. As president, Wilson also sent American troops to occupy Haiti in 1915 and the Dominican Republic in 1916. A year later, the United States bought the Virgin Islands, thereby gaining control of every major Caribbean island except British Jamaica. He engaged in more military interventions abroad than any other American president. Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born in Virginia but grew up in Augusta, Georgia, where his father was an official of the Southern Presbyterian church. After briefly practicing as a lawyer (he only had two clients, one of whom was his mother), he attended graduate school at Johns Hopkins and taught history and political science at Bryn Mawr, Wesleyan, and Princeton--his alma mater. He wrote several highly acclaimed books, including Congressional Government, which decried the weakening of presidential authority in the United States, and The State, a call for increased government activism. As Princeton's president, he developed a reputation as a reformer for trying to eliminate the school's elitist system of teaching clubs. Professional politicians in New Jersey, wrongly thinking that they could manipulate the politically inexperienced Wilson, helped make him the state's governor, and then, arranged his nomination as president in 1912. The nomination was a way to block another bid by William Jennings Bryan, whose prairie populism had been rejected three times by voters. Before he launched his campaign, Wilson described himself with these words: I am a vague, conjectural personality, more made up of opinions and academic prepossessions than of human traits and red corpuscles. We shall see what will happen! With the Republican vote split between Taft and Roosevelt, Wilson became the first Southerner to be elected president since the Civil War. He carried 40 states, but only 42 percent of the vote. After his election, the moralistic, self-righteous Wilson told the chairman of the Democratic Party: "Remember that God ordained that I should be the next president of the United States." Wilson later said that the United States had been created by God "to show the way to the nations of the world how they shall walk in the paths of liberty." During his first term, he initiated a long list of major domestic reforms. These included: The Underwood Simmons Tariff (1913), which substantially lowered duties on imports for the first time since the Civil War and enacted a graduated income tax; The Federal Reserve Act (1913), which established a Federal Reserve Board and 12 regional Federal Reserve banks to supervise the banking system, setting interest rates on loans to private banks and controlling the supply of money in circulation; The Federal Trade Commission Act (1914), which established the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC sought to preserve competition by preventing businesses from engaging in unfair business practices; Clayton Act Anti-Trust Act (1914), which limited the ownership of stock in one corporation by another, implemented non-competitive pricing policies, and forbade interlocking directorship for certain banking and business corporations. It also recognized the right of labor to strike and picket and barred the use of anti-trust statutes against labor unions. Unlike Roosevelt, who believed that big business could be successfully regulated by government, Woodrow Wilson believed that the federal government should break up big businesses in order to restore as much competition as possible. Other social legislation enacted during Wilson's first term included: The Seaman Act (1915), which set minimum standards for the treatment of merchant sailors; The Adamson Act (1916), which established an eight-hour workday for railroad workers; The Workingmen's Compensation Act (1916), which provided financial assistance to federal employees injured on the job; The Child Labor Act (1916), which forbade the interstate sale of goods produced by child labor; and The Farm Loan Act (1916), which made it easier for farmers to get loans. Following Wilson's election in 1912, four constitutional amendments were ratified: 16th Amendment (1913) gave Congress the power to impose an income tax; 17th Amendment (1913) required the direct election of senators; 18th Amendment (1919) banned the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages; and 19th amendment (1920) gave women the right to vote. Wilson's second term was dominated by American involvement in World War I. At the end of September 1919, Wilson suffered a mild stroke. Then in early October, he had a major stroke that almost totally incapacitated him. More than most presidents, Wilson's historical reputation had swung up and down. During the 1920s, he was viewed as a priggish and an anti-business president, an impractical visionary and fuzzy idealist who embroiled the United States in a needless war. During the 1940s, in sharp contrast, he was depicted in the Hollywood film, Wilson (1944), as an idealistic leader struggling to create a new world order based on international law.

rapid industrial growth

US emerges as an industrial power

Annexation of Texas, delayed by sectional rivalry

While southerners favored the annexation of Texas, Northeasterners opposed it, fearing the expansion of slave territory and, therefore, increased southern membership in the House of Representatives and Senate (Texas would no doubt be divided into more than one state.

Civil Disobedience

defense of nonviolent direct action

progressivism: federal level

direct election of senators achieved by the 17th amendment (1913) and national women's suffrage achieved by the 19th amendment (1920)

progressivism: state level

direct primaries (voters could nominate candidates), secret ballot, initiative and referendum, recall, civil service reform (more public officials had to take civil service exams), several states granted women suffrage

Frederick Douglass

has been called the father of the civil rights movement. He rose through determination, brilliance, and eloquence to shape the American nation. He was an abolitionist, human rights and women's rights activist, orator, author, journalist, publisher, and social reformer. Committed to freedom, Douglass dedicated his life to achieving justice for all Americans, in particular African-Americans, women, and minority groups. He envisioned America as an inclusive nation strengthened by diversity and free of discrimination. Douglass served as advisor to presidents. Abraham Lincoln referred to him as the most meritorious man of the nineteenth century. In his later years Douglass was appointed to several offices. He served as U.S. Marshal of the District of Columbia during Rutherford B. Hayes' administration and President James Garfield appointed him the District of Columbia Recorder of Deeds. In 1889 President Benjamin Harrison appointed him to be the US minister to Haiti. He was later appointed by President Grant to serve as secretary of the commission of Santo Domingo. Douglass had hoped that his appointments would open doors for other African-Americans, but it was many years before they would follow in his footsteps. Frederick Douglass rose from slavery to become the leading African-American voice of the nineteenth century. At an early age, he realized that his ability to read was the key to freedom. All of his efforts from then on focused on achieving freedom. As a young man, he came into contact with black preachers and taught in the Sabbath School in Baltimore. Here he refined his reading, writing, and speaking skills. At age twenty, Douglass escaped north to freedom. He settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts with his wife Anna Murray Douglass and joined the abolitionist movement. William Lloyd Garrison Frederick Douglass was a compelling force in the anti-slavery movement. A man of moral authority, Douglass developed into a charismatic public speaker. Prominent abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison recognized his oratory skill and hired him as a speaker for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. Wendell Phillips Douglass worked with many notable abolitionists of the nineteenth century including Wendell Phillips and Abby Kelley. Douglass also had a close relationship with John Brown and his family but disagreed with Brown's violent tactics, dramatically displayed in Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry in 1859. With the abolishment of slavery at the close of the Civil War, Douglass then turned his attention to the full integration of the African-American into political and economic life of the United States. Fredreick Douglass Douglass established his own weekly abolitionist newspaper, the North Star, that became a major voice of African-American opinion. Later, through his periodical titled the Douglass Monthly, he recruited black Union soldiers for the African-American Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts Volunteers. His sons Lewis and Charles both served in this regiment and saw combat. Douglass worked to retain the hard-won advances of African-Americans. However, the progress made during Reconstruction soon eroded as the twentieth century approached. Douglass spent his last years opposing lynching and supporting the rights of women. The antislavery crusade of the early nineteenth century served as a training ground for the women's suffrage movement. Douglass actively supported the women's rights movement, yet he believed black men should receive suffrage first. Demonstrating his support for women's rights, Douglass participated in the first feminist convention at Seneca Falls in July of 1848 where he was largely responsible for passage of the motion to support female suffrage. Together with abolitionist and feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Douglass signed the Declaration of Sentiments that became the movement's manifesto. His masthead of his newspaper, the North Star, once read "Right is of no Sex - Truth is of no Color." A women's rights activist to the end, Douglass died in February 1895, having just attended a Woman's Council meeting. This information was reproduced from a National Parks Service exhibit and is used with permission.

WI, NY, NJ, CA, MI, OH

leading progressive states

John Brown's Raid

ohn Brown's attempt to incite a massive slave uprising by seizing the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (in present-day West Virginia). The Harpers Ferry Raid went awry, however, and resulted only in Brown's capture. While Northerners mourned his execution, Southerners cheered.

General George B McClellan USA

opposed the Emancipation Proclamation and who ran on a platform which condemned Lincoln for "four years of failure" and called for a negotiated end to the war.

Fifteenth Amendment

prohibited states from abridging the right to vote because of race

Queen Liliuokalani

queen of Hawaii

Religious fundamentalism

scopes trial

lincoln's second inaugural

" With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds.

Muckrackers

"At the turn of the century, almost by accident, editors discovered that what most interested readers was the exposure of mischief in American life"

Alaska (1867)

"Seward's Folly." U.S. purchases from Russia for 7.2 million to show appreciation for their support in the Civil War and to reduce foreign possessions in North America. Considered a "barren icebox" by most citizens who were unaware of the territory's vast natural resources. Became a state in 1959.

Battle of First Bull Run

(First Manassas), July 21, 1861, near Manasass Junction, Va. (southerners sometimes named battles acc. to the name of nearby towns while northerners often referred to battles by the name of nearby geographical features). First major engagement of the war was a disaster for Union forces under Irvin McDowell (the beginning of Lincoln's "trouble with generals"). Describe battle. Confed.: General Joseph E. Johnston and Colonel Thomas J. Jackson. Earned nickname at Bull Run (comment may have been sarcastic??) Importance: Demonstrated to both sides (esp. to the North) that this war was not going to be a short one. Enlistments went up in the North after this battle.

Harrison Administration/Republican (1889-1893)

After the bloodless 1893 revolution, the American businessmen lobbied President Benjamin Harrison and Congress to annex the Hawaiian Islands. In his last month in office, Harrison sent an annexation treaty to the Senate for confirmation, but the new president, Grover Cleveland, withdrew the treaty "for the purpose of re-examination." He also received Queen Liliuokalani and replaced the American stars and stripes in Honolulu with the Hawaiian flag.

Agricultural programs of the 100 days

Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA)

Texas Revolution

American settlement in Texas began with the encouragement of first the Spanish, and then Mexican, governments. In the summer of 1820 Moses Austin, a bankrupt 59-year old Missourian, asked Spanish authorities for a large Texas land tract which he would promote and sell to American pioneers. The request by Austin seemed preposterous. His background was that of a Philadelphia dry goods merchant, a Virginia mine operator, a Louisiana judge, and a Missouri banker. But early in 1821, the Spanish government gave him permission to settle 300 families in Texas. Spain welcomed the Americans for two reasons--to provide a buffer against illegal U.S. settlers, who were creating problems in east Texas even before the grant was made to Austin, and to help develop the land, since only 3,500 native Mexicans had settled in Texas (which was part of the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas). Moses Austin did not live to see his dream realized. On a return trip from Mexico City, he died of exhaustion and exposure. Before he died, his son Stephen promised to carry out the dream of colonizing Texas. By the end of 1824, young Austin had attracted 272 colonists to Texas, and had persuaded the newly independent Mexican government that the best way to attract Americans was to give land agents (called empresarios) 67,000 acres of land for every 200 families they brought to Texas. Mexico imposed two conditions on land ownership: settlers had to become Mexican citizens, and they had to convert to Roman Catholicism. By 1830 there were 16,000 Americans in Texas. At that time, Americans formed a 4-to-1 majority in the northern section of Coahuila y Tejas, but people of Hispanic heritage formed a majority in the state as a whole. As the Anglo population swelled, Mexican authorities grew increasingly suspicious of the growing American presence. Mexico feared that the United States planned to use the Texas colonists to acquire the province by revolution. Differences in language and culture had produced bitter enmity between the colonists and native Mexicans. The colonists refused to learn the Spanish language, maintained their own separate schools, and conducted most of their trade with the United States. To reassert its authority over Texas, the Mexican government reaffirmed its Constitutional prohibition against slavery, established a chain of military posts occupied by convict soldiers, restricted trade with the United States, and decreed an end to further American immigration. Santa Anna These actions might have provoked Texans to revolution. But in 1832, General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, a Mexican politician and soldier, became the president of Mexico. Colonists hoped that he would make Texas a self-governing state within the Mexican republic. But once in power, Santa Anna proved to be less liberal than many Texans had believed. In 1834, he overthrew the constitutional government of Mexico, abolished state governments, and made himself dictator. When Stephen Austin went to Mexico City to try to settle the grievances of the Texans, Santa Anna imprisoned him in a Mexican jail for a year. On November 3, 1835, American colonists adopted a constitution and organized a temporary government, but voted overwhelmingly against declaring independence. A majority of colonists hoped to attract the support of Mexican liberals in a joint effort to depose Santa Anna and to restore power to the state governments, hopefully including a separate state of Texas. Sam Houston While holding out the possibility of compromise, the Texans prepared for war by electing Sam Houston commander of whatever military forces he could muster. Houston, one of the larger-than-life figures who helped win Texas independence, Houston had run away from home at the age of 15 and lived for three years with the Cherokee Indians in eastern Tennessee. During the War of 1812, he had fought in the Creek War under Andrew Jackson. At 30 he was elected to the House of Representatives and at 34 he was elected governor of Tennessee. Many Americans regarded him as the heir apparent to Andrew Jackson. Then, suddenly, in 1829, scandal struck. Houston married a woman 17 years younger than himself. Within three months, the marriage was mysteriously annulled. Depressed and humiliated, Houston resigned as governor. After wandering about the country as a near derelict, he returned to live with the Cherokee in present day Arkansas and Oklahoma. During his stay with the tribe, Houston was instrumental in forging peace treaties among several warring Indian nations. In 1832, Houston traveled to Washington to demand that President Jackson live up to the terms of the removal treaty. Jackson did not meet his demands, but instead sent Houston unofficially to Texas to keep an eye on the American settlers and the growing anti-Mexican sentiment. In the middle of 1835, scattered local outbursts erupted against Mexican rule. Then, a band of 300-500 Texas riflemen, who comprised the entire Texas army, captured the Mexican military headquarters in San Antonio. Revolution was underway. The Alamo Soon, the ominous news reached Texas that Santa Anna himself was marching north with 7,000 soldiers to crush the revolt. In actuality, the army of Santa Anna was not particularly impressive; it was filled with raw recruits, and included many Indian troops who spoke and understood little Spanish. When Houston learned that the initial goal of Santa Anna was to recapture San Antonio, he ordered San Antonio abandoned. But, 150 Texas rebels decided to defend the city and made their stand at an abandoned Spanish mission, the Alamo. The Texans were led by William Travis and Jim Bowie, and included the frontier hero David Crockett. For twelve days, Mexican forces lay siege to the Alamo. Travis issued an appeal for reinforcements, but only 32 men were able to cross Mexican lines. Legend has it that on the evening of March 5, 1836, Travis, realizing that defense of the Alamo was futile, drew a line in the dirt with his sword. Only those willing to die for Texas independence, Travis announced to the garrison, should step across the line and defend the Alamo. All but two men did. One refused to cross the line, and another, Jim Bowie, too sick to move from his cot, called over some friends and had them carry him across the line. At 5 a.m., March 6, Mexican troops scaled the walls of the mission. By 8 a.m., the fighting was over. 183 defenders lay dead--including several Mexican defenders who had fought for Texas independence. (Seven defenders surrendered and were immediately executed, and approximately 15 persons survived, including an American woman and her child). Mexican forces soaked the bodies of the defenders in oil, stacked them like cordwood outside the mission, and set them ablaze. If the Alamo was a military defeat, it was a psychological victory. The Mexican troops of Santa Anna suffered l,550 casualties--eight Mexican soldiers died for every defender. "Remember the Alamo" became the battle cry of the Texas War of Independence. Goliad Two weeks after the defeat at the Alamo, a group of Texas surrendered to Mexican forces outside of Goliad with the understanding that they would be treated as prisoners of war. But Santa Anna set aside the agreement. Instead, he ordered more than 350 Texans shot. San Jacinto The defeats gave Sam Houston time to raise and train an army. Volunteers from the American South flocked to his banner. On April 21, his army of less than 800 men surprised Santa Anna and his army as it camped out on the San Jacinto River, east of present-day Houston. The next day, the army led by Houston captured Santa Anna himself and forced him to sign a treaty granting Texas its independence--a treaty that was never ratified by the Mexican government because it was acquired under duress. For most Mexican settlers in Texas, defeat meant that they would be relegated to second-class social, political, and economic positions. The new Texas Constitution denied citizenship and property rights to those who failed to support the revolution. All persons of Hispanic ancestry were considered in the "denial" category unless they could prove otherwise. Consequently, many Mexican landowners fled the region.

protective tariff

At the heart of the nullification crisis, the protective tariff divided the north and south. The south bitterly opposed the tariff because the region was more dependent on manufactured goods.

Confederate Attacks on Northern Merchant Ship

British built several warships for the South, most importantly the Florida and the Alabama, which harassed northern shipping. This violated Britain's official policy of neutrality.

lincoln in history

Considered one of the greatest of American presidents. Remained steadfast in his devotion to the cause of Union. In 1858, in his famous House Divided speech, he proclaimed "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe that this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free." He was a champion of the democratic way of life (despite his extension of presidential power) and he possessed an enduring faith in republican government and in the future of the United States. His speeches contain some of the most eloquent and often quoted passages in the history of public discourse. READ excerpts from FIRST INAUGURAL and read all of GETTYSBURG ADDRESS.

Credit Mobilier

Construction of the railroad provided many opportunities for financial chicanery, corruption, graft, and bribery. The greatest financial scandal of the 19th century grew out of the railroad's construction. The president of the Union Pacific helped found a construction company, called Credit Mobilier, which allowed investors, including several members of Congress, to grant lucrative construction contracts to themselves, while nearly bankrupting the railroad.

Big Stick Democracy

Expansion of the Monroe Doctrine in the Caribbean

FHA

Federal Housing Authority

Dr. Francis Townsend

Francis Everett Townsend was an American physician who was best known for his revolving old-age pension proposal during the Great Depression.

Theodore Roosevelt: Trust Buster (1901-1909)

Franklin Roosevelt brought a new breed of government officials to Washington. Previously, most government administrators were wealthy patricians, businessmen, or political loyalists. Roosevelt, however, looked to new sources of talent, bringing to Washington a team of Ivy League intellectuals and New York State social workers. Known as the "brain trust," these advisors provided Roosevelt with economic ideas and oratorical ammunition. The New Dealers were strongly influenced by the Progressive reformers of the early 20th century, who believed that government had not only a right but a duty to intervene in all aspects of economic life in order to improve the quality of American life. In one significant respect, however, the New Dealers differed decisively from the Progressives. Progressive reform had a strong moral dimension; many reformers wanted to curb drinking, eliminate what they considered immoral sexual behavior, and reshape human character. In comparison, the New Dealers were much more pragmatic--an attitude vividly illustrated by an incident that took place during World War I. One of the most intense policy debates during the war was whether to provide American troops with condoms. The Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels rejected the idea, fearing that it would corrupt the troops' morals: It is wicked to seem to encourage and approve placing in the hands of the men an appliance which will lead them to think they may indulge in practices which are not sanctioned by moral...law. While Daniels was on vacation, however, Franklin Roosevelt authorized prophylactics for sailors. Pragmatism, not moral reform, would be a key New Deal theme. Apart from their commitment to pragmatism, the New Dealers were unified in their rejection of laissez-faire orthodoxy--the idea that federal government's responsibilities were confined to balancing the federal budgets and providing for the nation's defense. The New Dealers did, however, disagree profoundly about the best way to end the Depression. They offered three alternative prescriptions for rescuing the nation's economy. The "trust-busters," led by Thurman Arnold, called for vigorous enforcement of anti-trust laws to break-up concentrated business power. The "associationalists" wanted to encourage cooperation between business, labor, and government by establishing associations and codes supported by the three parties. The "economic planners," led by Rexford Tugwell, Adolph Berle, and Gardiner Means, wanted to create a system of centralized national planning. Roosevelt never aligned himself with any of these factions. He summed up his pragmatic attitude: "Take a method and try it," he said, "if it fails admit it frankly and try another. But above all try something."

Plessy v Ferguson 1896

In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the court said that the 14th Amendment "could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political, equality or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either." It would not be until 1954 that a unanimous Supreme Court would rule that legal segregation violated the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause.

Election of 1888

In office, Cleveland pleased conservatives by advocating sound money and reduction of inflation, curbing party patronage, and vetoing government pensions. But he alienated business and labor interests by proposing a lower tariff and was defeated by Republican Benjamin Harrison in 1888, winning the popular vote but losing the electoral vote.

Open Door Policy (John Hay)

John Hay served as Secretary of State from 1898-1905 in the Mckinley and T. Roosevelt administrations. he is best remembered for the Hay Pauncefote Treaty (that prepared the way for building the Panama Canal) and his _______________ in China

REA

Rural Electrification Administration

Relations w/Russia: Purchase of Alaska (Seward's Folly)

Russia is rewarded for their support of the North by the purchase of Alaska in 1867. Russia had wanted to sell the frozen territory to the U.S. for a long time.

WEB DuBois

Scholar and activist W.E.B. Du Bois was born on February 23, 1868, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. In 1895, he became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University. Du Bois wrote extensively and was the best known spokesperson for African-American rights during the first half of the 20th century. He co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909. Du Bois died in Ghana in 1963.

Knights of the White Camelia

Secret organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan, founded in Tennessee in 1866, and the Knights of the White Camellia were dedicated to ending Republican rule and preventing blacks from voting. Members of these organizations included judges, lawyers, and clergymen as well as yeomen farmers and poor whites.

SEC

Securities and Exchange Commission

Hawaii (1898)

Served as a resupply and fueling station for American merchant ships and attracted American missionaries. Also attracted American investors (particularly in sugar). Most Hawaiian sugar was sold in the U.S. In 1893, a group of revolutionists (mostly American settlers) overthrew the anti-American Queen Liliuokalani and requested annexation by the U.S. Annexation was delayed because Pres. Cleveland believed most native Hawaiians preferred independence. In 1898, under Pres. McKinley, Hawaii was annexed. Became a state in 1959. Importance: sugar and pineapples, tourism, naval base at Pearl Harbor

Huey P. Long and "Share-Our Wealth"

Share The Wealth was a movement begun in February 1934, during the Great Depression, by Huey Long, a governor and later United States Senator from Louisiana. Huey Long first proposed the plan in a national radio address, which is now referred to as the "Share Our Wealth Speech".[1]

Kellogg-Briand Pact

Signed by The Kellogg-Briand Pact was an agreement to outlaw war signed on August 27, 1928. Sometimes called the Pact of Paris for the city in which it was signed, the pact was one of many international efforts to prevent another World War, but it had little effect in stopping the rising militarism of the 1930s or preventing World War II. The Pact was named after the Foreign Minister of France (Briand) and the U.S. Secretary of State (Kellogg) and it outlawed war as "an instrument of national policy." Although 62 nations signed the agreement, there were no provisions for enforcement.

Wilmot Proviso

Some historians have called the Mexican War the first battle of the Civil War because it revived intense and heated debate about the expansion of slavery in the West. Tensions came to a head when Pennsylvanian congressman David Wilmot set forth the Wilmot Proviso in 1846, proposing that slavery be banned in the West. Not surprisingly, Southerners killed the proviso in the Senate before it could become law.

Alamo

Soon, the ominous news reached Texas that Santa Anna himself was marching north with 7,000 soldiers to crush the revolt. In actuality, the army of Santa Anna was not particularly impressive; it was filled with raw recruits, and included many Indian troops who spoke and understood little Spanish. When Houston learned that the initial goal of Santa Anna was to recapture San Antonio, he ordered San Antonio abandoned. But, 150 Texas rebels decided to defend the city and made their stand at an abandoned Spanish mission, the Alamo. The Texans were led by William Travis and Jim Bowie, and included the frontier hero David Crockett. For twelve days, Mexican forces lay siege to the Alamo. Travis issued an appeal for reinforcements, but only 32 men were able to cross Mexican lines. Legend has it that on the evening of March 5, 1836, Travis, realizing that defense of the Alamo was futile, drew a line in the dirt with his sword. Only those willing to die for Texas independence, Travis announced to the garrison, should step across the line and defend the Alamo. All but two men did. One refused to cross the line, and another, Jim Bowie, too sick to move from his cot, called over some friends and had them carry him across the line. At 5 a.m., March 6, Mexican troops scaled the walls of the mission. By 8 a.m., the fighting was over. 183 defenders lay dead--including several Mexican defenders who had fought for Texas independence. (Seven defenders surrendered and were immediately executed, and approximately 15 persons survived, including an American woman and her child). Mexican forces soaked the bodies of the defenders in oil, stacked them like cordwood outside the mission, and set them ablaze. If the Alamo was a military defeat, it was a psychological victory. The Mexican troops of Santa Anna suffered l,550 casualties--eight Mexican soldiers died for every defender. "Remember the Alamo" became the battle cry of the Texas War of Independence.

south secession

South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Arkansas

Blockade of Southern Ports

Starts out as a "paper blockade" because of the difficulty of blockading the entire southern coastline but as the navy increased # of ships, the blockade became very effective. Greatly reduced the South's exportation of cotton and ability to import manufactured goods and other supplies.

popular sovereignty

Stephen Douglas's doctrine of "popular sovereignty"--which stated that territorial governments had the power to prohibit slavery--was also unconstitutional.

TVA

Tennessee Valley Authority: The Tennessee Valley Authority is a federally owned corporation in the United States created by congressional charter in May 1933 to provide navigation, flood control, electricity generation, fertilizer.

Pan-Americanism (James G. Blaine)

The Conferences of American States, commonly referred to as the Pan-American Conferences, were meetings of the Pan-American Union, an international organization for cooperation on trade. James G. Blaine, a United States politician, Secretary of State and presidential contender, first proposed establishment of closer ties between the United States and its southern neighbors and proposed international conference.[1] Blaine hoped that ties between the United States and its southern counterparts would open Latin American markets to US trade.

FDIC

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is a United States government corporation providing deposit insurance to depositors in US banks.

Federal Farm Loan Act

The Federal Farm Loan Act of 1916 (Pub.L. 64-158, 39 Stat. 360, enacted July 17, 1916) was a United States federal law aimed at increasing credit to rural family farmers. It did so by creating a federal farm loan board, twelve regional farm loan banks and tens of farm loan associations.

harlem renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance was the name given to the cultural, social, and artistic explosion that took place in Harlem between the end of World War I and the middle of the 1930s. During this period Harlem was a cultural center, drawing black writers, artists, musicians, photographers, poets, and scholars.

The Jungle

The Jungle is a 1906 novel written by the American journalist and novelist Upton Sinclair. Sinclair wrote the novel to portray the harsh conditions and exploited lives of immigrants in the United States in Chicago and similar industrialized cities.

the new woman

The New Woman was a feminist ideal that emerged in the late nineteenth century and had a profound influence on feminism well into the twentieth century

the sexual revolution

The Sexual Revolution, also known as a time of Sexual Liberation, was a social movement that challenged traditional codes of behavior related to sexuality and interpersonal relationships throughout the Western world from the 1960s to the 1980s.

Northern Victories in the West (1862-1863)

U.S. Grant captured Fort Donelson (earned nickname here) and was victorious at Shiloh (bloodiest battle at that point w/ approx. 24,000 casualties), April 6-7, 1862. On July 4, 1863, Grant captures Vicksburg.

Wilson's New Freedom

Woodrow Wilson proposes the "New Freedom" which included a number of progressive reforms similar to that of the "New Nationalism," including direct election of senators. Also favored a graduated income tax, independence for the Philippines, lower tariffs, and banking reform. DID NOT agree with T.R. on the issue of big business which Wilson considered "evil." He was not content to simply regulate large corporations - he wanted to break them up.

Progressives

________________ believed in a strong chief executive who acted in the public interest. This concept was illustrated for the first time since Lincoln's presidency by both Progressive presidents: T. Roosevelt and Wilson.

Prohibition

a nationwide ban on the sale, production, importation, and transportation of alcoholic beverages that remained in place from 1920 to 1933. Prohibition was mandated under the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Private ownership and consumption of alcohol was not made illegal under federal law; however, in many areas local laws were more strict, with some states banning possession outright. Nationwide Prohibition ended with the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment. Prohibition led to some unintended consequences including the growth of criminal organizations, including the American Mafia and various other criminal groups, disregard of federal law, and corruption among some politicians and within law enforcement. Despite these criticisms, overall consumption of alcohol halved during the 1920s and remained below pre-Prohibition levels until the 1940s.

Harriet Tubman

an American abolitionist, humanitarian, and an armed scout and spy for the United States Army during the American Civil War. Born into slavery, Tubman escaped and subsequently made some thirteen missions to rescue approximately seventy enslaved families and friends,[2] using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. She later helped abolitionist John Brown recruit men for his raid on Harpers Ferry, and in the post-war era was an active participant in the struggle for women's suffrage. Born a slave in Dorchester County, Maryland, Tubman was beaten and whipped by her various masters as a child. Early in life, she suffered a traumatic head wound when an irate slave owner threw a heavy metal weight intending to hit another slave and hit her instead. The injury caused dizziness, pain, and spells of hypersomnia, which occurred throughout her life. She was a devout Christian and experienced strange visions and vivid dreams, which she ascribed to premonitions from God. In 1849, Tubman escaped to Philadelphia, then immediately returned to Maryland to rescue her family. Slowly, one group at a time, she brought relatives with her out of the state, and eventually guided dozens of other slaves to freedom. Traveling by night and in extreme secrecy, Tubman (or "Moses", as she was called) "never lost a passenger". After the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed, she helped guide fugitives farther north into British North America, and helped newly freed slaves find work. When the Civil War began, Tubman worked for the Union Army, first as a cook and nurse, and then as an armed scout and spy. The first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war, she guided the raid at Combahee Ferry, which liberated more than 700 slaves. After the war, she retired to the family home on property she had purchased in 1859 in Auburn, New York, where she cared for her aging parents. She was active in the women's suffrage movement until illness overtook her and she had to be admitted to a home for elderly African Americans that she had helped to establish years earlier. After she died in 1913, she became an icon of American courage and freedom. On April 20, 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department announced a plan for Tubman to replace Andrew Jackson as the portrait gracing the $20 bill.[3]

North financing war

raised money more easily. Imposed high excise taxes and a modest income tax (the first in American history), passed the Morrill Tariff Act in 1861 which raised import duties and protected northern manufacturing, issued greenbacks, sold bonds, passed the National Banking Act to regulate selling of government bonds.

standard of living

the degree of wealth and material comfort available to a person or community.

The Dust Bowl

the name given to the Great Plains region devastated by drought in 1930s depression-ridden America. The 150,000-square-mile area, encompassing the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles and neighboring sections of Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico, has little rainfall, light soil, and high winds, a potentially destructive combination. When drought struck from 1934 to 1937, the soil lacked the stronger root system of grass as an anchor, so the winds easily picked up the loose topsoil and swirled it into dense dust clouds, called "black blizzards." Recurrent dust storms wreaked havoc, choking cattle and pasture lands and driving 60 percent of the population from the region.

Ida M Tarbell

took on John D Rockefeller with her book The History of the Standard Oil Company

Red Scare/Palmer Raids

(1919): The first Red Scare began following the Russian Revolution of 1917. The Red Scare was "a nation-wide anti-radical hysteria provoked by a mounting fear and anxiety that a Bolshevik revolution in America was imminent—a revolution that would change Church, home, marriage, civility, and the American way of Life." A. Mitchell Palmer, Wilson's Attorney General spearheaded a wave of raids against radicals and leftists, breaking into Union offices and Socialist and Communist organization headquarters "without warning and without warrant." This was a continuation of the intolerance and First Amendment violations that occurred during WWI.

Granger Movement

Began with the National Grande in 1867 under the leadership of Oliver Kelly. Organization of local farmers' clubs that became active in state politics, electing Granger candidates to state legislatures and passing granger laws. Ultimately failed but taught farmers to work together.

North Political Issues/Conflicts: Expansion of Presidential Powers

Beyond Constitutional limits? Sometimes spent federal funds not yet appropriated, substituted martial law for civil law in areas that were removed from the fighting and where civil courts were still operating (Confederate areas), suspended habeas corpus . these actions later declared unconstitutional in ex parte Merryman (1861) by pro-southern Chief Justice Roger Taney.

Election of 1856

Bleeding Kansas was the hottest topic in the presidential election of 1856. Democrat James Buchanan eventually defeated his Republican and Know-Nothing foes after many Southern states threatened to secede if a Republican became the next president. The Know-Nothing party consisted of nativist Americans who wanted to stop the tide of foreign immigrants from Ireland and Germany entering the United States in the 1840s and 1850s. The Know-Nothings nominated former president Millard Fillmore in the 1856 presidential election. Members of the American Party were so secretive that they often claimed to "know nothing" whenever questioned, hence the nickname.

Theodore Roosevelt

Born in NYC in 1858 Graduated from Harvard and Columbia Law School Ran for NY Assemblyman in 1881 dropped out of law school Wrote The Naval War of 1812 in 1882 Wrote The Winning of the West (1889-1896) Became president of the board of NYC Polics COmmissioners in 1895 Appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy by McKinley in 1897 Lt Colonel of the Rough riders in the Spanish American War 1898 Elected Governor of New York, 1898- VP in McKinley administration (1901) President (1901-1909) Won Nobel peace prize in 1906 for mediating the Russo-Japanese War Died January 6, 1919 2001, Clinton awarded him Medal of Honor

Booker T Washington

Born into slavery in Virginia in the mid-to-late 1850s, Booker T. Washington put himself through school and became a teacher after the Civil War. In 1881, he founded the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama (now known as Tuskegee University), which grew immensely and focused on training African Americans in agricultural pursuits. A political adviser and writer, Washington clashed with intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois over the best avenues for racial uplift.

FDR background

Born on January 30, 1882, on a large estate near the village of Hyde Park, New York, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the only child of his wealthy parents, James and Sara Delano Roosevelt. He was educated by private tutors and elite schools (Groton and Harvard), and early on began to admire and emulate his fifth cousin, Theodore Roosevelt, elected president in 1900. While in college, Franklin fell in love with Theodore's niece (and his own distant cousin), Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, and they married in 1905. The couple had a daughter, Anna, followed by five sons, one of whom died in infancy.

Bull Moose Party

Bull Moose Party, formally Progressive Party, U.S. dissident political faction that nominated former president Theodore Roosevelt as its candidate in the presidential election of 1912; the formal name and general objectives of the party were revived 12 years later.

fort sumter

By late February, Fort Sumter had become a key symbol of whether the Confederate states exercised sovereignty over their territory. South Carolina demanded that President Buchanan surrender Fort Sumter in exchange for monetary compensation. To the rebels' surprise, he refused. As the following letter from Jefferson Davis makes clear, any decision about forcing the surrender of the fort by force carried profound consequences. Eight slave states in the Upper South remained in the Union. But their stance would clearly depend on the steps that South Carolina and the federal government took toward Fort Sumter.

Father Coughlin

Charles Edward Coughlin (/ˈkɒɡlɪn/ KOG-lin; October 25, 1891 - October 27, 1979), was a controversial Canadian-American Roman Catholic priest based in the United States near Detroit at Royal Oak, Michigan's National Shrine of the Little Flower church. Commonly known as Father Coughlin, he was one of the first political leaders to use radio to reach a mass audience, as up to thirty million listeners tuned to his weekly broadcasts during the 1930s. He was forced off the air in 1939. Early in his radio career, Coughlin was a vocal supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal. By 1934 he had become a harsh critic of Roosevelt, accusing him of being too friendly to bankers. In 1934 he established a new political organization called the National Union for Social Justice. He issued a platform calling for monetary reforms, the nationalization of major industries and railroads, and protection of the rights of labor. The membership ran into the millions, but it was not well-organized at the local level.[1] After hinting at attacks on Jewish bankers, Coughlin began to use his radio program to issue antisemitic commentary, and in the late 1930s to support some of the policies of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Emperor Hirohito. The broadcasts have been called "a variation of the Fascist agenda applied to American culture".[2] His chief topics were political and economic rather than religious, with his slogan being "Social Justice", initially in support of, and later opposing, the New Deal. Many American bishops as well as the Vatican wanted him silenced, but after the outbreak of World War II in Europe in 1939 it was the Roosevelt administration that finally forced the cancellation of his radio program and forbade the dissemination through the mail of his newspaper, Social Justice.

social gospel movement

Churches should involve themselves in social justice, should not just concern themselves with personal salvation or charitable work. Especially true in Protestant churches. Many Progressive leaders grew up in religious households. Strengthened the connection between evangelical piety and secular action. Middle class especially involved in the movement.

General Lewis Armistead CSA

Civil War 1817 Lewis Armistead born Share this: facebook twitter google+ PRINT CITE On this day in 1817, Confederate General Lewis Armistead is born in New Bern, North Carolina. Armistead is best known for leading Pickett's Charge at the 1863 Battle of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania,where he was mortally wounded. Armistead's father, Walker Keith Armistead, and his five uncles served in the military during the War of 1812. One of them, George Armistead, commanded Fort McHenry at Baltimore during the British bombardment, an eventthatinspired America's national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner." Lewis Armistead entered West Point in 1834 but did not graduate due to poor grades, although some sources indicate that the reason was a fight with another cadet, Jubal Early, who was later a comrade in the Army of Northern Virginia. Despite not graduating from West Point, Armistead joined the military as a second lieutenant and fought in the Seminole War in Florida. Later, he was cited for heroism three times in the Mexican War (1846-48). During the 1850s, he served on the frontier and developed a friendship with another officer, Pennsylvanian Winfield Scott Hancock. When the Civil War broke out,Armistead resigned his commission to fight with the Confederates. At the beginning of the war, Armistead commanded the 57th Virginia Infantry,and by April 1862 he was a brigadier general. He fought during the Seven Days Battles in June and July 1862, but played only minor roles at Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville. On July 3, 1863, he led a brigade in George Pickett's division during the climactic charge at Gettysburg. Armistead's men attacked Hancock's corps at the center of the Union line on Cemetery Ridge. Armistead crossed the wall that protected the Federal cannon, representing the so-called high-water mark of the Confederacy. He fell wounded there, and the attack stalled. Armistead was found by Union Captain Henry Bingham, an aide to Hancock, and Armistead told him: "Say to General Hancock for me that I have done him and done you all an injury which I shall regret the longest day that I live." Armistead lingered for two days, andrequested that his personal effects be given to Hancock, who was also seriously wounded that day. Armistead was buried in a family plot at St. Paul's Church in Baltimore, Maryland.

CCC

Civilian Conservation Corps

The Last Frontier

Closing the Western Frontier In 1860, most Americans considered the Great Plains the "Great American Desert." Settlement west of Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, and Lousiana averaged just 1 person per square mile. The only parts of the Far West that were highly settled were California and Texas. Between 1865 and the 1890s, however, Americans settled 430 million acres in the Far West--more land than during the preceding 250 years of American history.By 1893, the Census Bureau was able to claim that the entire western frontier was now occupied. The discovery of gold, silver, and other precious minerals in California in 1849, in Nevada and Colorado in the 1850s, in Idaho and Montana in 1860s, and South Dakota in the 1870s sparked an influx of prospectors and miners. The expansion of railroads and the invention of barbed wire and improvements in windmills and pumps attracted ranchers and farmers to the Great Plains in the 1860s and 1870s. This chapter examines the forces that drove Americans westward; the kinds of lives they established in the Far West; and the rise of the "West of the imagination," the popular myths that continue to exert a powerful hold on mass culture.

Roosevelt's Reelection and "Court-Packing"

Controversial but extremely popular with voters, Roosevelt won reelection by a huge margin in 1936 over Governor Alfred M. Landon of Kansas. He faced opposition from the Supreme Court over his New Deal programs, and proposed an expansion of the court that would allow him to appoint one new justice for every sitting justice 70 or older. After heated debate, Congress rejected this "court-packing" scheme, handing FDR the biggest setback of his career. Nonetheless, the Court abruptly changed direction, upholding both the Social Security Act and the Wagner Act (officially the National Labor Relations Act). Labor unrest and another economic downturn in 1937 hurt Roosevelt's approval ratings, but the crisis had largely passed by the following year. Republicans gained ground in the midterm congressional elections, however, and soon formed an alliance with conservative Democrats that would block further reform legislation. By the end of 1938, as support for the New Deal was waning, Roosevelt faced a new looming challenge, this time on the international stage.

Relations w/Russia: Pro-Northern Policies

Czar Alexander II sends a Russian fleet to "visit" Union ports (New York and San Francisco) in a show of support for the Union (also intended to intimidate the South). Favored the North's anti-slavery stance (Alexander II had freed the Russian serfs in 1861) and wanted a strong United States to balance the power of Great Britain.

Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo (1848)

Date:1848 Annotation: In early 1848, following the United States capture and occupation of Mexico City, negotiations drew up a preliminary draft of the treaty. After revision by the Senate, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed in the Villa de Guadalupe across from the shrine dedicateed to Mexico's patron saint, the Virgin of Guadalupe, was ratified by both governments later that year. In return for the northern third of Mexico, the United States agreed to pay $15 million and to assume up to $3.25 million in claims by its citizens against the Mexican government. The treaty guaranteeded Mexicans newly absorbed into the United States and to their descendants certain political rights, including land rights. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo gave Mexicans the right to remain in United States territory or to move to Mexico. About three thousand chose to move, but the overwhelming majority decided to stay. These people could choose to retain Mexican citizenship or become citizens of the United States. The treaty explicitly guaranteed Mexican Americans "the right to their property, language, and culture." The United States Senate revised Article IX, which guaranteed Mexicans civil and political rights (substituting wording from the treaty acquiring Louisiana territory from France), and deleted Article X, which protected Mexican land grants. Officials feared that Article X would revive old Mexican and Spanish land grants and would have thrown into question land grants made by the Texas government following its declaration of independence in 1836. Many Mexicans did not have perfect title to their lands. Frequent changes in political administrations, the slowness of the Mexican bureaucracy made it difficult for landholds to obtain clear title. Article X would have allowed them to complete the process under administration by the United States. The article specifically recognized the rights of Mexican land-grant claimants in Texas, most of whom had been dispossessed of their lands by Anglo-Texans following Texas independence. The article would have allowed them to resurrect their claims and fulfill the conditions of Mexican law.

Dred Scott v Sanford (1857)

Dred Scott was a slave in Missouri. From 1833 to 1843, he resided in Illinois (a free state) and in an area of the Louisiana Territory, where slavery was forbidden by the Missouri Compromise of 1820. After returning to Missouri, Scott sued unsuccessfully in the Missouri courts for his freedom, claiming that his residence in free territory made him a free man. Scott then brought a new suit in federal court. Chief Justice Roger Taney, along with a majority of the other justices of the Supreme Court, declared the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional in the 1857 Dred Scott v. Sanford decision, claiming that slaves were property and citizens could not be deprived of their property. The ruling startled Northerners because it meant that slavery technically could no longer be banned anywhere in the United States.

Eli Whitney

Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin gave slavery a new lease on life. Between 1792, when Whitney invented the cotton gin, and 1794, the price of slaves doubled. By 1825, field hands, who had brought $500 apiece in 1794, were worth $1,500. As the price of slaves grew, so, too, did their numbers. During the first decade of the 19th century, the number of slaves in the United States rose by 33 percent; during the following decade, the slave population grew another 29 percent.

Eugene Debs

Eugene Victor "Gene" Debs (November 5, 1855 - October 20, 1926) was an American union leader, one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or the Wobblies), and five times the candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States.[3] Through his presidential candidacies, as well as his work with labor movements, Debs eventually became one of the best-known socialists living in the United States. Early in his political career, Debs was a member of the Democratic Party. He was elected as a Democrat to the Indiana General Assembly in 1884. After working with several smaller unions, including the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, Debs was instrumental in the founding of the American Railway Union (ARU), one of the nation's first industrial unions. After workers at the Pullman Palace Car Company organized a wildcat strike over pay cuts in the summer of 1894, Debs signed many into the ARU. He called a boycott of the ARU against handling trains with Pullman cars, in what became the nationwide Pullman Strike, affecting most lines west of Detroit, and more than 250,000 workers in 27 states. To keep the mail running, President Grover Cleveland used the United States Army to break the strike. As a leader of the ARU, Debs was convicted of federal charges for defying a court injunction against the strike and served six months in prison. In jail, Debs read various works of socialist theory and emerged six months later as a committed adherent of the international socialist movement. Debs was a founding member of the Social Democracy of America (1897), the Social Democratic Party of America (1898), and the Socialist Party of America (1901). Debs ran as a Socialist candidate for President of the United States five times, including 1900 (earning 0.63% of the popular vote), 1904 (2.98%), 1908 (2.83%), 1912 (5.99%), and 1920 (3.41%), the last time from a prison cell. He was also a candidate for United States Congress from his native state Indiana in 1916. Debs was noted for his oratory, and his speech denouncing American participation in World War I led to his second arrest in 1918. He was convicted under the Sedition Act of 1918 and sentenced to a term of 10 years. President Warren G. Harding commuted his sentence in December 1921. Debs died in 1926, not long after being admitted to a sanatorium due to cardiovascular problems that developed during his time in prison. He has since been cited as the inspiration for numerous politicians.

Agrarian Crusade (1865-1900)

Farmers fought back by joining groups such as the Grange, the Greenback Labor Party, and the Populist Party - demanding help from state and local governments. Marks a trend away from 18th century economic liberalism that championed a laissez-faire approach to the economy. Moved toward the idea that government must take responsibility for the economic well-being of its people.

Stalemate in the East (1861-1862)

First Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas), July 21, 1861, near Manasass Junction, Va. (southerners sometimes named battles acc. to the name of nearby towns while northerners often referred to battles by the name of nearby geographical features). First major engagement of the war was a disaster for Union forces under Irvin McDowell (the beginning of Lincoln's "trouble with generals"). Describe battle. Confed.: General Joseph E. Johnston and Colonel Thomas J. Jackson. Earned nickname at Bull Run (comment may have been sarcastic??) Importance: Demonstrated to both sides (esp. to the North) that this war was not going to be a short one. Enlistments went up in the North after this battle.In the east for the next 3 years: Army of the Potomac v. Army of Northern Virginia, mainly on southern soil. Only two battles took place on northern soil : Antietam (MD) and and Gettysburg (PA). Antietam (1862) bloodiest one-day battle of the war w/ approx. 22,000 casualties. Was regarded by Lincoln as a northern victory (but really was not conclusive) allowing him to issue the preliminary E.P. from a position of strength. Gettysburg, July 1-3, 1863. The greatest battle of the C.W. (51,000 casualties). More than 170,000 men fought in it. Lee desperate to win a battle in the north. JEB Stuart lets Lee down. Lee v. Meade. The "high water mark" of the Confederacy.

Gasden Purchase (1853)

Five years after purchasing the Mexican Cession for $15 million, the United States paid Mexico $10 million for a small strip of land in southern Arizona and New Mexico. This land, known as the Gadsden Purchase, provided a favorable railroad route into California.

Civil Rights Act 1866

Following their lead, Congress adopted two bills, one extending the life of the Freedmen's Bureau, the second, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, guaranteeing blacks' equality before the law, short of the suffrage.

Final Phase (1864-1865)

Grant received command of all Union forces in 1864 and William T. Sherman placed in command of the Union forces in the West. Sherman captured Atlanta in 1864 (just prior to the 1864 pres. Election) and began his famous 300 mile march to the sea (Savannah), devastating the countryside. Note: Atlanta Campaign lasted from May 7 - Sept. 2, 1864. In April 1865, Grant captures Richmond and Lee realizes the war is lost and surrenders to Grant at Appomattox Court House in Va. Grant generously allows the southern soldiers to keep their horses "for the Spring plow" and requires his men to salute the defeated southern soldiers, saying "The rebels are our countrymen again."

The New Klan

Grew in membership during the 1920s due to increased nativism. The Klan actively recruited in northern states and targeted blacks, Jews, Catholics, immigrants, homosexuals, etc. Membership reached at least 4 million and may have been closer to 8 million. KKK membership in the state of Ohio, for example, reached 300,000. The KKK claimed to support traditional values and they favored prohibition and a return to religious fundamentalism.

Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) was one of the transcendentalists who strove to realize Emersonian ideals in his personal life. A pencilmaker, surveyor, and poet, Thoreau, like Emerson, was educated at Harvard. He felt nothing but contempt for social conventions and wore a green coat to chapel because Harvard's rules required black. After college, he taught school and worked at his father's pencil factory, but these jobs brought him no fulfillment. In March 1845, the 28-year-old Thoreau, convinced that his life was being frittered away by details, walked into the woods near Concord, Massachusetts, to live alone. He put up a cabin near Walden Pond as an experiment--to see if it was possible for a person to live truly free and uncommitted: "I went into the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." The aim of his experiment was to break free from the distractions and artificialities of life, to shed himself of needless obligations and possessions, and to establish an original relationship with nature. His motto was "simplify, simplify." During his 26 months at Walden Pond, he constructed his own cabin, raised his own food ("seven miles of beans"), observed nature, explored his inner self, and kept a 6,000-page journal. He served as "self-appointed inspector of snow-storms and rain-storms," "surveyor of forest-paths," and protector of "wild-stock." He also spent a night in jail, for refusing to pay taxes as a protest against the Mexican-American War. This incident led him to write the classic defense of nonviolent direct action, "Civil Disobedience."

Americans in Texas

In 1821, Americans were invited by newly independent Mexico to settle in its northern province of Texas. Led by Stephan Austin, land-hungry Americans flocked to Texas (30,000 whites and 500 black slaves). Friction developed between the Mexican government and the American settlers as Mexico attempted to halt further American immigration into Texas, free the black slaves, and deprive Texas of local self-government.

Control of the Mississippi

In 1862 Admiral Farragut captured New Orleans. In 1863, Grant captured Vicksburg, gaining control of the Mississippi river for the Union and splitting the Confederacy.

Dawes Act (1887)

In 1871 Congress declared that tribes were no longer separate, independent governments. It placed tribes under the guardianship of the federal government. The 1887 Dawes Act allotted reservation lands to individual Indians in units of 40 to 160 acres. Land that remained after allotment was to be sold to whites to pay for Indian education. The Dawes Act was supposed to encourage Indians to become farmers. But most of the allotted lands proved unsuitable for farming, owing to a lack of sufficient rainfall. The plots were also too small to support livestock. Much Indian land quickly fell into the hands of whites. There was to be a 25 year trust period to keep Indians from selling their land allotments, but an 1891 amendment did allow Indians to lease them, and a 1907 law let them sell portions of their property. A policy of "forced patents" took additional lands out of Indian hands. Under this policy, begun in 1909, government agents determined which Indians were "competent" to assume full responsibility for their allotments. Many of these Indians quickly sold their lands to white purchasers. Altogether, the severalty policy reduced Indian-owned lands from 155 million acres in 1881 to 77 million in 1900 and just 48 million acres in 1934. The most dramatic loss of Indian land and natural resources took place in Oklahoma. At the end of the 19th century, the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Creek nations held half the territory's land. But by 1907, when Oklahoma became a state, much of this land, as well as its valuable asphalt, coal, natural gas, and oil resources, had passed into the possession of whites.

populist movement

In 1892 the Alliance formed the Peoples' or Populist Party. Among other things, the Populists financed commodity credit system that would have allowed farmers to store their crop in a federal warehouse to await favorable market prices and meanwhile borrow up to 80 percent of the current market price. The Populist platform also sought a graduated income tax, public ownership of utilities, the voter initiative and referendum, the eight-hour workday, immigration restrictions, and government control of currency. In the presidential election of 1892, the Populist candidate, James B. Weaver of Iowa, received more than a million popular votes (8.5 percent of the total) and 22 electoral votes. The Populists also elected 10 representative, 5 senators, and 4 governors, as well as 345 state legislators.

Roosevelt Corollary to Monroe Doctrine 1904

In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt announced a new United States policy toward Latin America. Fearful that European countries might intervene in Latin America to collect debts or defend the property or lives of their citizens, he asserted the right of the United States to exercise "international police power" in Latin America. The Roosevelt Corollary changed the Monroe Doctrine from a policy designed to protect the Americas from European intervention to one justifying U.S. intervention in Latin America. In 1904, the Dominican Republic (then known as Santo Domingo) was unable to pay its debts to several European countries. To prevent European intervention, Roosevelt asserted the U.S. right to intervene in Latin America to prevent "chronic wrongdoing." In 1905, persuaded the Dominican Republic to allow the United States to supervise its debt repayment to France, Germany, and Italy. The Roosevelt Corollary provided justification American intervention into Cuba in 1906 and 1917, Nicaragua in 1909 and 1912, into Mexico in 1914 and 1916, into Haiti in 1915, and into the Dominican Republic in 1916.

Yalta Conference and Franklin D. Roosevelt's Death

In 1944, as the tide of war turned toward the Allies, a weary and ailing Roosevelt managed to win election to a fourth term in the White House. The following February, he met with Churchill and Stalin in the Yalta Conference, where Roosevelt got Stalin's commitment to enter the war against Japan after Germany's impending surrender. (The Soviet leader kept that promise, but failed to honor his pledge to establish democratic governments in the eastern European nations then under Soviet control.) The "Big Three" also worked to build foundations for the post-war international peace organization that would become the United Nations. After Roosevelt returned from Yalta, he was so weak that he was forced to sit down while addressing Congress for the first time in his presidency. In early April 1945, he left Washington and traveled to his cottage in Warm Springs, Georgia, where he had long before established a nonprofit foundation to aid polio patients. On April 12, Roosevelt suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage; he died later that day, and was succeeded in office by his vice president, Harry S. Truman. Although he knew nothing about the development of the atom bomb (the Manhattan Project), Truman was suddenly the man who had to make the decision to use it.

General Ulysses S Grant USA

In March 1864, Lincoln gave Ulysses S. Grant command of all Union armies. Vowing to end the war within a year, Grant launched three major offenses. General Philip H. Sheridan's task was to lay waste to farm land in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, a mission he completed by October. Meanwhile, General William Tecumseh Sherman advanced southeastward from Chattanooga and seized Atlanta, a major southern rail center, while Grant himself pursued Lee's army and sought to capture Richmond, the Confederate capital. Grant started his offensive with 118,000 men; by early June, half of his men were casualties. But Lee's army had been reduced by a third to 40,000 men. In a month of fighting in northern and eastern Virginia, Grant lost almost 40,000 men, leading Peace Democrats to call him a "butcher." But Confederate losses were also heavy--and southern troops could not be replaced. At the Battle of the Wilderness, in northern Virginia, Lee's army suffered 11,000 casualties; at Spotsylvania Court House, Lee lost another 10,000 men. After suffering terrible casualties at Cold Harbor--12,000 men killed or wounded--Grant advanced to Petersburg, a rail center south of Richmond, and began a nine-month siege of the city. At the same time that Grant was pursuing Lee's army, Sherman, with a force of 100,000 men, marched toward Atlanta from Chattanooga, and captured the rail center on September 2, 1864. After leaving Atlanta in flames, Sherman's men marched across Georgia toward Savannah. In order to break the South's will to fight, Sherman had his men destroy railroad tracks, loot houses, and burn factories. Sherman seized Savannah December 21, and then drove northward, capturing Charleston and Columbia, South Carolina, then heading through North Carolina to Virginia. Sherman summed up the goal of his military maneuvers in grim terms: "We cannot change the hearts of those people, but we can make war so terrible...[and] make them so sick of war that generations would pass away before they would again appeal to it."

impeachment of Johnson

In Tennessee Johnson, a 1940s movie about the nation's first presidential impeachment trial, President Johnson (played by Van Heflin) storms into the Senate chamber and gives an eloquent speech to avert his ouster. In fact, the president's own lawyers kept him out of the Senate chamber, fearing he would lose his temper. Officially, Johnson was impeached for violating the Tenure of Office Act, which had been passed over Johnson's veto, which prohibited the president from dismissing certain federal officials without Senate approval, and for denouncing Congress as unfit to legislate. But those reasons masked the issues that were more important to Congressional Republicans. Johnson had vetoed 20 Reconstruction bills and had urged southern legislatures to reject the 14th Amendment, guaranteeing equal protection of the laws. He had ordered African American families evicted from land on which they had been settled by the U.S. Army. Johnson's lawyers sought to portray the dispute as a partisan attack made to look like a legal proceeding. His opponents insisted he had abused his powers and flouted the will of Congress. The House voted 126-47 to impeach Johnson on 11 separate articles. The proceedings were intensively partisan. One Republican Representative even suggested that Johnson, as vice president, had been involved in the plot to assassinate President Lincoln, just so he could succeed him. The chief of the Secret Service gave false reports that the president had an affair with a woman seeking to obtain pardons for former Confederates. Johnson's attorneys argued the Tenure of Office Act applied to officials appointed by the president, and since Secretary of War Stanton was appointed by Lincoln, not Johnson, he was not covered by the act. The final vote was 35 to 19, one short of the two-thirds needed for conviction and removal from office. Seven Republicans voted to acquit. The Senate voted on two more articles of impeachment, each again just one vote shy of conviction. The chamber never voted on the remaining eight impeachment articles. But Johnson had been defamed. In the future, he no longer obstructed Congress' Reconstruction policies. President Johnson spent the rest of his life seeking vindication. He actively pursued the 1868 Democratic presidential nomination but in the end lost the nomination to New York governor Horatio Seymour, who subsequently lost the election to Republican candidate Ulysses S. Grant. Johnson then moved back to Tennessee, where he ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in 1869 and the House in 1872. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1874 and was greeted by the Senators with thunderous applause, his desk strewn with roses. After a few months, however, he suffered a series of strokes and died. His wife placed a copy of the U.S. Constitution under his head in his coffin.

Annexation of Texas achieved by join resolution (1845)

In the 1844 Presidential race, James K. Polk (Democrat) of TN demanded the "re-annexation" of Texas, claiming that it had been part of the original Louisiana purchase. Polk won the election but just before he took office, Congress admitted Texas to the Union by means of a joint resolution (requiring only a majority vote in each House) rather than by treaty (which would have required a 2/3 vote in the Senate).

automobile

In the 1920s, due to mass production of the Model T Ford, cars were affordable. The automobile transformed American culture and contributed to the growth of many other industries such as steel, highway building, motels, service stations, etc. The automobile heightened the urban-rural conflict of the 1920s.

yellow winkies

In the Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Dorothy and friends must pass through "Dainty China Country" after climbing over a high white wall. In his script for the state production of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum points out that "It isnt the people who live in a country who know most about it... Look at the Filipinos. Everybody knows more about their country than they do"

Antietam

In the east for the next 3 years: Army of the Potomac v. Army of Northern Virginia, mainly on southern soil. Only two battles took place on northern soil : Antietam (MD) and and Gettysburg (PA). Antietam (1862) bloodiest one-day battle of the war w/ approx. 22,000 casualties. Was regarded by Lincoln as a northern victory (but really was not conclusive) allowing him to issue the preliminary E.P. from a position of strength.

Presidential Election of 1876

In the election of 1876, the Republicans nominated Rutherford B. Hayes, the governor of Ohio, while the Democrats, out of power since 1861, selected Samuel J. Tilden, the governor of New York. The initial returns pointed to a Tilden victory, as the Democrats captured the swing states of Connecticut, Indiana, New Jersey, and New York. By midnight on Election Day, Tilden had 184 of the 185 electoral votes needed to win. He led the popular vote by 250,000. But Republicans refused to accept the result. They accused the Democrats of using physical intimidation and bribery to discourage African Americans from voting in the South. The final outcome hinged on the disputed results in four states--Florida, Louisiana, Oregon, and South Carolina--which prevented either candidate from securing a majority of electoral votes. Republicans accused Democrats in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina of refusing to count African American and other Republican votes. Democrats, in turn, accused Republicans of ignoring many Tilden votes. In Florida, the Republicans claimed to have won by 922 votes out of about 47,000 cast. The Democrats claimed a 94 vote victory. Democrats charged that Republicans had ruined ballots in one pro-Tilden Florida precinct by smearing them with ink. Both Democrats and Republicans in Oregon acknowledged that Hayes had carried the state. But when the Democratic governor learned that one of the Republican electors was a federal employee and ineligible to serve as an elector, he replaced him with a Democratic elector. The Republican elector, however, resigned his position as a postmaster and claimed the right to cast his ballot for Hayes. Florida, Louisiana, Oregon, and South Carolina each submitted two sets of electoral returns to Congress with different results. To resolve the dispute, Congress, in January 1877, established an electoral commission made up of five U.S. representatives, five senators, and five Supreme Court justices. The justices included two Democrats, two Republicans, and Justice David Davis, who was considered to be independent. But before the commission could render a decision, Democrats in the Illinois legislature, under pressure from a nephew of Samuel Tilden, elected Davis to the U.S. Senate, in hopes that this would encourage Davis to support the Democrat. Instead, Davis recused himself and was replaced by Justice Joseph Bradley. Bradley was a Republican, but he was considered one of the court's least political members. In the end, however, he voted with the Republicans. A Democrat representative from New York, Abraham Hewitt, later claimed that Bradley was visited at home by a Republican Senator on the commission, who argued that "whatever the strict legal equities, it would be a national disaster if the government fell into Democratic hands." Bradley's vote produced an eight-to-seven ruling, along straight party lines, to award all the disputed elector votes to Rutherford B. Hayes. This result produced such acrimony that many feared it would incite a second civil war. Democrats threatened to filibuster the official counting of the electoral votes to prevent Hayes from assuming the presidency. At a meeting in February 1877 at Washington, D.C.'s Wormley Hotel (which was operated by an African American), Democratic leaders accepted Hayes's election in exchange for Republican promises to withdraw federal troops from the South, provide federal funding for internal improvements in the South, and name a prominent Southerner to the president's cabinet. When the federal troops were withdrawn, the Republican governments in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina collapsed, bringing Reconstruction to a formal end. Under the so-called Compromise of 1877, the national government would no longer intervene in southern affairs. This would permit the imposition of racial segregation and the disfranchisement of black voters.

Relations w/France during Civil war: Maximilian Affair (1862-1867)

In the first real test of the Monroe Doctrine, Napoleon III installs a "Puppet emperor" in Mexico. U.S. is upset but unwilling to commit troops to remove Maximilian. After the war is over, U.S. troops demonstrate that the U.S. is determined to uphold the Monroe Doctrine and Maximilian is ousted. He is later killed by Mexican troops.

Jefferson Davis

Jefferson Davis (1808-1889) was a Mexican War hero, U.S. senator from Mississippi, U.S. secretary of war and president of the Confederate States of America for the duration of the American Civil War (1861-1865). Prior to the start of the war, Davis had argued against secession, but when Mississippi seceded he resigned from the U.S. Senate. In February 1861 he was elected president of the Confederacy. Davis faced difficulties throughout the war as he struggled to manage the Southern war effort, maintain control the Confederate economy and keep a new nation united. Davis' often contentious personality led to conflicts with other politicians as well as his own military officers. In May 1865, several weeks after the Confederate surrender, Davis was captured, imprisoned and charged with treason, but never tried.

gettysburg

July 1-3, 1863. The greatest battle of the C.W. (51,000 casualties). More than 170,000 men fought in it. Lee desperate to win a battle in the north. JEB Stuart lets Lee down. Lee v. Meade. The "high water mark" of the Confederacy.

Relations with Great Britain during Civil War

King Cotton Diplomacy fails. South believes that G.B. and France will find the prospect of a divided (and therefore weakened) United States appealing. Also, believe that G.B. is dependent on southern cotton. However, northern wheat wins out over southern cotton. Britain has alternative suppliers in Egypt and India and have a stockpile of cotton. British people are anti-slavery and oppose helping the slaveholding South.

philosophy of manifest destiny

Land hungry Americans were only temporarily satisfied by the acquisition of new territory through the Louisiana Purchase and the Adams-Onis (Transcontinental) Treaty (Florida). By the 1840s, Americans were expansion-minded and they believed that the United States had a "divine mission" to spread democratic ideals throughout the continent (or at least to the Pacific coast). This mission became known as "manifest destiny."

lincoln's plan

Lincoln believed that the conditions of re-admission should be determined by the executive branch because he never considered the Confederacy to be a separate country. In his view, the Confederates were "rebels" who were still citizens of the United States. According to the Constitution, the president has the power to pardon and, therefore, the course of Reconstruction should be directed by the executive branch. Congress, on the other hand, insisted that the Confederate states had officially left the union and that the conditions of Reconstruction should be established by the legislative branch because of its constitutional power to admit states to the union.

Lincoln's 10% plan

Lincoln's blueprint for Reconstruction included the Ten-Percent Plan, which specified that a southern state could be readmitted into the Union once 10 percent of its voters (from the voter rolls for the election of 1860) swore an oath of allegiance to the Union.

Freedman's Bureau Act

March 1865: To coordinate efforts to protect the rights of former slaves and provide them with education and medical care, Congress creates the Freedmen's Bureau. One of the bureau's most important functions is to oversee labor contracts between ex-slaves and employers.

First 100 days

March 9, 1933-June 16,1933

The Omaha Platform

Meeting at Omaha, Nebraska, in 1892, the Populists adopted the following program: 1. coinage of silver at a ration of 16 oz to 1 oz. 2. graduated income tax 3. government ownership of telephone, telegraph, and railroad systems 4. secret ballot and direct election of senators

monitor v merrimac

Merrimac also known as the C.S.S. Virginia, meets the Monitor (Union) at the Battle of Hampton Roads, Va. (May 1862). First ironclad ships fought to a standstill, allowing the North to maintain its blockade of southern ports and forecasting the doom of wooden ships.

women progressives

Middle class women were the foot soldiers for charity organizations Florence Kelley Jane Addams Margaret Sanger

The Redeemers

More than any other southern city, New Orleans, La., tested the boundaries of possibility during Reconstruction. With the largest black population of any city in the nation, New Orleans was the first city in the South to integrate its police force and to experiment with school integration. At least 240 blacks in New Orleans were active in Reconstruction politics, and three served as Louisiana's lieutenant governor and one served briefly as acting governor. Resentful whites in Louisiana organized the White League to terrorize African Americans. Read one call for supporters: Can you bear it longer, that negro [sic] ignorance, solidified in opposition to white intelligence, and led by carpet-bag and scalawag impudence and villainy, shall continue to hold the State, your fortunes and your honor by the throat, while they perpetuate upon you indignities and crimes unparalleled? The White League, made up largely of former Confederate soldiers and the white business elite, was dedicated to the reestablishment of white supremacy. In September 1874, the League overwhelmed the state militia seized control of state government offices. The attack left 27 Republican supporters of Reconstruction dead, including 24 African Americans and three whites. President Ulysses S. Grant had to order a squadron of six warships and federal troops in order to force the White League to surrender. Reconstruction was overthrown by a political movement known as Redemption, which reestablished white supremacy in the South. Some upper class white southern conservatives, such as Wade Hampton, a wealthy South Carolinian, attempted to draw black voters away from the Republican Party. In 1876, when he ran for governor, he told African American voters: We want your votes; we don't want you to be deprived of them.... if we are elected...we will observe, protect, and defend the rights of the colored man as quickly as any man in South Carolina. But the main strategy used to overthrow Reconstruction was economic intimidation and physical violence. Secret organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan, founded in Tennessee in 1866, and the Knights of the White Camellia were dedicated to ending Republican rule and preventing blacks from voting. Members of these organizations included judges, lawyers, and clergymen as well as yeomen farmers and poor whites. The Redeemers had no scruples about fraud or terror. "Every Democrat," said a South Carolina Redeemer, "must feel honor bound to control the vote of at least one negro by intimidation, purchase...or as each individual will determine." Hundreds of blacks were beaten and murdered by the Ku Klux Klan and other white terrorist groups. In 1870 and 1871, Congress passed the Force Act and the Ku Klux Klan Act which gave the president the power to use federal troops to prevent the denial of voting rights. Activities of groups like the Ku Klux Klan declined, but the campaign of intimidation was successful in keeping many African Americans from the polls. By 1876, Republican governments had been toppled in all but three states.

Dawes Plan

Named after Charles G. Dawes (Chicago banker, former Director of the Bureau of the Budget, and future Vice President), the Dawes Plan, with the support of the Allies, reduced Germany's reparations payments. Over the next four years, U.S. banks continued to lend Germany enough money to enable it to meet its reparation payments to countries such as France and the United Kingdom. These countries, in turn, used their reparation payments from Germany to service their war debts to the United States. In 1925, Dawes was a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his plan's contribution to the resolution of the crisis over reparations.

Wagner Act

National Labor Relations act, creates the NLRB

NYA

National Youth Administration

New South

New South, New South Democracy or New South Creed is a slogan in the history of the American South, after 1877. Reformers use it to call for a modernization of society and attitudes, to integrate more fully with the United States, and reject the economy and traditions of the Old South and the slavery-based plantation system of the antebellum period. The term was coined by its leading spokesman and Atlanta editor Henry W. Grady.[1]

Roosevelt and the New Deal

Other key pieces of legislation during FDR's first "Hundred Days" created some of the most important programs and institutions of Roosevelt's New Deal, including the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), the Public Works Administration (PWA), the Civilian Conservations Corps (CCC) and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). In addition to programs aimed at providing economic relief for workers and farmers and creating jobs for the unemployed, Roosevelt also initiated a slate of reforms of the financial system, notably the creation of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to protect depositors' accounts and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to regulate the stock market and prevent abuses of the kind that led to the 1929 crash. In 1935, after the economy had begun to show signs of recovery, Roosevelt asked Congress to pass a new wave of reforms, known as "Second New Deal." These included the Social Security Act (which for the first time provided Americans with unemployment, disability, and pensions for old age) and the Works Progress Administration. The Democratic-led Congress also raised taxes on large corporations and wealthy individuals, a hike that was derisively known as the "soak-the-rich" tax.

Granger Cooperatives

Owned and operated by farmers to pack, ship, sell crops and buy farm equipment (eliminated the profits of "middlemen." )

Slavery

Recognizing that "King Cotton" ruled the economy of the South (although only a small minority of southerners actually owned slaves), southern planters portray their "peculiar institution" as a "positive good." Abolitionists gain support in the North. Conflict over territorial expansion heats up after the War with Mexico. Popular sovereignty fails and efforts to compromise are exhausted.

Roosevelt Enters the White House

Reelected as governor in 1930, Roosevelt emerged as a front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination two years later. He broke tradition and appeared in person in Chicago to accept the nomination, famously pledging himself to "a new deal for the American people." In the general election, a confident and exuberant Roosevelt triumphed by an overwhelming margin over the incumbent Hoover, who had become a symbol for many people of the ongoing Great Depression. In addition, Democrats won sizeable majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. By the time Roosevelt was inaugurated on March 4, 1933, the Depression had reached desperate levels, including 13 million unemployed. In the first inaugural address to be widely broadcast on the radio, Roosevelt boldly declared that "This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and prosper...The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Roosevelt began the momentous first 100 days of his presidency by closing all banks for several days until Congress could pass reform legislation. He also began holding open press conferences and giving regular national radio addresses in which he spoke directly to the American people. The first of these "fireside chats," about the banking crisis, was broadcast to a radio audience of some 60 million, and would go a long way toward restoring public confidence and preventing harmful bank runs (listen to: http://www.history.com/topics/fireside-chats/speeches ). After passage of the Emergency Banking Relief Act, three out of every four banks were open within a week.

Election of 1864

Republicans nominated Lincoln (called themselves the Union Party and included "war Democrats" who were loyal to the Union) with Andrew Johnson (a pro-Union Democrat from TN) as V.P. Republican platform vowed to continue the war to victory. Democrats nominated Gen. George McClellan and demanded a negotiated end to the war. Oddly, McClellan himself disagreed with that demand. Lincoln thought he would lose the election (the North was tired of the war and an end did not appear to be in sight). However, a series of northern victories in 1864 (culminating in the fall of Atlanta - thank you Sherman) assured his re-election.

Robert La Follette

Robert Marion "Fighting Bob"[1] La Follette Sr. (June 14, 1855 - June 18, 1925) was an American Republican (and later a Progressive) politician. He served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, was the Governor of Wisconsin, and was a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin from 1906 to 1925. He ran for President of the United States as the nominee of his own Progressive Party in 1924, carrying Wisconsin and winning 17% of the national popular vote. His wife Belle Case La Follette, and his sons Robert M. La Follette Jr. and Philip La Follette led his political faction in Wisconsin into the 1940s. La Follette has been called "arguably the most important and recognized leader of the opposition to the growing dominance of corporations over the Government"[2] and is one of the key figures pointed to in Wisconsin's long history of political liberalism. He is best remembered as a proponent of progressivism and a vocal opponent of railroad trusts, bossism, World War I, and the League of Nations. In 1957, a Senate Committee selected La Follette as one of the five greatest U.S. Senators, along with Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, and Robert A. Taft. A 1982 survey asking historians to rank the "ten greatest Senators in the nation's history" based on "accomplishments in office" and "long range impact on American history," placed La Follette first, tied with Henry Clay.[3] Robert La Follette is one of nine outstanding senators memorialized by portraits in the Senate reception room in US Capitol.[4] The Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin is named for him.[5]

James Blaine

Secretary of State during Garfield Administration Pan-Americanism

Fourteenth Amendment

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state. Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability. Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any state shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void. Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Relations w/France during Civil war: Pro-Southern Policies

Sells Confederate bonds and provides loans to the Confederacy.

Kansas-Nebraska Act

Senator Stephen Douglas introduced the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 and pushed it successfully through Congress. The act carved the territory into the Kansas and Nebraska territories and, more controversially, declared that popular sovereignty would determine the future of slavery there. Fearing that Kansas would become the next slave state, hundreds of Northern abolitionists also flocked to the territory and set up their own government in Lawrence. A band of proslavery men, however, burned Lawrence to the ground in 1856. In revenge, an abolitionist gang led by John Brown killed five border ruffians at the Pottawatomie Massacre. These two events sparked an internal war so savage that many referred to the territory as "Bleeding Kansas."

Military Strategies

South - win quickly, "On to Washington". North - follow General Winfield Scott's Anaconda Plan (see slide). Lincoln rejects part of the plan. Lincoln wants to strike hard and decisively, "On to Richmond"

Roosevelt's New Nationalism

Teddy Roosevelt issues "New Nationalism" platform in his Ossawatomie, Kansas speech in 1910: federal child labor law, minimum wage, stricter regulation of large corporations, women's suffrage, direct election of senators, initiative (certain % of voters in a state sign a petition that proposes a law and the state legislature must act on it), referendum (petition signed by certain % of voters in a state that requests that an existing law be submitted to the voters in the next general election to allow them to defeat it - gives the voters "veto power"), recall.

The American Liberty League

The American Liberty League was an American political organization formed in 1934, primarily of wealthy business elites and prominent political figures because they opposed the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt. It was highly active for just two years.

Sumner/Brooks Affair

The Kansas crisis was so shocking and so controversial that it even ignited tempers in Washington, D.C. In the most infamous case, one Southern congressman, Preston Brooks, nearly caned abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner to death on the Senate floor for speaking out against the act and insulting Brooks' uncle, Senator Andrew Butler. Southern reaction? Supporters sent Brooks hundreds of new canes

Mellon

The Mellon family is a wealthy and influential American family from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The family fortune originated with Mellon Bank, founded 1869.

NAWSA

The National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) was formed on February 18, 1890 to work for women's suffrage in the United States. It was created by the merger of two existing organizations, the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) and the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA).

NIRA

The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) was a law passed by the United States Congress in 1933 to authorize the President to regulate industry in an attempt to raise prices after severe deflation and stimulate economic recovery.

Legacy of the New Deal

The New Deal did not end the Depression. Nor did it significantly redistribute income. It did, however, provide Americans with economic security that they had never known before. The New Deal legacies include unemployment insurance, old age insurance, and insured bank deposits. The Wagner Act reduced violence in labor relations. The Securities and Exchange Commission protected stock market investments of millions of small investors. The New Deal's greatest legacy was a shift in government philosophy. As a result of the New Deal, Americans came to believe that the federal government has a responsibility to ensure the health of the nation's economy and the welfare of its citizens.

Rockefeller

The Rockefeller family (/ˈrɒkəfɛlər/) is an American industrial, political, and banking family that made one of the world's largest fortunes in the oil business during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with John D. Rockefeller and his brother William Rockefeller primarily through Standard Oil.[1] The family is also known for its long association with and control of Chase Manhattan Bank.[2] They are considered to be one of the most powerful families, if not the most powerful family,[3] in the history of the United States.

The Social Gospel Movement

The Social Gospel Movement was a religious movement that arose during the second half of the nineteenth century. Ministers, especially ones belonging to the Protestant branch of Christianity, began to tie salvation and good works together. They argued that people must emulate the life of Jesus Christ.

Texas Revolution (1836)

The Texans, inspired by the Declaration of Independence, rebelled against the Mexican government. At the Alamo in San Antonio, a small Texan force was annihilated by General Santa Anna. Thereafter, the battle cry of the Texans became, "Remember the Alamo!" Led by Sam Houston, the Texans won a great battle at San Jacinto, capturing Santa Anna and driving his troops from Texas. Settlers proclaimed the Republic of Texas (the Lone Star Republic) and requested annexation by the United States. The Texans elected Sam Houston President of the Republic.

Trent Affair

The Trent Affair was a diplomatic crisis that took place between the United States and Great Britain from November to December 1861, during the U.S. Civil War (1861-65). The crisis erupted after the captain of the USS San Jacinto ordered the arrest of two Confederate envoys sailing to Europe aboard a British mail ship, the Trent, in order to seek support for the South in the Civil War. The British, who had not taken sides in the war, were outraged and claimed the seizure of a neutral ship by the U.S. Navy was a violation of international law. In the end, President Abraham Lincoln's administration released the envoys and averted an armed conflict with Britain.

The Election of 1912

The United States presidential election of 1912 was the 32nd quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 5, 1912. The election was a rare four-way contest. Incumbent President William Howard Taft was renominated by the Republican Party with the support of its conservative wing.

Vanderbilt

The Vanderbilt family is an American family of Dutch origin that was prominent during the Gilded Age. Their success began with the shipping and railroad empires of Cornelius Vanderbilt, and the family expanded into various other areas of industry and philanthropy.

Montgomery Convention (Feb 1861)

The confederate states of america is established and Jefferson Davis is selected as president

Cattle Kingdom

The development of the railroad made it profitable to raise cattle on the Great Plains. In 1860, some five-million longhorn cattle grazed in the Lone Star state. Cattle that could be bought for $3 to $5 a head in Texas could be sold for $30 to $50 at railroad shipping points in Abilene or Dodge City in Kansas. Cowboys had to drive their cattle a thousand miles northward to reach the Kansas railheads. Although the popular image of the cowboy is of John Wayne or Roy Rodgers, many of the cowboys were African Americans or Mexican Americans. About one in five cowboys was a Mexican American and one in seven was black. By the 1880s, the cattle boom was over. An increase in the number of cattle led to overgrazing and destruction of the fragile Plains grasses. Sheep ranchers competed for scarce water, and the sheep ate the grass so close to the ground that cattle could no longer feed on it. Bitter range wars erupted when cattle ranchers, sheep ranchers, and farmers fenced in their land using barbed wire. The romantic era of the long drive and the cowboy came to an end when two harsh winters in 1885-1886 and 1886-1887, followed by two dry summers, killed 80 to 90 percent of the cattle on the Plains. As a result, corporate-owned ranches replaced individually owned ranches. After the terrible winters, many ranchers decided to fence in their cattle rather than letting them roam freely. The invention of barbed wire made it possible to build fences without lumber and protect railroad tracks from stampeding animals. The first barbed wire was produced in 1868 and early barbed wire had to be manufactured by hand. Two strands of wire were wound together and barbs were then threaded through the wires. A salesman, John "Bet a Million" Gates, helped convince ranchers to adopt barbed wire. (He received his nickname because he reportedly lost $1 million when he bet about which raindrop would slide down a train window the fastest). In San Antonio, Texas, Gates bet local ranchers that they could not drive steers out of a corral made up of eight strands of barbed wire.

election of 1860

The election of 1860 took place amid this supercharged atmosphere. The Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln, who was morally opposed to slavery but wanted to maintain the Union above all else. Northern Democrats wanted Stephen Douglas to run, but Southerners in the party refused to back him. As a result, the party split: Northern Democrats nominated Douglas, while Southern Democrats nominated Vice President John C. Breckinridge. The Constitutional Union Party nominated John Bell. Southerners threatened to secede if a Republican was elected. On Election Day, Lincoln received 40 percent of the popular vote and more electoral votes than all the other candidates combined.

The Hayes Administration (1877-1881)

The election of 1876 hinged on disputed returns from Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina, where Republican governments still survived. After intense negotiations involving leaders of both parties, the Republican candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes, became president, while Democrats assumed control of the disputed Southern states. Reconstruction had come to an end.

election of 1848

The expansion of slavery remained the hot topic in the election of 1848 . The Whigs nominated war hero General Zachary Taylor while the Democrats nominated Lewis Cass. Hoping to appeal to voters from both regions, Cass proposed applying popular sovereignty to the slavery question, arguing that the citizens living in each territory should decide for themselves whether theirs would become a slave state or a free state. Taylor won the election.

tenements

The immigrant poor lived in overcrowded, unsanitary, and unsafe housing. Many lived in tenements, dumbbell-shaped brick apartment buildings, four to six stories in height. In 1900, two-thirds of Manhattan's residents lived in tenements. In one New York tenement, up to 18 people lived in each apartment. Each apartment had a wood-burning stove and a concrete bathtub in the kitchen, which, when covered with planks, served as a dining table. Before 1901, residents used rear-yard outhouses. Afterward, two common toilets were installed on each floor. In the summer, children sometimes slept on the fire escape. Tenants typically paid $10 a month rent. In tenements, many apartments were dark and airless because interior windows faced narrow light shafts, if there were interior windows at all. With a series of newspaper articles and then a book, entitled How the Other Half Lives, published in 1889, Jacob Riis turned tenement reform into a crusade.

Gilded Age

The term "Gilded Age" was coined by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley in their 1873 book the Gilded Age: A Tale of Today. The Gilded Age covers the time period from 1877-1900 and was characterized by industrial expansion and business consolidation, substantial population growth, a wave of "new immigration," extravagant displays of wealth, labor conflict, racial tension, and political corruption. As America grew into an industrial giant, it began looking for new markets, new opportunities for investment, and new sources of raw materials. With the closing of the frontier in 1890, the U.S. undertook imperialist ventures in Asia, the Caribbean, and Central America.

America and the War with Spain 1898

The war lasted only 4 months. Ambassador (later Secretary of State) John Hay, writing from London to his friend Theodore Roosevelt declared that from start to finish it had been "a splendid little war"

Santa Anna

These actions might have provoked Texans to revolution. But in 1832, General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, a Mexican politician and soldier, became the president of Mexico. Colonists hoped that he would make Texas a self-governing state within the Mexican republic. But once in power, Santa Anna proved to be less liberal than many Texans had believed. In 1834, he overthrew the constitutional government of Mexico, abolished state governments, and made himself dictator. When Stephen Austin went to Mexico City to try to settle the grievances of the Texans, Santa Anna imprisoned him in a Mexican jail for a year. On November 3, 1835, American colonists adopted a constitution and organized a temporary government, but voted overwhelmingly against declaring independence. A majority of colonists hoped to attract the support of Mexican liberals in a joint effort to depose Santa Anna and to restore power to the state governments, hopefully including a separate state of Texas.

Elections of 1868

Ulysses S. Grant is elected president by only 306,000 votes out of 5.7 million cast. His victory depends on 500,000 black votes.

the progressive mind

Unabashed idealists. Believed that scientific investigation could find solutions to social problems, so they formed commissions and committees to evaluate issues: prostitution, gambling, child labor, poverty etc. Rejected social Darwinism. The most important source of progressive idealism was the Social Gospel movement.

victorian values

Victorian morality is a distillation of the moral views of people living at the time of Queen Victoria's reign (1837-1901) and of the moral climate of the United Kingdom of the 19th century in general, which contrasted greatly with the morality of the previous Georgian period. Many of these values spread throughout the British Empire. Today, the term "Victorian morality" can describe any set of values that espouse sexual restraint, low tolerance of crime and a strict social code of conduct. The term "Victorian" was first used during the Great Exhibition in London (1851), where Victorian inventions and morals were shown to the world.[1] Victorian values were developed in all facets of Victorian living. The morality and values of the period can be classed as Religion, Morality, Elitism, Industrialism, and Improvement. These values took root in Victorian morality, creating an overall change in the British Empire. Historians now regard the Victorian era as a time of many contradictions, such as the widespread cultivation of an outward appearance of dignity and restraint together with the prevalence of social phenomena such as prostitution and child labour. A plethora of social movements arose from attempts to improve the prevailing harsh living conditions for many under a rigid class system.

Not really. Taft (the Rep. incumbent) had been moving toward the conservative Rep. camp. Although he had been T.R.'s hand-picked successor in the election of 1908, T.R. felt betrayed by Taft's move to the right. So, he throws his hat in the ring and, when Taft is nominated by a conservative-dominated Rep. convention, T.R. runs as the candidate of the newly formed Progressive Party (nicknamed the "Bull Moose Party") Democrats nominate Wilson. Of course, Wilson wins.

Was the 1912 election a referendum on the New Freedom v. the New Nationalism?

The crisis of the 1890s turned the nation's attention to reform. At the beginning of the 20th century, Americans were living in the most advanced industrial society in the world and they began to consider the costs of that rapid growth. "a frightening concentration of corporate power, a rebellious working class, misery in the cities, and the corruption of machine politics"

What conditions led to the Progressive Era?

sharecropping

What the freed men and women wanted above all else was land on which they could support their own families. During and immediately after the war, many former slaves established subsistence farms on land that had been abandoned to the Union army. But President Andrew Johnson, a Democrat and a former slaveowner, restored this land to its former owners. The failure to redistribute land reduced many former slaves to economic dependency on the South's old planter class and new landowners. During Reconstruction, former slaves--and many small white farmers--became trapped in a new system of economic exploitation known as sharecropping. Lacking capital and land of their own, former slaves were forced to work for large landowners. Initially, planters, with the support of the Freedmen's Bureau, sought to restore gang labor under the supervision of white overseers. But the freedmen, who wanted autonomy and independence, refused to sign contracts that required gang labor. Ultimately, sharecropping emerged as a sort of compromise. Instead of cultivating land in gangs supervised by overseers, landowners divided plantations into 20 to 50 acre plots suitable for farming by a single family. In exchange for land, a cabin, and supplies, sharecrossers agreed to raise a cash crop (usually cotton) and to give half the crop to their landlord. The high interest rates landlords and sharecroppers charged for goods bought on credit (sometimes as high as 70 percent a year) transformed sharecropping into a system of economic dependency and poverty. The freedmen found that "freedom could make folks proud but it didn't make 'em rich." Nevertheless, the sharecropping system did allow freedmen a degree of freedom and autonomy far greater than they experienced under slavery. As a symbol of their newly won independence, freedmen had teams of mules drag their former slave cabins away from the slave quarters into their own fields. Wives and daughters sharply reduced their labor in the fields and instead devoted more time to childcare and housework. For the first time, black families could divide their time between fieldwork and housework in accordance with their own family priorities.

Economic Effects of the Depression

When President Hoover was inaugurated, the American economy was a house of cards. Unable to provide the proper relief from hard times, his popularity decreased as more and more Americans lost their jobs. His minimalist approach to government intervention made little impact The economy shrank with each successive year of his Presidency. As middle class Americans stood in the same soup lines previously graced only by the nation's poorest, the entire social fabric of America was forever altered. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in 1933, one in four Americans was out of work nationally, but in some cities and some industries unemployment was well over 50 percent. Equally troubling were the bank panics. Between 1929 and 1931, 4,000 banks closed for good; by 1933 the number rose to more than 9,000, with $2.5 billion in lost deposits.

Chinese exclusion act

prohibited Chinese laborers from coming to the United States. The third wave of immigration occurred from 1881 to 1920. Almost 23 ½ million immigrants poured into the United States from almost every area of the world. Beginning in the 1890s, the majority of arrivals were called the "new immigrants," people from southern and eastern Europe. More and more native-born Americans believed the swelling flood of immigrants threatened the nation's unity. Hostility which had boiled over against the Chinese in the 1870s now turned against Jews, Roman Catholics, Japanese, and, finally, the new immigrants in general. The peak year of European immigration was in 1907, when 1,285,349 persons entered the country. In 1921, the Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act followed by the Immigration Act of 1924. The 1924 Act was aimed at further restricting the Southern and Eastern Europeans, especially Jews, Italians, and Slavs, who had begun to enter the country in large numbers beginning in the 1890s. Most of the European refugees fleeing the Nazis and World War II were barred from coming to the United States.

Taft Administration

William Howard Taft (September 15, 1857 - March 8, 1930) served as the 27th President of the United States (1909-1913) and as the tenth Chief Justice of the United States (1921-1930), the only person to have held both offices. Taft was elected president in 1908, the chosen successor of Theodore Roosevelt, but was defeated for re-election by Woodrow Wilson in 1912 after Roosevelt split the Republican vote by running as a third-party candidate. In 1921, President Warren G. Harding appointed Taft to be chief justice, a position in which he served until a month before his death. Taft was born in Cincinnati in 1857. His father, Alphonso Taft, was a U.S. Attorney General and Secretary of War. William Taft attended Yale and was a member of Skull and Bones secret society like his father, and after becoming a lawyer was appointed a judge while still in his twenties. He continued a rapid rise, being named Solicitor General and as a judge of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. In 1901, President William McKinley appointed Taft civilian governor of the Philippines. In 1904, Roosevelt made him Secretary of War, and he became Roosevelt's hand-picked successor. Despite his personal ambition to become chief justice, Taft declined repeated offers of appointment to the Supreme Court of the United States, believing his political work to be more important. With Roosevelt's help, Taft had little opposition for the Republican nomination for president in 1908, and easily defeated William Jennings Bryan for the presidency that November. In the White House, he focused on East Asia more than European affairs, and repeatedly intervened to prop up or remove Latin American governments. Taft sought reductions to trade tariffs, then a major source of governmental income, but the resulting bill was heavily influenced by special interests. His administration was filled with conflict between the conservative wing of the Republican Party, with which Taft often sympathized, and the progressive wing, toward which Roosevelt moved more and more. Controversies over conservation and over antitrust cases filed by the Taft administration served to further separate the two men. Roosevelt challenged Taft for renomination in 1912. Taft used his control of the party machinery to gain a bare majority of delegates, and Roosevelt bolted the party. The split left Taft with little chance of re-election; he took only Utah and Vermont in Wilson's victory. After leaving office, Taft returned to Yale as a professor, continuing his political activity and working against war through the League to Enforce Peace. In 1921, President Harding appointed Taft as chief justice, an office he had long sought. Chief Justice Taft was a conservative on business issues, but under him, there were advances in individual rights. In poor health, he resigned in February 1930. After his death the next month, he was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, the first president and first Supreme Court justice to be interred there. Taft is generally listed near the middle in historians' rankings of U.S. presidents.

Yellow Journalism: Hearst v. Pulitzer:

William Randolph Hearst (New York Journal) vs Joseph Pulitzer (New York World)

robber barons

a derogatory metaphor of social criticism originally applied to certain late 19th-century American businessmen who used unscrupulous methods to get rich.

War With Mexico (1846-1848) Causes:

a. Mexican government resented Americans annexation of Texas and the American claim that the Rio Grande was the southern boundary of the United States b. American ambition to acquire additional territory from Mexico c. The Mexican government was in debt to a number of American citizens d. Mexican government refused to negotiate outstanding issues with the American negotiator, John Slidell. e. Mexican forces and American forces entered the disputed area and fought a minor battle in 1846. President Polk furiously informed Congress that Mexico had invaded our territory and shed American blood. Polk received an overwhelming declaration of war f. NOTE: Southerners and Westerners in Congress supported the war. Most members of Congress from the Northeast did also but many citizens in the northeast condemned the war as an imperialist plot against a weak neighbor to seize land and extend slavery (Thoreau expressed theses ideas in "Civil Disobedience")

Treaty of Paris 1898

a. Provisions: 1) Cuba was freed from Spanish Control 2) Puerto Rico and Guam ceded to the U.S. 3) Philippines sold to the U.S. for $20 million. b. Significance: The U.S. emerges from the War as a world power with colonial possessions in the Caribbean and the Pacific. Anti-imperialists (like William Jennings Bryan) were alarmed. But the American people ignored the warning, voting instead for the imperialist McKinley (who promised "a full dinner pail") in the election of 1900.

Philippines

according to President Willim McKinley US annexation of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War was necessary in order to "educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them" "You seem to have about finished your work of civilizing the Filipinos. About 8,000 of them have been civilized and sent to Heaven. I hope you like it" -Andrew Carnegie, American industrialist and anti-imperialist 1899

North raising army

also volunteer army initially. When enlistments fell off, instituted cash bounties which led to bounty-jumping. Passed a draft law in 1863 which allowed the hiring of substitutes for $300. Poor people resented the draft and riots broke out - most notably in NYC (increased resentment of blacks) . Altogether, the Union raised an army of 2 million men

reconstruction

refers to the years from 1865 to 1877 when the American people re-established the southern states as part of the Union. Had to answer the following questions: 1. What conditions should be placed on the southern states before allowing them to re-enter the Union? 2. What branch of the federal government (executive or legislative) should determine the conditions of re-admission? 3. What political, economic, and social rights should be granted to the former slaves?

normalcy

returned to politics in the wake of the emotional patriotism of World War I. In most major countries, including the United States, women won the right to vote for the first time. Politicians courted women's votes at first until they discovered that, at the time, most women voted exactly as their husbands did.

Home Rule

the government of a colony, dependent country, or region by its own citizens.

Compromise of 1877

the national government would no longer intervene in southern affairs. This would permit the imposition of racial segregation and the disfranchisement of black voters.

forty-niners

the nickname of the immigrants who traveled to California in 1849-slaughtered Indians for sport, drove Mexicans from the mines on penalty of death, and sought to restrict the immigration of foreigners, especially the Chinese.

Solid South

the politically united southern states of the US, traditionally regarded as giving unanimous electoral support to the Democratic Party.

election of 1852

the pro-Southern Democrat Franklin Pierce replaced Fillmore after defeating Whigs and Free-Soilers in the election of 1852. Playing off manifest destiny and the Southern desire for new slave states, Pierce supported a variety of proposals to acquire more territory.

urbanization

the process of making an area more urban.

fanaticism

the quality of being fanatical.

reconstruction: executive, lincoln, and johnson

the south had never left the Union. They had rebelled, but Lincoln never recognized the Confederacy as a separate country. Therefore, according to the Constitution, the Executive branch should determine conditions for Reconstruction under the presidential power to pardon

South raising army

volunteer army at first but draft (conscription) initiated in 1862. Provided occupational exemptions (slave overseers) and allowed the hiring of substitutes which resulted in unrest ("rich man's war, poor man's fight). Raised an army of 1 million men.

The Florida and the Alabama

battleships built by G.B. for the South. After the war (in the Alabama and Florida claims), G.B. is forced to make reparations for damages done by these warships.

Reconstruction: Congress, radical republicans

believed that the Confederacy had broken away from the Union and according to the Constitution, only Congress had the power to admit (re-admit?) states to the Union

Clara Barton

carried supplies to soldiers and nursed wounded men on the battlefield and in hospitals.

Louisa May Alcott

carried supplies to soldiers and nursed wounded men on the battlefield and in hospitals.

progressivism: social and economic reform

consumer protection laws, child labor laws, minimum wage laws for women, factory inspection laws, workers compensation laws, federal regulation of railroads and industrial combinations, conservation measures, fed. Income tax (16th amendment in 1913), legitimate Union activities were exempted from anti-trust prosecution.

Square Deal

description by U.S. Pres. Theodore Roosevelt (served 1901-09) of his personal approach to current social problems and the individual. It embraced Roosevelt's idealistic view of labour, citizenship, parenthood, and Christian ethics. Roosevelt first used the term following the settlement of a mining strike in 1902 to describe the ideal of peaceful coexistence between big business and labour unions. The Square Deal concept was later largely incorporated into the platform of the Progressive (Bull Moose) Party when Roosevelt was its candidate in the 1912 presidential election.

South Financing War

great difficulty in raising money. Levied excise taxes, sold bonds and issued tremendous quantities of paper money. Secured a few loans from foreign supporters but not much money. Europeans doubted the South's ability to pay back loans because of the success of the northern blockade that greatly limited the South's exportation of cotton and tobacco.

Whiskey Ring Scandal

group of whiskey distillers (dissolved in 1875) who conspired to defraud the federal government of taxes. Operating mainly in St. Louis, Mo., Milwaukee, Wis., and Chicago, Ill., the Whiskey Ring bribed Internal Revenue officials and accomplices in Washington in order to keep liquor taxes for themselves. Benjamin H. Bristow, secretary of the Treasury, organized a secret investigation that exposed the ring and resulted in 238 indictments and 110 convictions. Allegations that the illegally held tax money was to be used in the Republican Party's national campaign for the reelection of President Ulysses S. Grant aroused the public. Though Grant was not suspected, his private secretary, Orville E. Babcock, was indicted in the conspiracy but was acquitted after Grant testified to his innocence.

Compromise of 1850

hen California applied for admission as a free state, Daniel Webster and Henry Clay met for the last time to hammer out a compromise. After much debate, the North and South finally came to an agreement that both sides thought would be lasting and binding. Included in the Compromise of 1850: 1) California would be admitted as a free state 2) Popular sovereignty would determine the fate of the other western territories 3) Slave trading would be banned in Washington, D.C. 4) Congress would pass a tougher Fugitive Slave Law to reduce the number of slaves who escaped to the North and Canada every year. NOTE: Many northerners refused to obey the strengthened fugitive slave law.

First Reconstruction Act

imposes martial law on the southern states, splits them into five military districts, and provides for the restoration of civil government when they ratify the 14th Amendment.

Naval War

naval blockade and fight to control the Misssissippi R. Also, the battle of Hampton Roads (the Monitor v. the Merrimac).

northern advantage

population, manufactuaring, transportation (railroads), financial resources, control of the navy and merchant marine, LINCOLN

Canal Treaties

1. Clayton-Bulwer Treaty (1850) 2. Hay-Pauncefote Treaty (1901) 3. Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty (1903)

social darwinism

1. Henry George, Progress and Poverty 2. Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class 3. Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward

Ida Wells Barnett

A daughter of slaves, Ida B. Wells was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi, on July 16, 1862. A journalist, Wells led an anti-lynching crusade in the United States in the 1890s, and went on to found and become integral in groups striving for African-American justice. She died in 1931 in Chicago, Illinois.

progressivism

A movement in the early 20th century that sought to improve American life by expanding democracy and achieving social and economic justice.

Lincoln-Douglas Debates

A series of public debates between the relatively unknown former congressman Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas in their home state of Illinois in 1858. Hoping to steal Douglas's seat in the Senate in the national elections that year, Lincoln wanted to be the first to put the question of slavery to the voters. The "Little Giant" Douglas accepted and engaged Lincoln in a total of seven debates, each in front of several thousand people. Even though Lincoln lost the Senate seat, the debates made Lincoln a national figure. During the debates, Douglas articulated his famous "Freeport Doctrine" in which he said that, while the Dred Scott decision made slavery legal in the territories in theory, the people of a territory could keep slavery out in practice. This, of course, was impossible.

results of Civil War and Reconstruction

A. Slavery is Abolished and the Constitution Guarantees Blacks' Rights B. Discrimination of Blacks in the South C. Beginnings of Education for Blacks in the South D. Supremacy of the Federal Government E. Expansion of Presidential Powers in Wartime F. The "Solid South" G. Developments in the Southern Economy: 1. Physical and economic destruction: 2. Revival of southern agriculture and the emergence of sharecropping 3. Development of Industry: The "New South"

Spanish American War (1898)

Americans had long been interested in the Spanish colony of Cuba due to its strategic importance. The U.S. feared Cuba might pass into stronger European hands. Before the Civil War, southerners wanted to annex Cuba as another slave state. In 1854, three U.S. diplomats proposed the Ostend Manifesto saying that, if the U.S. could not obtain Cuba through diplomatic means, it was justified in taking the island by force. The Ostend Manifesto was repudiated by the U.S. government. Nevertheless, many Americans favored the idea at the time.

Panama Canal

Americans had long desired a canal through Central America that would connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. This undertaking was diplomatically challenging and was the most impressive engineering undertaking the U.S. had ever attempted.

Social Security Act

An act to provide for the general welfare by establishing a system of Federal old-age benefits, and by enabling the several States to make more adequate provision for aged persons, blind persons, dependent and crippled children, maternal and child welfare, public health, and the administration of their unemployment ...

Carnegie

Andrew Carnegie (1835—1919) was a Scottish-born immigrant who built the Carnegie Steel Company from an humble beginning and was the first steel industry in Pittsburgh. He eventually sold his business to J.P. Morgan and dedicated his life to helping others. His charitable organizations built more than 2,500 public libraries around the world. He also gave away more than $350 million during his lifetime.

economy

Although the United States suffered a brief but serious recession from 1920-1921, the transition to a peacetime economy was facilitated by unprecedented industrial growth and accelerated consumer demand. Mass production made technology affordable to the middle class. This demand for the many new products developed in the 1920s boosted the economy and led to a tendency to "buy now, pay later." For the first time in American history, people could purchase products on credit. By the middle of the decade, prosperity was widespread. It was, however, a difficult time for labor unions. Finally the Wall Street Crash of 1929 ended the era, and the Great Depression began worldwide.

imperialism

American imperialism is the economic, military and cultural philosophy that the United States, either directly or indirectly, affects and controls other countries or their policies. Such influence is often closely associated with expansion into foreign territories. The concept of an American Empire was first popularized during the presidency of James K. Polk who led the United States into the Mexican-American War of 1846, and the eventual annexation of California and other western territories via the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the Gadsden purchase.[4][5]

Morgan

During the Gilded Age, J.P. Morgan stood astride the nation's financial world like a colossus. His banking house erected the structure of the most prominent American industries in the Gilded Age beginning with the railroad. Convinced that cutthroat competition had to give way to order, he consolidated competing railroad lines and many other industries. He organized syndicates to float bond and stock issues that gave birth to such companies as AT&T (which dominated the nation's telephone industry for decades), General Electric, and U.S. Steel (the world's largest steel manufacturer). A voracious collector, he also spent $60 million on paintings, sculptures, rare books, and manuscripts. His critics considered him a ruthless capitalist pirate, the personification of the oppressive power of Wall Street that would crucify mankind on a cross of gold. But his goal was to replace cutthroat competition with economic stability. Morgan was instrumental in helping to create the modern American economy. After the Panic of 1893, he reorganized many bankrupt railroads and industrial companies. He assembled U.S. Steel, the world's first billion-dollar corporation, and helped establish International Harvester and General Electric. He believed that the combination of rival interests into rational systems was necessary to stabilize the U.S. economy and to prevent harmful price wars. During a financial panic in 1907, which threatened to trigger a run on the nation's banks, Morgan took charge. He assembled the leading bank presidents in his library and locked the door. At 4 a.m., his lawyer read them an agreement stipulating how much each must pledge to the bailout package. "There the place..." Morgan told one banker, "and here's the pen." When he decided to buy the Carnegie Steel Company on the way to forming United States Steel, he asked Andrew Carnegie to name his price. Carnegie wrote $480 million on a sheet of paper. Morgan glanced at the paper and said, "I accept this price." Next

Major General William Tecumseh Sherman USA

"We are not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war"

Robert E Lee CSA

"With all my devotion to the Union and the feeling of loyalty and duty of an American citizen, I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home. I have therefore resigned my commission in the Army, and save in defense of my native State, with the sincere hope that my poor services may never be needed, I hope I may never be called on to draw my sword..."

Dorothea Dix

A number of reformers devoted their attention to the problems of the mentally ill, the deaf, and the blind. In 1841, Dorothea Dix (1802-1887), a 39-year-old former schoolteacher, volunteered to give religious instruction to women incarcerated in the East Cambridge, Massachusetts, House of Correction. Inside the House of Correction, she was horrified to find mentally ill inmates dressed in rags and confined to a single dreary, unheated room. Shocked by what she saw, she embarked on a lifelong crusade to reform the treatment of the mentally ill. After a two-year secret investigation of every jail and almshouse in Massachusetts, Dix issued a report to the state legislature. The mentally ill, she found, were mixed indiscriminately with paupers and hardened criminals. Many were confined "in cages, closets, cellars, stalls, pens! Chained, naked, beaten with rods and lashed into obedience." Dix then carried her campaign for state-supported asylums nationwide, persuading more than a dozen state legislatures to improve institutional care for the insane. Through the efforts of reformers such as Thomas Gallaudet and Samuel Gridley Howe, institutions to care for the deaf and blind began to appear. In 1817, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet (1787-1851) established the nation's first school in Hartford, Connecticut, to teach deaf-mutes to read and write, read lips, and communicate through hand signals. Samuel Gridley Howe (1801-1876), the husband of Julia Ward Howe, composer of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," accomplished for the blind what Gallaudet achieved for the deaf. He founded the country's first school for the blind in Boston and produced printed materials with raised type.

carpetbaggers/scalawags

According to myth, unscrupulous carpetbaggers from the North and unprincipled scalawags from the South manipulated the freedmen to gain control of the state governments. Backed by the presence of federal troops, they embarked on an orgy of corruption, humiliating and impoverishing the helpless South and unsettling relations between blacks and whites. At last - the myth continues - the nation grew weary of the corruption and the cost of maintaining troops in the South. The army was withdrawn and the responsible white citizenry regained control of their governments. According to this stereotype popularized after Reconstruction, the carpetbaggers were dishonest fortune seekers whose possession could be put in a satchel. "They are fellows who crawled down South on the track of our armies...stealing and plundering," said editor Horace Greeley. Contrary to legend, however, most carpetbaggers were not impoverished opportunists seeking easy money in the South. Rather they were former soldiers who migrated to the South to seek a livelihood. They generated hostility because they supported the Republican Party and defended the civil and political rights of freedmen.

Jim Crow laws

After the Civil War ended in 1865, the court severely limited federal power to fight lynchings and private discrimination. When the 14th Amendment was adopted in 1868, it was expected that the Supreme Court would protect the rights of African Americans. But in the 30 years after the 14th Amendment was adopted, the Supreme Court restricted its scope. Eight years after the Civil War, the Supreme Court ruled (in the Slaughter-House Cases) that the 14th Amendment's prohibition against states restricting the privileges or immunities of American citizens was not intended to protect citizens of a state against the legislative power of their state. The court made this 1873 ruling even though the 14th Amendment states in its first paragraph: No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. The Supreme Court decision in the Slaughter-House Cases reduced the "privileges and immunity" clause to a dead-letter. A 5-4 majority held that the clause only protected the rights of national citizenship and placed no new obligations on the states. This ruling left African American residents of the South powerless against discriminatory actions by state legislatures. In the Civil Rights Case (1883), involving an inn in Jefferson, Mo., which barred blacks, the court ruled that the 14th Amendment did not give Congress the power to ban private discrimination in public accommodations. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the court said that the 14th Amendment "could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political, equality or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either." It would not be until 1954 that a unanimous Supreme Court would rule that legal segregation violated the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause.

black codes

After the Civil War, every southern state enacted laws that defined the rights of the former slaves. These laws extended certain basic rights, including the right to make contracts and wills, to sue and be sued, and to lease, own, and dispose of real and personal property. These laws also imposed a variety of restrictions on African Americans. Under Texas's Black Code, blacks were not allowed to vote, hold office, or serve on juries. Nor could blacks marry whites. Railroads were required to provide separate cars for blacks. Not only was the state prohibited from providing public land to blacks, it was also barred from supporting schools for blacks out of the state's public school fund. The black codes also defined labor relations. Vagrancy laws allowed local courts to arrest individuals deemed idle, to fine them, and force them to work if they could not pay the fines. Employers were given the power to deduct the wages of an employee guilty of theft, disobedience, absence, or destruction of property. Any appeals would be heard by a local justice of the peace and two landowners. Under Texas's code, minors could be apprenticed until the age of 21, with parental consent or by order of a county court. Masters were allowed to impose corporal punishment to force an apprentice to work.

KKK

After the Civil War, the Ku Klux Klan, led by former Confederate General Nathaniel Bedford Forrest, used terrorist tactics to intimidate former slaves. A new version of the Ku Klux Klan arose during the early 1920s. Throughout this time period, immigration, fear of radicalism, and a revolution in morals and manners fanned anxiety in large parts of the country. Roman Catholics, Jews, African Americans, and foreigners were only the most obvious targets of the Klan's fear-mongering. Bootleggers and divorcees were also targets. Contributing to the Klan's growth was a post-war depression in agriculture, the migration of African Americans into northern cities, and a swelling of religious bigotry and nativism in the years after World War I. Klan members considered themselves defenders of Prohibition, traditional morality, and true Americanism. The Klan efforts were directed against African Americans, Jews, Catholics, and immigrants. In 1920, two Atlanta publicists, Edward Clarke, a former Atlanta journalist, and Bessie Tyler, a former madam, took over an organization that had formed to promote World War I fund drives. At that time, the organization had 3,000 members. In three years they built it into the Southern Publicity Association, a national organization with three million members. After the war, they bolstered membership in the Klan by giving Klansmen part of the $10 induction fee of every new member they signed up. During the early 1920s, the Klan helped elect 16 U.S. Senators and many Representatives and local officials. By 1924, when the Klan had reached its peak in numbers and influence, it claimed to control 24 of the nation's 48 state legislatures. That year it succeeded in blocking the nomination of Al Smith, a New York Catholic, at the Democratic National Convention. The three million members of the Klan after World War I were quite open in their activities. Many were small-business owners, independent professionals, clerical workers, and farmers. Members marched in parades, patronized Klan merchants, and voted for Klan-endorsed political candidates. The Klan was particularly strong in the Deep South, Oklahoma, and Indiana. Historians once considered the Ku Klux Klan a group of marginal misfits, rural traditionalists unable to cope with the coming of a modern urban society. But recent scholarship shows that Klan members were a cross-section of native Protestants; many were women, and many came from urban areas. The leader of Indiana's Klan was David Curtis Stephenson, a Texan who had worked as a printer's apprentice in Oklahoma before becoming a salesman in Indiana. Given control of the Klan in Indiana in 1922 and the right to organize in 20 other states, he soon became a millionaire from the sale of robes and hoods. A crowd estimated at 200,000 attended one Klan gathering in Kokomo, Ind., in 1923. A public defender of Prohibition and womanhood, Stephenson was, in private, a heavy drinker and a womanizer. In 1925, he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison for kidnapping and sexually assaulting 28-year-old Madge Oberholtzer, who ran a state program to combat illiteracy. Stephenson's downfall, which was followed by the indictment and prosecution of many Klan-supported politicians on corruption charges, led members to abandon the organization in droves. Within a year, the number of Klansmen in Indiana fell from 350,000 to 15,000. By 1930, the Klan had just 45,000 members in the nation as a whole.

First Cleveland Administration/Democratic (1885-1889)

After the bloodless 1893 revolution, the American businessmen lobbied President Benjamin Harrison and Congress to annex the Hawaiian Islands. In his last month in office, Harrison sent an annexation treaty to the Senate for confirmation, but the new president, Grover Cleveland, withdrew the treaty "for the purpose of re-examination." He also received Queen Liliuokalani and replaced the American stars and stripes in Honolulu with the Hawaiian flag. Cleveland also ordered a study of the Hawaiian revolution. The inquiry concluded that the American minister to Hawaii had conspired with the businessmen to overthrow the queen, and that the coup would have failed "but for the landing of the United States forces upon false pretexts respecting the dangers to life and property." Looking back on the Hawaii takeover, President Cleveland later wrote that "the provisional government owes its existence to an armed invasion by the United States. By an act of war...a substantial wrong has been done." President Cleveland's recommendation that the monarchy be restored was rejected by Congress. The House of Representatives voted to censure the U.S. minister to Hawaii and adopted a resolution opposing annexation. But Congress did not act to restore the monarchy. In 1894, Sanford Dole, who was beginning his pineapple business, declared himself president of the Republic of Hawaii without a popular vote. The new government found the queen guilty of treason and sentenced her to five years of hard labor and a $5,000 fine. While the sentence of hard labor was not carried out, the queen was placed under house arrest.

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Agricultural Adjustment Act

The Gospel of wealth

Andrew Carnegie did not believe that men of great wealth were robber barons, but trustees whose duty it was to devote their talents to the common good. This, he wrote, is "the true Gospel concerning Wealth, obedience to which is destined some day to solve the problem of the Rich and the Poor, and to bring 'Peace on earth, among men of Good-Will.'" Drawing on the doctrine of St. Paul, that the rich had to be stewards of wealth, defenders of the Gospel of Wealth, like the Episcopal Bishop of Massachusetts, argued that it was God's will that some men attained great wealth, and "in the long run, it is only to the man of morality that wealth comes." He concluded: "Material prosperity is helping to make the national character sweeter, more joyous, more unselfish, more Christ like." In an 1889 essay, steel magnate Carnegie told his fellow business leaders, "The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced." Carnegie believed that the wealthy should repay their debt to society. True to his beliefs, by his death in 1919 he had divested himself of more than 95 percent of his fortune. He built a library building for any town that would provide a site, stock the building with books, and guarantee maintenance expenses. He provided pensions for professors at universities that agreed to meet strict academic standards. In addition to funding music halls, outdoor swimming pools, and church organs, he also set up endowments to promote teaching and world peace.

FDR and World War II

As early as 1937, FDR warned the American public about the dangers posed by hard-line regimes in Germany, Italy and Japan, though he stopped short of suggesting America should abandon its isolationist policy. After World War II broke out in September 1939, however, Roosevelt called a special session of Congress in order to revise the country's existing neutrality acts and allow Britain and France to purchase American arms on a "cash-and-carry" basis. Germany captured France by the end of June 1940, and Roosevelt persuaded Congress to provide more support for Britain, now left to combat the Nazi menace on its own. Despite the two-term tradition for presidents in place since the time of George Washington, Roosevelt decided to run for reelection again in 1940; he defeated Wendell L. Wilkie by nearly 5 million votes. Roosevelt increased his support of Great Britain with passage of the Lend-Lease Act in March 1941 and met with Prime Minister Winston Churchill in August aboard a battleship anchored off Canada. In the resulting Atlantic Charter, the two leaders declared the "Four Freedoms" on which the post-war world should be founded: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of religion, freedom from want and freedom from fear. On December 8, 1941, the day after Japan bombed the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt appeared before a joint session of Congress, which declared war on Japan. The first president to leave the country during wartime, Roosevelt spearheaded the alliance between countries combating the Axis, meeting frequently with Churchill and seeking to establish friendly relations with the Soviet Union and its leader, Joseph Stalin. Meanwhile, he spoke constantly on the radio, reporting war events and rallying the American people in support of the war effort (as he had for the New Deal).

Government Regulations

At the beginning of the 20th century, milk distributors frequently adulterated milk by adding chalk or plaster to improve its color and molasses and water to cut costs. Meatpackers killed rats by putting poisoned pieces of bread on their floors; sometimes, the poisoned rats made their way onto the production lines. The publication of Upton Sinclair's book,The Jungle, exposed unsanitary conditions in the meatpacking industry, generating widespread public support for federal inspection of meatpacking plants. The Department of Agriculture disclosed the dangers of chemical additives in canned foods. A muckraking journalist named Samuel Hopkins uncovered misleading and fraudulent claims in non-prescription drugs. To deal with these problems the federal government enacted: The Meat Inspection Act (1906), mandating government enforcement of sanitary and health standards in meatpacking plants; The Pure Food and Drug Act (1906), prohibiting false advertising and harmful additives in food Progressives often portrayed their battles as simply the latest example of an older struggle between "the people" and business interests and proponents of democracy against the defenders of special privilege. In fact, this view is quite misleading. Corporate managers were often strong supporters of Progressive reform. During Theodore Roosevelt's presidency, mining companies worked closely with the administration in order to try to rationalize the extraction of natural resources. Big meatpackers promoted the Meat Inspection Act of 1906 to prevent smaller packers from exporting bad meat and closing foreign markets to all American meat products.

New Immigration

During the early 1800s, New York City began to replace Philadelphia as the nation's chief port of entry for immigrants. Ellis Island, the world's most famous station, operated in New York Harbor from 1892 to 1954. The second wave of immigration lasted from 1820 to 1870. Almost 7 ½ million newcomers entered the United States. Nearly all of them came from northern and western Europe. About a third were Irish, many of them seeking escape from a potato famine that struck Ireland in the mid-1840s. Almost a third were German. Most of the Irish had little money, and so they stayed where they arrived, on the East Coast. Many Germans had enough money to journey to the Midwest in search of farmland. In the mid-1880s, some states sent agents to Europe to attract settlers. Railroad companies did the same thing, bringing in thousands of Chinese immigrants to work on the transcontinental railroads. Better conditions on ships and steep declines in travel time and fares made the voyage across the Atlantic Ocean easier and more affordable. In the mid-1800s news of the discovery of gold in California reached China. Chinese immigrants streamed across the Pacific to strike it rich. The flood of immigrants began to alarm many native born Americans. Some feared job competition from foreigners. Others disliked the religion or politics of the newcomers. During the 1850s, the America Party, also called the Know-Nothing Party, demanded laws to reduce immigration and to make it harder for foreigners to become citizens. During the late 1870s, Californians demanded laws to keep out Chinese immigrants. In some instances, mobs attacked Chinese immigrants, who were accused of lowering wages and unfair business competition. They were also denounced as inassimilable and as racially inferior. In 1882, Congress passed the

FDR

Franklin D. Roosevelt was in his second term as governor of New York when he was elected as the nation's 32nd president in 1932. With the country mired in the depths of the Great Depression, Roosevelt immediately acted to restore public confidence, proclaiming a bank holiday and speaking directly to the public in a series of radio broadcasts or "fireside chats." His ambitious slate of New Deal programs and reforms redefined the role of the federal government in the lives of Americans. Reelected by comfortable margins in 1936, 1940 and 1944, FDR led the United States from isolationism to victory over Nazi Germany and its allies in World War II. He spearheaded the successful wartime alliance between Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States and helped lay the groundwork for the post-war peace organization that would become the United Nations. The only American president in history to be elected four times, Roosevelt died in office in April 1945.

The Brain Trust

Franklin Roosevelt brought a new breed of government officials to Washington. Previously, most government administrators were wealthy patricians, businessmen, or political loyalists. Roosevelt, however, looked to new sources of talent, bringing to Washington a team of Ivy League intellectuals and New York State social workers. Known as the "brain trust," these advisors provided Roosevelt with economic ideas and oratorical ammunition.

The Frontier Closes

Frederick Jackson Turner and the frontier. A year after the Oklahoma Land Rush, the director of the U.S. Census Bureau announced that the frontier was closed. The 1890 census had shown that a frontier line, a point beyond which the population density was less than two persons per square mile, no longer existed.

The Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)

From 1882 until 1943, most Chinese immigrants were barred from entering the United States. The Chinese Exclusion Act was the nation's first law to ban immigration by race or nationality. All Chinese people--except travelers, merchants, teachers, students, and those born in the United States--were barred from entering the country. Federal law prohibited Chinese residents, no matter how long they had legally worked in the United States, from becoming naturalized citizens. From 1850 to 1865, political and religious rebellions within China left 30 million dead and the country's economy in a state of collapse. Meanwhile, the canning, timber, mining, and railroad industries on the United States's West Coast needed workers. Chinese business owners also wanted immigrants to staff their laundries, restaurants, and small factories. Smugglers transported people from southern China to Hong Kong, where they were transferred onto passenger steamers bound for Victoria, British Columbia. From Victoria, many immigrants crossed into the United States in small boats at night. Others crossed by land. The Geary Act, passed in 1892, required Chinese aliens to carry a residence certificate with them at all times upon penalty of deportation. Immigration officials and police officers conducted spot checks in canneries, mines, and lodging houses and demanded that every Chinese person show these residence certificates. Due to intense anti-Chinese discrimination, many merchants' families remained in China while husbands and fathers worked in the United States. Since Federal law allowed merchants who returned to China to register two children to come to the United States, men who were legally in the United States might sell their testimony so that an unrelated child could be sponsored for entry. To pass official interrogations, immigrants were forced to memorize coaching books which contained very specific pieces of information, such as how many water buffalo there were in a particular village. So intense was the fear of being deported that many "paper sons" kept their false names all their lives. The U.S. government only gave amnesty to these "paper families" in the 1950s.

Dollar Diplomacy (Pres. Taft)

From 1909 to 1913, President William Howard Taft and Secretary of State Philander C. Knox followed a foreign policy characterized as "dollar diplomacy." William Howard Taft Taft shared the view held by Knox, a corporate lawyer who had founded the giant conglomerate U.S. Steel, that the goal of diplomacy was to create stability and order abroad that would best promote American commercial interests. Knox felt that not only was the goal of diplomacy to improve financial opportunities, but also to use private capital to further U.S. interests overseas. "Dollar diplomacy" was evident in extensive U.S. interventions in the Caribbean and Central America, especially in measures undertaken to safeguard American financial interests in the region. In China, Knox secured the entry of an American banking conglomerate, headed by J.P. Morgan, into a European-financed consortium financing the construction of a railway from Huguang to Canton. In spite of successes, "dollar diplomacy" failed to counteract economic instability and the tide of revolution in places like Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and China.

the Pendleton Act (1883)

George Plunkitt, a local leader of New York City's Democratic Party, defended the spoils system, through which elected politicians filled government jobs with their friends and supporters. "You can't keep an organization together without patronage," he declared. "Men ain't in politics for nothin'. They want to get somethin' out of it." But in one of the most significant political reforms of the late 19th century, Congress adopted the Pendleton Act, creating a federal civil service system, partly eliminating political patronage. The goal was to create a more competent governmental bureaucracy and to reduce the influence of outside money on government. Andrew Jackson introduced the spoils system to the federal government. The practice, epitomized by the saying "to the victory belong the spoils," involved placing party supporters into government positions. An incoming president would dismiss thousands of government workers and replace them with members of his own party. Scandals under the Grant administration generated a mounting demand for reform. Ironically, the president who led the successful campaign for civil service, Chester Arthur, a Republican, was linked to a party faction from New York that was known for its abuse of the spoils of office. In fact, in 1878, Arthur had been fired from his post at New York Federal Custom's Collection for giving away too many patronage jobs. In 1880, Arthur had been elected vice president on a ticket headed by James A. Garfield. Garfield's assassination in 1881 by a mentally disturbed man, Charles J. Guiteau, who thought he deserved appointment to a government job, led to a public outcry for reform. In 1883, Arthur helped push through the Pendleton Act. Failing to please either machine politicians or reformers, Arthur was the last incumbent president to be denied renomination for a second term by his own party. The Pendleton Act stipulated that government jobs should be awarded on the basis of merit. It provided for selection of government employees through competitive examinations. It also made it unlawful to fire or demote covered employees for political reasons or to require them to give political service or payment, and it set up a Civil Service Commission to enforce the law. When the Pendleton Act went into effect, only 10 percent of the government's 132,000 civilian employees were placed under civil service. The rest remained at the disposal of the party power, which could distribute for patronage, payoffs, or purchase. Today, more than 90 percent of the 2.7 million federal civilian employees are covered by merit systems.

Cleveland and Civil Service Reform

George Plunkitt, a local leader of New York City's Democratic Party, defended the spoils system. "You can't keep an organization together without patronage," he declared. "Men ain't in politics for nothin'. They want to get somethin' out of it." But in one of the most significant political reforms of the late 19th century, Congress adopted the Pendleton Act, creating a federal civil service system, partly eliminating political patronage. Andrew Jackson introduced the spoils system to the federal government. The practice, epitomized by the saying "to the victory belong the spoils," involved placing party supporters into government positions. An incoming president would dismiss thousands of government workers and replace them with members of his own party. Scandals under the Grant administration generated a mounting demand for reform. Ironically, the president who led the successful campaign for civil service, Chester Arthur, a Republican, was linked to a party faction from New York that was known for its abuse of the spoils of office. In fact, in 1878, Arthur had been fired from his post at New York Federal Custom's Collection for giving away too many patronage jobs. In 1880, Arthur had been elected vice president on a ticket headed by James A. Garfield. Garfield's assassination in 1881 by a mentally disturbed man, Charles J. Guiteau, who thought he deserved appointment to a government job, led to a public outcry for reform. As president, Arthur became an ardent reformer. He insisted that high ranking members of his own party be prosecuted for their part in a Post Office scandal. He vetoed a law to improve rivers and harbors. In 1883, he helped push through the Pendleton Act. Failing to please either machine politicians or reformers, Arthur was the last incumbent president to be denied renomination for a second term by his own party. The Pendleton Act stipulated that government jobs should be awarded on the basis of merit. It provided for selection of government employees through competitive examinations. It also made it unlawful to fire or demote covered employees for political reasons or to require them to give political service or payment, and it set up a Civil Service Commission to enforce the law. When the Pendleton Act went into effect, only 10 percent of the government's 132,000 civilian employees were placed under civil service. The rest remained at the disposal of the party power, which could distribute for patronage, payoffs, or purchase. Today, more than 90 percent of the 2.7 million federal civilian employees are covered by merit systems. In 1884, New York became the first state to adopt a civil service system for state workers. Massachusetts became the second state when it started a merit system in 1885.

Voluntarism

Herbert Hoover did not cause the Great Depression, but he was blamed for failing to address the economic crisis. Hoover feared that too much intervention or coercion by the government would destroy individuality and self-reliance (a concept he referred to as "rugged individualism"), both of which he considered to be important American values. However, both his ideals and the economy were put to the test with the onset of the Great Depression. Despite calls for greater government assistance, Hoover refused to fund welfare programs, as he believed that such assistance projects would reduce the incentive to work. · In 1929, in an effort to reduce municipal aid services burdens and combat white American unemployment, Hoover instituted the Mexican Repatriation program. This resulted in the forced migration of over 500,000 Mexicans and Mexican Americans to Mexico. · The Smoot-Hawley Tariff raised the tariff on thousands of imported items as part of a failed effort to encourage the purchase and growth of American-made goods, raise federal revenue, and protect farmers.

Horatio Alger image

Horatio Alger Jr. (/ˈældʒər/; January 13, 1832 - July 18, 1899) was a prolific 19th-century American writer, best known for his many young adult novels about impoverished boys and their rise from humble backgrounds to lives of middle-class security and comfort through hard work, determination, courage, and honesty. His writings were characterized by the "rags-to-riches" narrative, which had a formative effect on America during the Gilded Age. All of Alger's juvenile novels share essentially the same theme, known as the "Horatio Alger myth": a teenage boy works hard to escape poverty. Often it is not hard work that rescues the boy from his fate but rather some extraordinary act of bravery or honesty. The boy might return a large sum of lost money or rescue someone from an overturned carriage. This brings the boy—and his plight—to the attention of a wealthy individual. Alger secured his literary niche in 1868 with the publication of his fourth book, Ragged Dick, the story of a poor bootblack's rise to middle-class respectability. This novel was a huge success. His many books that followed were essentially variations on Ragged Dick and featured casts of stock characters: the valiant hard-working, honest youth, the noble mysterious stranger, the snobbish youth, and the evil, greedy squire. In the 1870s, Alger's fiction was growing stale. His publisher suggested he tour the American West for fresh material to incorporate into his fiction. Alger took a trip to California, but the trip had little effect on his writing: he remained mired in the tired theme of "poor boy makes good." The backdrops of these novels, however, became the American West rather than the urban environments of the northeastern United States. In the last decades of the 19th century, Alger's moral tone coarsened with the change in boys' tastes. Sensational thrills were wanted by the public. The Protestant work ethic had loosened its grip on America, and violence, murder, and other sensational themes entered Alger's works. Public librarians questioned whether his books should be made available to the young. They were briefly successful, but interest in Alger's novels was renewed in the first decades of the 20th century, and they sold in the thousands. By the time he died in 1899, Alger had published around a hundred volumes. He is buried in South Natick, Massachusetts. Since 1947, the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans has awarded scholarships and prizes to deserving individuals.

manifest destiny

In 1845 John L. O'Sullivan, editor of the Democratic Review, referred in his magazine to America's "Manifest Destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions." One of the most influential slogans ever coined, "manifest destiny" expressed the romantic emotion that led Americans to risk their lives to settle the Far West. The idea that America had a special destiny to stretch across the continent motivated many people to migrate West. The very idea of manifest destiny encouraged men and women to dream big dreams. "We Americans," wrote Herman Melville, one of this country's greatest novelists, "are the peculiar, chosen people--the Israel of our time." Manifest destiny inspired a 29-year old named Stephen F. Austin to talk grandly of colonizing the Mexican province of Texas with "North American population, enterprise and intelligence." It led expansionists, united behind the slogan "54° 40' or fight!," to demand that the United States should own the entire Pacific Northwest all the way to the southern border of Alaska. Aggressive nationalists invoked the idea to justify Indian removal, war with Mexico, and American expansion into Cuba and Central America. More positively, the idea of manifest destiny inspired missionaries, farmers, and pioneers, who dreamed only of transforming plains and fertile valleys into farms and small towns.

the election of 1860

In April 1860, the Democratic Party assembled in Charleston, South Carolina to select a presidential nominee. Southern delegates insisted that the party endorse a federal code to guarantee the rights of slaveholders in the territories. When the convention rejected the proposal, delegates from the deep South walked out. The remaining delegates reassembled six weeks later in Baltimore and selected Stephen Douglas as their candidate. Southern Democrats proceeded to choose John C. Breckinridge as their presidential nominee. In May, the Constitutional Union Party, which consisted of conservative former Whigs, Know Nothings, and pro-Union Democrats nominated John Bell of Tennessee for President. This short-lived party denounced sectionalism and tried to rally support around a platform that supported the Constitution and the Union. Meanwhile, the Republican Party nominated Abraham Lincoln on the third ballot. The 1860 election revealed how divided the country had become. There were actually two separate sectional campaigns: one in the North, pitting Lincoln against Douglas, and one in the South between Breckinridge and Bell. Only Stephen Douglas mounted a truly national campaign. The Republicans did not campaign in the South and Lincoln's name did not appear on the ballot in 10 states. In the final balloting, Lincoln won only 39.9 percent of the popular vote, but received 180 Electoral College votes, 57 more than the combined total of his opponents.

reconstruction governments of the southern states

In an event without historical precedent, former slaves joined with white Republicans to govern the South. The freedmen, in alliance with carpetbaggers (Northerners who had migrated South during or after the Civil War) and southern white Republicans derogatorily called scalawags, temporarily gained power in every Confederate state except Virginia. Altogether, over 600 African Americans served as legislators in Reconstruction governments (though blacks comprised a majority only in the lower house of South Carolina's legislature). The Republican governments were damned for their extravagance, but they gave the South its first public school systems, asylums, and roads. Southern Republicans sought to modernize the South by building railroads and providing free public education and other social services. The Reconstruction governments drew up democratic state constitutions, expanded women's rights, provided debt relief, and established the South's first state-funded schools. Before Reconstruction, there were no statewide, tax supported education systems in the South, except in Tennessee. Freedmen's academies set up by northern philanthropists to educate former slaves provided the framework for state education systems. Meanwhile, the first institutions of higher education for blacks were established in the South. Black colleges founded during Reconstruction included Fisk University in Nashville in 1866, Howard University in Washington in 1867, and Virginia's Hampton Institute in 1868. To be sure, some of the reconstruction governments were plagued by inexperienced and incompetent leadership and corruption, which disillusioned many northerners. There were a number of examples of flagrant corruption, including one instance in which a state legislature awarded a thousand dollars to a member to cover a lost bet on a horse race. In another example, a New York publisher gave a $30,000 loan to a Georgia official to convince him to adopt a textbook. Nevertheless, the nation's first integrated governments had many substantial achievements.

The Grant Administration/Republican (1869-1877)

On average, the South's bi-racial Republican state governments lasted just four-and-a-half years. During the 1870s, internal divisions within the Republican Party, white terror, and northern apathy allowed southern white Democrats to return to power. Retirement and death removed from Congress the more outspoken advocates of civil rights, such as Thaddeus Stevens, who died in 1868. Corruption in the Grant administration divided the Republican Party and helped the Democrats win control of the House of Representatives in 1874. Corruption in the South's Republican government also undercut support for Reconstruction. Northern outrage over southern intransigence gave way to helpless resignation or indifference. As early as 1872, many former abolitionists believed that their aims had been achieved. Slavery had been abolished and citizenship and voting rights had been established by Constitutional Amendment. Democrats denounced "foreign" rule of the South by carpetbaggers and attacked corruption in President Grant's administration. In 1872, "Liberal Republicans," repelled by the supposed corruption of the radical regimes in the South, declared that the North had attained its goals and that Reconstruction should end. Many threw their support to the Democrats. The nationwide economic depression of 1873 further weakened the Republican Party, and Democrats regained the House of Representatives in 1874. The financial panic of 1873 and the subsequent economic depression helped bring Reconstruction to a formal end. Across the country, but especially in the South business failures, unemployment, and tightening credit heightened class and racial tensions and generated demands for government retrenchment. Property owners in the South demanded that state budgets be cut and tax rates lowered. Southern penitentiaries were dismantled and convicts were leased to private contractors. Spending on public schools and the care of orphans, the sick, and the insane was sharply reduced. Budgets for schools for blacks were cut especially heavily. It was the disputed presidential election of 1876 that brought Reconstruction to a formal end.

General James Longstreet CSA

On this day in 1821, Confederate General James Longstreet is born near Edgefield, South Carolina. Longstreet became one of the most successful generals in the Confederate army, but after the war he becamea target of some of his comrades, who were searching for a scapegoat. Longstreet grew up in Georgia and attended West Point, graduating in 1842. He was a close friend of Ulysses S. Grant, and served as best man in Grant's 1848 wedding to Julia Dent, Longstreet's fourth cousin. Longstreet fought in the Mexican War (1846-48) and was wounded at the Battle of Chapultepec. He resigned from the U.S. military at the beginning of the Civil War, when he was named brigadier general in the Confederate army. Longstreet fought at the First Battle of Bull Run, Virginia, in July 1861,and within a year was commander of corps in the Army of Northern Virginia under General Robert E. Lee. Upon the death of General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson at the Battle of Chancellorsville, Virginia,in May 1863, Longstreet was considered the most effective corps commander in Lee's army. He served with Lee for the rest of the war-except for the fall of 1863, when he took his force to aid the Confederate effort in Tennessee. Longstreet was severely wounded at the Battle of the Wilderness in Virginia in May 1864, and did not return to service for six months. He went on to fight with Lee until the surrender at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, in April 1865. After the war, Longstreetwas involvedin a number of businesses and held several governmental posts, most notably U.S. minister to Turkey. Although successful, he made two moves that greatly tarnished his reputation among his fellow Southerners: He joined the despised Republican Party and publicly questioned Lee's strategy at the pivotal Battle of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. His fellow officers considered these sins to be unforgivable, and former comrades such as generals Jubal Early and John Gordon attacked Longstreet as a traitor. They asserted that Longstreet was responsible for the errors that lost Gettysburg. Longstreet outlived most of his comrades and detractors before dying at age 82 on January 2, 1904. His second wife, Helen Dortch, lived until 1962.

McKinley Administration/ Republican (1897-1901)

President William McKinley was deeply ambivalent about war against Spain. The last president to have served in the Civil War said he had seen too much carnage at battles like Antietam to be enthusiastic about war with Spain. "I've been through one war. I have seen the dead piled up, and I do not want to see another." Ultimately, however, the pressure of public opinion forced McKinley into the war that made the United States an international power. Newspaper publishers like William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer worked up war fever among the public with reports of Spanish atrocities against Cuban rebels. Then, Hearst's New York Journal published a leaked letter in which the chief Spanish diplomat in Washington, Enrique Duby de Lome, described President McKinley as "weak" and a "petty politician." Hearst publicized the DeLome letter under the screaming headline: "WORST INSULT TO THE UNITED STATES IN ITS HISTORY". Days later an explosion sank the U.S.S. Maine in Cuban's Havana harbor. A naval court of inquiry blamed the explosion on a mine, further inflaming public sentiment against Spain. At the end of the Spanish-American war, pressure on President William McKinley to annex the Philippines was intense. After originally declaring that it would "be criminal aggression" for the United States to annex the archipelago, he reversed himself, partly out of fear that another power would seize the Philippines. Six weeks after Dewey defeated the Spanish fleet at Manila Bay, a German fleet sought to set up a naval base there. The British, French, and Japanese also sought bases in the Philippines. Unaware that the Philippines were the only predominantly Catholic nation in Asia, President McKinley said that American occupation was necessary to "uplift and Christianize" the Filipinos.

corruption

Progressivism is an umbrella label for a wide range of economic, political, social, and moral reforms. These included efforts to outlaw the sale of alcohol; regulate child labor and sweatshops; scientifically manage natural resources; insure pure and wholesome water and milk; Americanize immigrants or restrict immigration altogether; and bust or regulate trusts. Drawing support from the urban, college-educated middle class, Progressive reformers sought to eliminate corruption in government, regulate business practices, address health hazards, and improve working conditions. They also fought to give the public more direct control over government through direct primaries to nominate candidates for public office, direct election of senators, the initiative, referendum, and recall, and women's suffrage. By the beginning of the 20th century, muckraking journalists were calling attention to the exploitation of child labor, corruption in city governments, the horror of lynching, and the ruthless business practices employed by businessmen, like John D. Rockefeller. At the local level, many Progressives sought to suppress red-light districts, expand high schools, construct playgrounds, and replace corrupt urban political machines with more efficient systems of municipal government. At the state level, Progressives enacted minimum wage laws for women workers, instituted industrial accident insurance, restricted child labor, and improved factory regulation. At the national level, Congress passed laws establishing federal regulation of the meat-packing, drug, and railroad industries, and strengthened anti-trust laws. It also lowered the tariff, established federal control over the banking system, and enacted legislation to improve working conditions. Four constitutional amendments were adopted during the Progressive era including: authorizing an income tax; providing for the direct election of senators; extending the vote to women; and prohibiting the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages.

Interstate Commerce Act (1887)

The 1880s marked the emergence of trusts, companies that bought out locally-owned factories and merged them into conglomerates that sought to monopolize entire industries. The concentration of industry aroused "deep feelings of unrest," said Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan, a conservative Republican: The conviction was universal that the country was in real danger from another form of slavery...that would result from the aggregation of capital in the hands of a few individuals controlling, for their own profit and advantage exclusively, the entire business of the country. A national consensus emerged that monopolies were dangerous to democracy. The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887, which applied only to railroads passing through more than one state, declared that railroads could only charge just and reasonable rates. It required railroads to post their rates, provide 10-day notice before raising rates, prohibited railroads from charging less for a long haul than a short haul over the same line. The act also set up the first federal regulatory commission, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) had authority to investigate the railroads. Railroad operators found ways to circumvent the law, and many of the ICC's decisions were reversed by the Supreme Court. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act passed in 1890 outlawed any combination "in restraint of trade." In 1894, in the case of U.S. v. Debs, the Supreme Court ruled that the act could be used to stop labor unions from interfering with commerce. Between 1890 and 1901, the federal government filed 18 suits under the law, four against labor unions.

AWSA

The American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) was formed in November 1869[1] in response to a split in the American Equal Rights Association over the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Its founders, who supported the Fifteenth Amendment, included Lucy Stone,[1] Henry Blackwell, and Julia Ward Howe. The AWSA founders were staunch abolitionists, and strongly supported securing the right to vote for African American men. They believed that the Fifteenth Amendment would be in danger of failing to pass in Congress if it included the vote for women. On the other side of the split in the American Equal Rights Association, opposing the Fifteenth Amendment, were "irreconcilables" Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, who formed the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) to secure women's enfranchisement through a federal constitutional amendment. AWSA believed success could be more easily achieved through state-by-state campaigns.[2] In 1890 the NWSA and the AWSA merged to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA).

California Gold Rush

The California Gold Rush (1848-1855) began on January 24, 1848, when gold was discovered in Ca., causing some 300,000 people to flock to the territory. The gold-seekers, called "forty-niners" (as a reference to 1849), often faced substantial hardships on the trip. In 1849 a state constitution was written, a governor and legislature chosen and California became a state in 1850 as part of the Compromise of 1850.

The Anthracite Coal Strike 1902

The Coal strike of 1902 (also known as the anthracite coal strike[1][2]) was a strike by the United Mine Workers of America in the anthracite coalfields of eastern Pennsylvania. Miners struck for higher wages, shorter workdays and the recognition of their union. The strike threatened to shut down the winter fuel supply to major US cities. (At that time, residences were typically heated with anthracite or "hard" coal, which produces higher heat value and less smoke than "soft" or bituminous coal.) President Theodore Roosevelt became involved and set up a fact-finding commission that suspended the strike. The strike never resumed, as the miners received a 10% wage increase and reduced workdays from ten to nine hours; the owners got a higher price for coal, and did not recognize the trade union as a bargaining agent. It was the first labor dispute in which the US federal government intervened as a neutral arbitrator.

13th amendment

The Emancipation Proclamation freed only those slaves in states still at war. As a wartime order, it could subsequently be reversed by presidential degree or congressional legislation. The permanent emancipation of all slaves therefore required a constitutional amendment. In April 1864, the Senate passed the Thirteenth Amendment to abolish slavery in the United States. Opposition from Democratic Representatives prevented the amendment from receiving the required two-thirds majority. If McClellan and the Democrats had won the election of 1864, as Lincoln and most Northerners expected in the summer, the amendment would almost certainly have been defeated and slave emancipation repudiated as a war aim. Only after Lincoln was reelected did Congress approve the amendment. Ratification by the states was completed in December 1865.

Emergency Banking Relief Act

The Emergency Banking Act (the official title of which was the Emergency Banking Relief Act), Public Law 1, 48 Stat. 1 (March 9, 1933), was an act passed by the United States Congress in March 1933 in an attempt to stabilize the banking system.

The Turner Thesis

The Frontier Thesis or Turner Thesis, is the argument advanced by historian Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893 that American democracy was formed by the American frontier. He stressed the process—the moving frontier line—and the impact it had on pioneers going through the process.

The Gentlemen's Agreement w/Japan 1907

The Gentlemen's Agreement between the United States and Japan in 1907-1908 represented an effort by President Theodore Roosevelt to calm growing tension between the two countries over the immigration of Japanese workers. A treaty with Japan in 1894 had assured free immigration, but as the number of Japanese workers in California increased, they were met with growing hostility. In August 1900, Japan agreed to deny passports to laborers seeking to enter the United States; this, however, did not stop the many workers who obtained passports to Canada, Mexico, or Hawaii and then moved on to the United States. Racial antagonism intensified, fed by inflammatory articles in the press. On May 7, 1905, a Japanese and Korean Exclusion League was organized, and on October 11, 1906, the San Francisco school board arranged for all Asian children to be placed in a segregated school. Japan was prepared to limit immigration to the United States, but was deeply wounded by San Francisco's discriminatory law aimed specifically at its people. President Roosevelt, wishing to preserve good relations with Japan as a counter to Russian expansion in the Far East, intervened. While the American ambassador reassured the Japanese government, Roosevelt summoned the San Francisco mayor and school board to the White House in February 1907 and persuaded them to rescind the segregation order, promising that the federal government would itself address the question of immigration. On February 24, the Gentlemen's Agreement with Japan was concluded in the form of a Japanese note agreeing to deny passports to laborers intending to enter the United States and recognizing the U.S. right to exclude Japanese immigrants holding passports originally issued for other countries. This was followed by the formal withdrawal of the San Francisco school board order on March 13, 1907. A final Japanese note dated February 18, 1908, made the Gentlemen's Agreement fully effective. The agreement was superseded by the exclusionary Immigration Act of 1924.

The Great Depression

The Great Depression did not affect everyone the same way. Many rich people felt no impact at all, and were oblivious to the suffering of others. Up to forty percent of the country never faced real hardship during those years. But most were touched by it in some way. By the time of Franklin Roosevelt's inauguration in 1933, the unemployment rate hovered close to twenty-five percent. Fluctuating during the 1930s, it never fell below 14.3% until 1941. The Depression changed the family in dramatic ways. Many couples delayed marriage - the divorce rate dropped sharply (it was too expensive to pay the legal fees and support two households); and birth rates dropped below the replacement level for the first time in American history. Families suffered a dramatic loss of income during Herbert Hoover's term in office, dropping 35% in those four years to $15M. This put a great deal of stress on families. Some reacted by pulling together, making due with what they had, and turning to family and friends for help. Only after exhausting all alternatives would they reluctantly look to the government for help. Other families did not fare as well, and ended up failing apart. Traditional roles within the family changed during the 1930s. Men finding themselves out of work now had to rely on their wives and children in some cases to help make ends meet. Many did not take this loss of power as the primary decision maker and breadwinner very well. Many stopped looking for work, paralyzed by their bleak chances and lack of self-respect. Some became so frustrated that they just walked out on their families completely. A 1940 survey revealed that 1.5 million married women had been abandoned by their husbands.

Venezuela Debt Dispute (1902)

The Venezuelan crisis of 1902-03[a] was a naval blockade from December 1902 to February 1903 imposed against Venezuela by Britain, Germany and Italy over President Cipriano Castro's refusal to pay foreign debts and damages suffered by European citizens in the Venezuelan civil war. Castro assumed that the United States' Monroe Doctrine would see the U.S. prevent European military intervention, but at the time the president Theodore Roosevelt and the Department of State saw the Doctrine as concerning European seizure of territory, rather than intervention per se. With prior promises that no such seizure would occur, the U.S. allowed the action to go ahead without objection. The blockade saw Venezuela's small navy quickly disabled, but Castro refused to give in, and instead agreed in principle to submit some of the claims to international arbitration, which he had previously rejected. Germany initially objected to this, particularly as it felt some claims should be accepted by Venezuela without arbitration. President Roosevelt forced the Germans to back down by sending his own larger fleet under Admiral George Dewey and threatening war if the Germans landed.[1] With Castro failing to back down, U.S. pressure and increasingly negative British and American press reaction to the affair, the blockading nations agreed to a compromise, but maintained the blockade during negotiations over the details. This led to the signing of an agreement on 13 February 1903 which saw the blockade lifted, and Venezuela commit 30% of its customs duties to settling claims. When the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague subsequently awarded preferential treatment to the blockading powers against the claims of other nations, the US feared this would encourage future European intervention. The episode contributed to the development of the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, asserting a right of the United States to intervene to "stabilize" the economic affairs of small states in the Caribbean and Central America if they were unable to pay their international debts, in order to preclude European intervention to do so.

General Thomas J Stonewall Jackson CSA

Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson (January 21, 1824 - May 10, 1863) was a Confederate general during the American Civil War, and the best-known Confederate commander after General Robert E. Lee.[2] His military career includes the Valley Campaign of 1862 and his service as a corps commander in the Army of Northern Virginia, under Robert E. Lee. Confederate pickets accidentally shot him at the Battle of Chancellorsville on May 2, 1863. The general survived but lost an arm to amputation; he died of complications from pneumonia eight days later. His death was a severe setback for the Confederacy, affecting not only its military prospects, but also the morale of its army and of its general public. Jackson in death became an icon of Southern heroism and commitment, and became a mainstay in the pantheon of the "Lost Cause".[3] Military historians consider Jackson to be one of the most gifted tactical commanders in U.S. history.[4] His Valley Campaign and his envelopment of the Union Army's right wing at Chancellorsville are studied worldwide, even today, as examples of innovative and bold leadership. He excelled as well in other battles: the First Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas), where he received his famous nickname "Stonewall"; the Second Battle of Bull Run (Second Manassas); and the battles of Antietam and Fredericksburg. Jackson was not, however, universally successful as a commander as displayed by his late arrival and confused efforts during the Seven Days Battles around Richmond, in 1862.

Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall

To many late 19th century Americans, he personified public corruption. In the late 1860s, William M. Tweed was the political boss of New York City. His headquarters, located on East 14th Street, was known as Tammany Hall. He wore a diamond, orchestrated elections, controlled the city's mayor, and rewarded political supporters. His primary source of funds came from the bribes and kickbacks that he demanded in exchange for city contracts. The most notorious example of urban corruption was the construction of the New York County Courthouse, begun in 1861 on the site of a former almshouse. Officially, the city wound up spending nearly $13 million--roughly $178 million in today's dollars--on a building that should have cost several times less. Its construction cost nearly twice as much as the purchase of Alaska in 1867. The corruption was breathtaking in its breadth and baldness. A carpenter was paid $360,751 (roughly $4.9 million today) for one month's labor in a building with very little woodwork. A furniture contractor received $179,729 ($2.5 million) for three tables and 40 chairs. And the plasterer, a Tammany functionary, Andrew J. Garvey, got $133,187 ($1.82 million) for two days' work; his business acumen earned him the sobriquet "The Prince of Plasterers." Tweed personally profited from a financial interest in a Massachusetts quarry that provided the courthouse's marble. When a committee investigated why it took so long to build the courthouse, it spent $7,718 ($105,000) to print its report. The printing company was owned by Tweed. In July 1871, two low-level city officials with a grudge against the Tweed Ring provided The New York Times with reams of documentation that detailed the corruption at the courthouse and other city projects. The newspaper published a string of articles. Those articles, coupled with the political cartoons of Thomas Nast in Harper's Weekly, created a national outcry, and soon Tweed and many of his cronies were facing criminal charges and political oblivion. Tweed died in prison in 1878. The Tweed courthouse was not completed until 1880, two decades after ground was broken. By then, the courthouse had become a symbol of public corruption. "The whole atmosphere is corrupt," said a reformer from the time. "You look up at its ceilings and find gaudy decorations; you wonder which is the greatest, the vulgarity or the corruptness of the place." Boss-rule, machine politics, payoff and graft, and the spoils system outraged late 19th century reformers. But were bosses and political machines as corrupt as their critics charged? George Washington Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, New York's Democratic political machine, distinguished between "honest" and "dishonest" graft. Dishonest graft involved payoffs for protecting gambling and prostitution. Honest graft might involve buying up land scheduled for purchase by government. As Plunkitt said, "I seen my opportunities and I took 'em." Paradoxically, a political machine often created benefits for the city. Many machines professionalized urban police forces and instituted the first housing regulations. Political bosses served the welfare needs of immigrants. They offered jobs, food, fuel, and clothing to the new immigrants and the destitute poor. Political machines also served as a ladder of social mobility for ethnic groups blocked from other means of rising in society. In The Shame of the Cities, the muckraking journalist Lincoln Steffens argued that it was greedy businessmen who kept the political machines functioning. It was their hunger for government contracts, franchises, charters, and special privileges, he believed, that corrupted urban politics. At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, urban reformers would seek to redeem the city through beautification campaigns, city planning, rationalization of city government, and increases in city services.

Sam Houston

While holding out the possibility of compromise, the Texans prepared for war by electing Sam Houston commander of whatever military forces he could muster. Houston, one of the larger-than-life figures who helped win Texas independence, Houston had run away from home at the age of 15 and lived for three years with the Cherokee Indians in eastern Tennessee. During the War of 1812, he had fought in the Creek War under Andrew Jackson. At 30 he was elected to the House of Representatives and at 34 he was elected governor of Tennessee. Many Americans regarded him as the heir apparent to Andrew Jackson. Then, suddenly, in 1829, scandal struck. Houston married a woman 17 years younger than himself. Within three months, the marriage was mysteriously annulled. Depressed and humiliated, Houston resigned as governor. After wandering about the country as a near derelict, he returned to live with the Cherokee in present day Arkansas and Oklahoma. During his stay with the tribe, Houston was instrumental in forging peace treaties among several warring Indian nations. In 1832, Houston traveled to Washington to demand that President Jackson live up to the terms of the removal treaty. Jackson did not meet his demands, but instead sent Houston unofficially to Texas to keep an eye on the American settlers and the growing anti-Mexican sentiment. In the middle of 1835, scattered local outbursts erupted against Mexican rule. Then, a band of 300-500 Texas riflemen, who comprised the entire Texas army, captured the Mexican military headquarters in San Antonio. Revolution was underway.

William Tecumseh Sherman

William Tecumseh Sherman February 8, 1820 - February 14, 1891) was an American soldier, businessman, educator, and author. He served as a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War (1861-65), for which he received recognition for his outstanding command of military strategy as well as criticism for the harshness of the "scorched earth" policies he implemented in conducting total war against the Confederate States.[1] Sherman began his Civil War career serving in the First Battle of Bull Run and Kentucky in 1861. He served under General Ulysses S. Grant in 1862 and 1863 during the battles of forts Henry and Donelson, the Battle of Shiloh, the campaigns that led to the fall of the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg on the Mississippi River, and the Chattanooga Campaign, which culminated with the routing of the Confederate armies in the state of Tennessee. In 1864, Sherman succeeded Grant as the Union commander in the western theater of the war. He proceeded to lead his troops to the capture of the city of Atlanta, a military success that contributed to the re-election of Abraham Lincoln. Sherman's subsequent march through Georgia and the Carolinas further undermined the Confederacy's ability to continue fighting. He accepted the surrender of all the Confederate armies in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida in April 1865, after having been present at most major military engagements in the western theater. When Grant assumed the U.S. presidency in 1869, Sherman succeeded him as Commanding General of the Army, in which capacity he served from 1869 until 1883. As such, he was responsible for the U.S. Army's engagement in the Indian Wars over the next 15 years. Sherman advocated total war against hostile Indians to force them back onto their reservations. He steadfastly refused to be drawn into politics and in 1875 published his Memoirs, one of the best-known first-hand accounts of the Civil War. British military historian B. H. Liddell Hart famously declared that Sherman was "the first modern general".[2]

FDR's Personal Struggles and Election as Governor

With the support of his wife and his longtime supporter, the journalist Louis Howe, Roosevelt began to return to public life, issuing statements on issues of the day and keeping up a correspondence with Democratic leaders. Eleanor Roosevelt spoke publicly throughout New York State, keeping her husband's reputation strong despite his illness; she also organized the women's division of the Democratic Party. In 1924, Franklin made a triumphant public appearance at the Democratic National Convention to nominate New York's Governor Alfred E. Smith for president (though Smith lost the nomination and the Democrats lost the general election). He nominated Smith again in 1928, this time successfully, and at Smith's urgings agreed to run for governor of New York. Smith lost to Herbert Hoover, but Roosevelt won. Governor Roosevelt grew more liberal in his policies as New York (and the nation) sank deeper into economic depression after the stock market crash of 1929. In particular, he set up the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration (TERA), which aimed at finding jobs for the unemployed, and by 1932 TERA was helping nearly one out of every 10 families in New York.

WPA

Works Progress Administration: Of all of Roosevelt's New Deal programs, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) is the most famous, because it affected so many people's lives. Roosevelt's vision of a work-relief program employed more than 8.5 million people. For an average salary of $41.57 a month, WPA employees built bridges, roads, public buildings, public parks and airports. When federal support of artists was questioned, Hopkins answered, "Hell! They've got to eat just like other people." The WPA supported tens of thousands of artists, by funding creation of 2,566 murals and 17,744 pieces of sculpture that decorate public buildings nationwide. The federal art, theater, music, and writing programs, while not changing American culture as much as their adherents had hoped, did bring more art to more Americans than ever before or since. The WPA program in the arts led to the creation of the National Foundation for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.