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US History/Napp
Tea and Perfectly Green Alien Review
Name: _________________
One day, after the last class of the day, I sat at my desk and opened my green thermos.
Pouring myself a cup of lemon ginger tea, I breathed in the fresh aroma of ginger and
debated what to do next. In the midst of my reflection, a perfectly green individual entered
the room.
“I have just arrived to record the details of your country,” the perfectly green individual
said, “and I was hoping that you could save me some time by providing a sort of quick list
of the most critical facts.”
“Have I placed too much fresh ginger in the thermos?” I wondered aloud.
Suddenly, the perfectly green individual fixed his rather large eyes on mine and I
descended into a hypnotic trance but before I had completely succumbed to this trance
state, I asked, “But why don’t you just do the work?”
The perfectly green individual said, “I have a rather critical intergalactic soap opera to
return to. Even in other universes, slackers exist!”
First, U.S. Geography
The regions:
New England:
 Part of the original thirteen colonies
 Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut
 Rocky soil and short growing season – made farming difficult
 Ports and harbors for fishing
 Abundant forests – timber and lumber for shipbuilding
Middle Colonies:
 Part of the original thirteen colonies
 New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware
 Fertile soil to support small, family farms
 Warm summers and cold winters
 Harbors for shipping and commerce (trade/business)
The South:
 Part of the original thirteen colonies
 Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia
 Fertile soil and long growing season – very good for farming
 Supported large farms or plantations
 Tobacco, sugarcane and cotton grown
 Slaves on plantations
The Appalachian Mountains:
 The original thirteen colonies were located east of the Appalachian Mountains
 The British issued the Proclamation Line of 1763 to forbid settlement west of the
Appalachian Mountains to avoid conflict with Native American Indians
The Appalachian Mountains are
located in the east. The Rocky
Mountains are located in the west.
When looking at a map, the right
side of the map is east. The left side
of the map is west.
The Mississippi River:
 The United States gained full control of the Mississippi River as a result of the
Louisiana Purchase.
 The Ohio River flows into the Mississippi River and the Mississippi River flows to
the port of New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico.
 The Mississippi River is an important river for trade.
 Farmers in the Ohio River Valley benefitted from the Louisiana Purchase and the
inclusion of the Mississippi River in the United States.
 Farmers in the Ohio River Valley could transport their goods on the Mississippi
River to the port of New Orleans to the Gulf of Mexico.
Now, I will sing a song:
From the Ohio Valley,
I carried my goods
On a boat named Sally.
Then my flowing goods
Went to Mississippi Valley
Where they did not dally
To the Gulf of Mexico!
The Great Plains:
 Acquired as a result of the Louisiana Purchase
 Grasslands or flat lands with grasses
 From the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains
 Good for farming and herding
 The breadbasket or grain-basket of the nation
I love bannock, pioneer bread made
from wheat. And of course, I love
popcorn, especially when watching
my intergalactic soap opera!
The Rocky Mountains:
 Located in the west
 Bordered by the Great Plains
 Made westward expansion a little difficult
 Mountains are not easy to cross
 But when gold was discovered in California, well, you know what they say: when
there is a will, there is a way!
Of course, you should know that there are fifty states today in the union and
that there are different regions like the Midwest and the Southwest. So,
here is a map to help!
You should know
that Chicago is a
city in Illinois on
one of the Great
Lakes. You should
know that San
Francisco is on the
Pacific coast…that
Oregon is the
Northwest.
Remember to look
at the map!
Colonial America: The Thirteen Colonies
The First Americans:
 The first peoples of the Americas were the Native American Indians
 Ancestors of the Native American Indians crossed a land bridge that spanned the
Bering Strait
 Sometimes these indigenous Americans are referred to as Pre-Columbian because
they lived in the Americas before the arrival of Columbus
 Some Native American Indians were hunters and gatherers while others were
settled farmers
 Native Americans were frequently forced off their lands as European and American
settlers claimed their lands
Jamestown:
 It was the first successful English settlement in North America
 It was established in Virginia in 1607
 After much suffering, the settlers learned how to grow tobacco
 Tobacco became an important cash crop in the South
The Pilgrims and the Puritans:
 Some early English settlers came to North America in search of religious freedom
 The Pilgrims were religious separatists
 They wanted to separate from the Church of England
 The Puritans, on the other hand, did not want to separate
 Rather the Puritans wanted to “purify” the Church of England from Catholic
influences
The Mayflower Compact:
 When sailing on the ship called the Mayflower, the Pilgrims signed this document
 The Pilgrims pledged to make decisions in the new settlement by voting and
majority rule
 Thus, this document is an early example of self-government in the colonies
 This is also an early example of consent of the governed or the idea that the people
give the government its power through voting
The House of Burgesses:
 The colony of Virginia had its own representative assembly known as the House of
Burgesses
 This legislative assembly was the first assembly of elected representatives in the
Americas
 The Virginia Company allowed this representative assembly to exist
A burgess is a representative in the House of Burgesses!
Indentured Servant:
 A person who has signed a contract to work for a period of time
 Generally labored for seven years in exchange for the voyage over
 Sort of a “buy me a ticket to the New World and I will work to pay you back”
 Many settled in Maryland and Virginia to work in the tobacco fields
 Given freedom dues or tools and land after their contractual labor ended
Mercantilism:
 It was a popular idea in Europe and pursued by the British government by 1650
 It is the idea that colonies exist for the benefit of the mother country
 Colonies must only trade with the mother country
 Colonies only export natural resources or raw materials like cotton, tobacco, and
sugar
 Colonies buy finished or manufactured goods only from the mother country
To be or not to be…It is better not to be a colony!
Salutary Neglect:
 Salutary means beneficial or producing good effects
 Neglect means to ignore or to pay little attention to
 So, salutary neglect means that the British paid little attention to the colonies but
the colonists loved this kind of neglect
 In other words, the British ignored certain trade laws and did not act like much of a
mother country which was just fine with the colonists
 But the French and Indian War ended all that
The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut:
 The first constitution of its kind in the colonies
 Created in Connecticut in 1639
Anne Hutchinson and William Penn:
 After questioning the Puritan religion, Anne Hutchinson was banished for
challenging church authority in 1637
 With some of her followers, she settled in what is now Rhode Island
 She had criticized the colony’s ministers and emphasized that a person could know
God directly
 William Penn founded the colony of Pennsylvania
 The colony had no established church; so, it was a more religiously tolerant colony
 Penn created the colony for Quakers and other religious minorities
 He was an advocate of religious freedom
Religious toleration is even allowing an alien to practice an alien religion!
Metacom:
 Also known as King Philip
 A Native American Indian leader
 War developed between Native American tribes of New England united by
Metacom and the colonists of the region
 This war was known as King Philip’s War
 In the end, the Native American Indians were defeated but many settler towns were
destroyed too
Salem Witch Trials:
 1692
 Some girls were accused of witchcraft in Massachusetts Bay
 Nineteen of the accused were executed
 An early example of people being accused and punished without fair trials
Oh, I cannot imagine what would have happened to an alien in 1692!
The Middle Passage:
 Part of the Triangular Trade Routes which connected Africa to the Americas, the
Americas to Europe, and Europe to Africa
 The Middle Passage was the slave’s journey from Africa to the Americas
 African slaves were brought to the Americas to replace a dying Native American
Indian population, particularly in the Caribbean Islands, Brazil, and the Southern
Colonies of the Thirteen Colonies
 African slaves forcibly labored under brutal conditions in plantations
 Plantation cash crops were sugar, cotton, tobacco, etc.
Abraham Lincoln once said, “Those who deny freedom to others deserve
it not for themselves.”
Stono Rebellion:
 Slaves in South Carolina had heard of slaves escaping to Spanish-controlled Florida
for freedom
 A slave named Jemmy recruited slaves in South Carolina looking for freedom
 The slaves gained ammunition and fighting began
 The rebellion was crushed by local whites
 Afterwards slave codes further limited what slaves could do
The French and Indian War:
 1754-1763
 British versus French
 Part of a larger conflict known as the Seven Years’ War
 Basically, the British, North American colonists, and their Native American Indian
allies were fighting the French and their Native American Indian allies
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The Iroquois Confederacy sided with the British
The British eventually defeated the French
The British gained control of Canada
But the British incurred a large debt in the course of the struggle
To pay off this debt, the British started to act like a Mother Country
This led to the end of Salutary Neglect
This led to lots of taxes
So, this British victory led to taxes, taxes, and more taxes in the colonies
making someone shout, “No taxation without representation.”
The Albany Plan of the Union:
 1754
 Benjamin Franklin encouraged the colonists to unite during the French and Indian
War to help the British win
 Franklin encouraged the colonists to unite in a permanent union for defense
 He created this very cool cartoon: Join or Die
I like this idea of a union.
Perhaps I will propose an
Intergalactic Plan of the Union –
after the completion of my soap
opera, of course!
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The Albany Plan of the Union failed because the colonies were not ready to give up
local power for the union
However, it did introduce the concept of a federal plan of representative
government with specific powers given to the central authority
The Proclamation Line of 1763:
 After the French and Indian War, the British issued the Proclamation Act of 1763
 It forbade settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains
 The colonists were furious – they needed more land
 The British wanted to avoid conflicts with the Native American Indians
There are those Appalachian Mountains again! In
visiting New York and Ms. Napp, I was able to actually
hike part of the Appalachian Mountains, right here at
Bear Mountain State Park!
Here is a map of the
thirteen colonies.
Notice that all of
the thirteen colonies
are located in the
East – near the
Atlantic Ocean.
Also notice that all
of the thirteen
colonies are located
west of the
Appalachian
Mountains.
Causes and Consequences of a Revolution:
Let’s start with this critical statement.
After the French and Indian War, Britain needed money. Yes, Britain
had won the war. Yes, it had experienced victory. But wars cost
money and when a government needs money, a government taxes!
So, suddenly, Britain began to act like a mother country. Now, a
mother country demands that a colony only trades with the mother
country. A mother country demands that a colony only exports natural
resources or raw materials to the mother country. A mother country
demands that the colony only purchases manufactured or finished
goods from the mother country.
But remember, Britain had neglected the colonies for many years and
that was a good kind of neglect for the colonists (salutary neglect).
Now, the colonies will be treated like colonies. Goodbye, Salutary
Neglect!
The Sugar Act, 1764:
 The British placed taxes on imports of sugar
The Stamp Act, 1765:
 Required colonial newspapers, books and documents to carry an official
government stamp
 Colonists objected to the tax, since they were not represented in Parliament
 Parliament repealed the tax, but replaced it with taxes on paper, glass, and tea.
I like this idea of “No taxation without representation.” I think I will
bring it the Intergalactic Council. Government should be based on the
consent of the people. The people should give government its power to
make decisions and to create taxes. Of course, consent or permission is
given by voting.
The Townshend Acts, 1767:
 British taxes on imports such as paper and tea
 Led to smuggling or colonists illegally bringing these products into the colonies to
avoid paying taxes
 Led to writs of assistance or permits that allowed British officials to search
colonists’ homes
A writ of assistance was a hated thing! It was a general search
warrant that allowed a British official to search for anything at any
time. There was no need for evidence in order to get the writ. The
official could just wave the paper, enter your home, and search for
anything!
The Boston Massacre, 1770:
 Colonists met to protest British taxes and rule
 A mob formed in the streets of Boston
 Some colonists began to hurl snowballs and rocks at the British soldiers
 The soldiers fired
 Crispus Attucks, a freed African American, was killed
The Boston Tea Party, 1773:
 When the British repealed all the taxes except the one on tea, in 1773, a group of
protesters threw tea off a British ship in Boston harbor.
 As a result of the Boston Tea Party, the British government closed Boston harbor
and banned public meetings until the tea that had been destroyed was paid for.
 Representatives of the colonies met in Philadelphia to discuss the situation.
The Tea Act actually reduced the price of tea but the tea had to be purchased
from the British East India Company. Thus, it allowed a monopoly. You also
might remember this company from the Sepoy Rebellion in India.
The Intolerable or Coercive Acts:
 These British acts punished the colonists for their behavior at the Boston Tea Party.
 Boston harbor was closed
 The colonists had to pay for the destroyed tea
 British troops could stay in peoples’ homes (quartering)
 The Quebec Act increased the size of Quebec and allowed the practice of Roman
Catholicism
 The Protestant colonists were not happy
The First Continental Congress:
 Met at Carpenters Hall in Philadelphia on September 5, 1774
 The delegates at the Congress were narrowly divided between those who favored
resistance and those who advocated conciliation
The colonists still wanted to maintain their connection with Britain.
Lexington and Concord:
 The first shots of the Revolutionary War were fired in these towns
 Lexington was known as “the shot heard around the world”
 No one knows who fired first
 Colonial Minutemen (assembled in a minute) defended Lexington against the
British
 The Revolutionary War had begun
 The Patriots versus the British Tories or Loyalists
The Olive Branch Petition, July 1775:
 The colonists tried one more time to avoid conflict with King George III
 But the King was not interested
 The King believed the colonists needed to obey the law
The Second Continental Congress:
 1775 in Philadelphia
 The colonists prepared for war
 But some still wanted peace
 George Washington was named Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army
Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, 1776:
 Wrote a very important pamphlet encouraging colonists to fight for independence
 Paine argued that it was simply “common sense” for America to be independent
 Paine argued that it was simply ridiculous for the American colonies, located on a
huge continent, to be governed by a tiny far-off island like Great Britain
I love when Paine wrote “Our corn will fetch its price in
any market in Europe.” Who needs a mother country?
The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776:
 Influenced by the ideas and principles of the European Enlightenment or Age of
Reason
 Influenced by John Locke and his ideas of natural rights (life, liberty, and property)
and Montesquieu (separation of powers)
 Influenced by the idea of “consent of the governed” or that by voting, citizens give
government permission to act
 Government derives or gets its power from the people
 The document also included a long list of grievances or complaints against King
George III
 Written by Thomas Jefferson
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that
they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that
among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure
these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just
powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of
Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to
alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…” Just beautiful!
Victory and a New Nation:
 With help from the French, after years of fighting the Continental Army under
General George Washington finally gained a hard-won victory over the British
 Colonial advantages included patriotic spirit spurred by defending their towns,
homes, and families and extensive aid received through a treaty alliance with France
 In 1783, Britain recognized the independence of the thirteen American colonies
 Each colony now became an independent state
The Treaty of Paris, 1783:
 The treaty that ended the Revolutionary War
 Established the thirteen colonies as thirteen states
 Secured more territory east of the Mississippi River
Early Government and Changing Documents:
The Articles of Confederation:
 An agreement known as the Articles of Confederation went into effect in 1781 while
the Revolutionary War was still being fought
 The confederation was a weak, loose association of independent states
 Each state sent one representative to the Confederation Congress, where it had one
vote
Problems within the Articles of Confederation:
 No national executive or court
 Congress could not levy national taxes, regulate trade, or enforce its laws.
 Each state government was more powerful than the new national government
An accomplishment of the Articles of Confederation:
 The Northwest Ordinance, 1787
- Provided a system for governing the western territories
- Provided a method for admitting new states into the Union
- Abolished slavery in the Northwest Territory
Shay’s Rebellion, 1786-87:
 In Massachusetts, farmers who were crushed by demands for payment of debts and
taxes joined together
 They took matters into their own hands after the courts ordered that their homes
and land be sold to pay their debts
 Led by Daniel Shays, a captain during the Revolutionary War, some 1,200 armed
followers gathered to attack the federal arsenal at Springfield
 Shay’s Rebellion was put down by state troops, but if it had spread, the
Confederation government would have been too weak to stop it
The rebellion revealed the weakness of the Federal Government under the
Articles of Confederation. Congress did not even have the power to raise a
standing army. Clearly, a new document was needed to insure domestic
tranquility.
The Constitutional Convention:
 Delegates from twelve states met in Philadelphia in 1787
 They quickly decided to abandon the Articles of Confederation and to write a new
constitution (a document outlining the basic form and rules of government)
 The delegates at the Constitutional Convention agreed on the need for a strong
central government with a national executive, legislature, and judiciary
The Great Compromise:
 At the Constitutional Convention, a debate occurred over representation in
Congress
 Small states favored the New Jersey Plan and wanted representation to be equal so
the small states would not be under-represented
 Large states favored the Virginia Plan and wanted representation based upon each
state’s population
 The Great Compromise or Connecticut Compromise created a bicameral (two
house) legislature where the House of Representatives is based upon population and
the Senate has equal representation (two Senators per state)
 A census is taken every ten years to determine each state’s population and thus, its
number of representatives
The Three-Fifths Compromise:
 Delegates from the South wanted to count slaves as part of a state’s population, to
increase their number of representatives in the House of Representatives
 But Southerners did not want slaves counted for taxation purposes
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Northerners wanted slaves to count for taxation but not representation
The Three-Fifths Compromise was reached
It was agreed that three-fifths of the slave population in a state would be counted for
the purposes of representation and taxation
One More Compromise Regarding Taxes on Goods:
 Northern states wanted to tax imports and exports
 Northern states also wanted to regulate interstate (between states) commerce
 Southerners did not want exports taxed
 Southerners exported lots of farm goods
 The compromise: the Federal Government has the power to regulate interstate
commerce and to tax imports
 But the Federal Government cannot tax exports
 A tariff is a tax on imported goods
 The Federal Government has the power to impose tariffs
Tariffs are taxes on imported goods. A tariff raises the price of an imported good.
Think chocolate. With a tariff, Belgian chocolate bars in the United States would
cost more than similar American chocolate bars. And of course, there is the Law
of Demand. This law states that consumers buy more of a product at lower prices.
Thus, the more expensive Belgian chocolate bars would not be bought as readily as
the similar American chocolate bars. As the tariff encourages Americans to buy
American chocolate bars, American chocolate companies prosper. In other words,
tariffs protect domestic industries. But today, most economists believe in free
trade or no tariffs because in free trade, the consumer gets the best product as a
result of increased competition. Oh, and back in the day, the North favored tariffs
because new industries in the North had a hard time competing with more
established European companies. It takes time for new companies to become
competitive. So, new companies liked tariffs because tariffs created a sort of
guaranteed market for the new companies’ products.
Federalists:
 Federalists favored the ratification (approval) of the Constitution
 Federalists believed in a strong central government
 Leading federalists were Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay, and
George Washington
Antifederalists:
 Claimed the new Constitution created too powerful a government with no Bill of
Rights to protect citizens’ liberties.
 They feared a strong central government and preferred increasing the power of the
states
It is important to remember that the new Americans had just fought a powerful
king. So, naturally, there was fear of a powerful central government.
The Federalist Papers:
 A series of 85 published essays arguing for the need for a strong Constitution
 Leading Federalists like Alexander Hamilton argued in favor of the Constitution in
The Federalist Papers
 The authors claimed that a stronger government was needed to protect against
rebellion or foreign attack and to regulate interstate trade
 They also said that citizens should not fear the new government, since its power was
divided among three separate branches of government: executive, legislative, and
judicial
 In Federalist #10, James Madison argued that a strong union would be able to
control tyrannical forces
The Bill of Rights, 1791:
 The first ten amendments to the Constitution
 Added to the Constitution to address the fears of the Antifederalists
 Added to protect the individual liberties of citizens
 Included freedom of speech, press, religion, the right bear arms, due process, the
right to an attorney, and the prevention of cruel and unusual punishment
 The Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791, two years after the Constitution went into
effect
United States Government:
Federalism:
 Federalism is a system of sharing power between the national and state governments
 The Federal (national) government deals with national matters and relations among
the states, while state governments deal with matters within each state
 Concurrent powers, such as the power to tax, are held by both the federal and state
governments
 Reserved powers are those held exclusively by state governments
Three Branches of Government:
 To protect its citizens against tyranny, the national government’s power was further
divided among three branches: the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches
 This separation of powers makes it almost impossible for any one individual or
group to gain control of the entire government
 This idea of separation of power was first articulated by Baron de Montesquieu, a
philosopher of the European Enlightenment
The Legislate branch legislates or makes laws. The Congress is bicameral
composed of a House of Representatives with 435 members and a Senate with
two Senators per state (thus, 100 Senators). The Executive branch, President
and Vice President, enforce the laws. The Judicial Branch (courts) interprets
the laws.
The Elastic Clause:
 The “necessary and proper” clause in the Constitution
 Expands the powers of the federal government by giving Congress whatever
additional powers are “necessary and proper” for carrying out those powers
specifically listed in the Constitution
 These additional powers are sometimes called implied powers
 Implied powers are powers that government has but are not specifically and
explicitly granted by the Constitution
 A strict constructionist of the Constitution would only use the elastic clause if
absolutely necessary
 A loose constructionist of the Constitution would use the elastic clause more freely
Strict Constructionist:
 Individuals who felt that the Constitution should be read literally and that the
elastic clause should be used only for expanding the powers of Congress in cases
where the expansion is absolutely necessary
 Thomas Jefferson was a strict constructionist – this is why he experienced so much
conflict before purchasing the Louisiana Territory from France; there was no
passage in the Constitution that stated that a President could buy land – but the
land was too good to not buy; so, he justified the purchase as a treaty…the
Constitution states that the President has the power to make a treaty, of course, the
Senate must ratify
Loose Constructionist:
 Individuals who held the belief that the Constitution and specifically the elastic
clause should be read broadly and that the framers intended the clause to mean that
Congress should have the “proper” powers resulting from its other powers
A Flexible Document – The Constitution:
 The Constitution is still in use today because it has the ability to adapt to changing
situations through the amending process and new interpretations
 The Constitution can be changed by amendment
 However, to prevent changes for unimportant reasons, the amending process was
made much more difficult than the passage of an ordinary law
 After Congress votes for a Constitutional amendment, three-quarters or threefourths of the states must ratify or approve it
I am not as flexible as I would like. Perhaps I should try Yoga.
The Unwritten Constitution:
 The federal government relies on many practices that developed after the
Constitution was put into effect
 These practices, often referred to as the “unwritten Constitution,” became
customary
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Many of the practices of the unwritten Constitution were based on the examples or
precedents of President George Washington, the first President of the United States
Examples include the President’s Cabinet or advisers, political parties, and judicial
review (the power of the Court to declare a law unconstitutional)
The Legislative Branch:
 The main task of Congress, the Legislative Branch of government, is to make
America’s laws
 Composed of two houses both of which must approve any new law
 The Senate has 100 members, two from each state.
 Each Senator is elected for a six-year term
 Two-thirds of the Senate is needed to ratify treaties negotiated by the President
 The Senate must also confirm all Presidential appointments
 The House of Representatives has 435 members
 Each member is elected for a two-year term
 The number of Representatives of each state is determined by that state’s
population
 Every ten years a census is taken and the seats in the House of Representatives are
redistributed
 So, Congress makes laws, approves Presidential appointments, overrides
Presidential vetoes, declares war, regulates interstate trade, and impeaches federal
officials including the President
The Executive Branch:
 The Presidency is the Executive Branch of government
 The President must be a natural-born citizen who is at least 35 years old
 The President is elected for a four-year term - traditionally, Presidents only served
two terms of office, until Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected four times
 In 1951, the Twenty-second Amendment was passed, limiting a President to two
terms in office
 The President fills many roles – Chief Executive, Chief of State, Commander-inChief, foreign policy chief, chief legislator, and chief of a political party
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected President four times. He was
President during the Great Depression and World War II. He
promised the people that things would get better. He gave many
Americans hope. But loved or not, in a democracy, leadership must
change.
The Judicial Branch:
 The U.S. Supreme Court is the highest federal court
 Federal courts form the Judicial Branch of government
 The Supreme Court has nine members, each nominated by the President and
confirmed by the Senate
 The Supreme Court can review lower-court decisions that come before it on appeal.

The court has the power to determine if laws are constitutional
Judicial Review:
 The power of the Court to decide if laws are constitutional is known as Judicial
Review
 Chief Justice John Marshall (1801 – 1835) introduced judicial review and helped
establish the importance of the federal judiciary and the supremacy of the national
government over the states
The Electoral College:
 The members of the Constitutional Convention did not trust the people to elect the
President directly
 Instead, they turned selection of the President to electors who form the Electoral
College
 To become President, a candidate needs to win a majority of the Electoral College
votes
 The number of electors each state has is equal to the number of its Representatives
in the House combined with the number of its Senators
 The candidate with the most votes in a state wins all of the electors of that state
 If no candidate wins a majority of the Electoral College (270), the election must be
decided by a special vote in the House of Representatives
 Sometimes the winner of the electoral vote is not the winner of the popular vote
How a Bill Becomes a Law:
 Before it is a law, it is a bill
 Bills are drafted in committees in the House and the Senate
 Each house debates the bill and votes
 In the Senate, debate can be unlimited (a filibuster is a strategy employed in the
Senate, where a person can delay a vote on the proposed legislation by making a
long speech or introducing irrelevant information)
 If a bill passes both houses by a simple majority, it can be signed by the President
 The President can veto (to say no) a bill if the President does not approve the bill
 The Congress can override (cancel) the President’s veto with a 2/3 vote from each
house
Some differences between the House of Representatives and the Senate:
 The House of Representatives starts all revenue (income or money) bills, impeach
(to charge a public official with misconduct), and determine who becomes President
if no candidate wins a majority of the Electoral College
 The Senate ratifies (approves) treaties, acts as the jury for the impeachment cases,
and approves Presidential appointments
Lobbying:
 To try to influence a political official regarding an issue
 An interest group tries to persuade lawmakers to vote a certain way
Pork-Barrel Legislation:
 Appropriations (the action of taking something for one’s own use) made by
Congressional representatives that are not essential but benefit the representatives’
local districts
 Bringing money into local areas to benefit local representatives
Impeachment:
 To impeach means to charge a political official with a crime
 The House of Representatives can impeach a federal official
 After the House of Representatives impeaches or charges a federal official, the
Senate holds a trial
 The Senate decides if the charged official will be removed from office
 Thus far, two Presidents have been impeached (Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton)
 Yet neither President was removed from office
The law applies equally to everyone. Even a public official can be
charged with a crime. This is why Lady Justice wears a blindfold.
Lady Justice does not see class or gender or ethnicity. She only
objectively listens to the evidence.
The Amendment Process:
 An amendment is a change or addition to the Constitution
 The general method for adding an amendment is as follows:
- 2/3 of each House must approve the proposed Amendment
- 3/4 of the state legislatures must ratify (approve) it
 Only the Twenty-First Amendment did not use this method
 The Twenty-First Amendment was ratified when 3/4 of the states had a special
convention to legalize the sale of alcohol and repeal (to take back) Prohibition
 Due to the amendment process, the Constitution is a flexible (can change) document
The Ways of the Supreme Court:
 There are nine justices on the Supreme Court
 Supreme Court justices are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate
 Once appointed and confirmed, they serve for life
 The justices only hear cases that involve Constitutional issues
 The justices can overturn (reverse) cases that come out of the lower federal courts
and the highest court of each state
 To get to the Supreme Court, there is an appeals process (appellate jurisdiction)
that goes through the federal court system or the states’ courts
 The Court can strike down a Legislative or Executive act in a process called judicial
review
 The first instance of judicial review was Chief Justice John Marshall and the
Supreme Court’s decision in the 1803 case of Marbury v. Madison
 Judicial review is the power of the court to determine the constitutionality of a law
 A law can be declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court
Amendments:
 There are twenty-seven Amendments
 The first ten amendments are known as the Bill of Rights in 1791
Here is a list of important Amendments that frequently appear on the
United States Regents:
1st – Freedom of speech and press, religion, assembly, and right to petition
the government
2nd – To bear arms (carry firearms/guns)
4th – Protections against unreasonable searches and seizures
5th – Right to Due Process (Fair treatment in court – to be charged with a
crime, to have a trial, to have an impartial jury, etc.) and a Person cannot
be charged twice for the same crime (freedom from double-jeopardy)
6th – Right to a fair trial and attorney
10th – Division of power between states and federal government
(federalism)
Added after the Civil War:
13th – Abolished slavery
14th – Equal rights for citizens
15th – Universal Male Suffrage (all male citizens have right to vote)
Progressive Era Amendments:
16th – Graduated Income Tax (the more you make, the more you pay)
17th – Direct Election of Senators
18th – Prohibition (No alcohol)
19th – Women’s suffrage
Two More to Consider:
22nd – Two term limit for President
26th – Lowered the voting age to 18 (during Vietnam War – if you can serve
in the military, you should vote!)
Precedents (Examples) Established by George Washington:
 A two term limit for President
 Neutrality in foreign affairs (Farewell Address)
 Formation of a cabinet to aid in decision-making
 A farewell address upon leaving office
This is an excerpt from George Washington’s Farewell Address:
“The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in
extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political
connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let
them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set
of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation…Our
detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different
course…neutrality.”
The Three Capitals of the USA:
 New York City, 1789-1790
 Temporarily moved to Philadelphia (1790-1800)
 Washington, D.C.
Alexander Hamilton:
 Federalist
 Claimed a stronger federal government was needed
 Secretary of Treasury under Washington
 Proposed a program to put the nation’s finances on a solid basis
 Proposed that the federal government pay off the nation’s debts
 Pass a high tariff (tax on imported goods) to protect American industries
 Place a tax on whiskey
 Create a national bank
 Favored a loose construction of the Constitution
 Favored using the elastic clause
 The Federalists passed most of Hamilton’s plan in Congress, except for the
protective tariff
That National Bank created a lot of conflict. Some loved the idea and
some feared that a National Bank would only loan to the rich and
powerful.
Whiskey Rebellion:
 Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton proposed a tax on whiskey to raise
money for the national debt and to assert the power of the national government
 Small farmers of the back country distilled whiskey, which was easier to transport
and sell than the grain that was its source
 The distillers resisted the tax (the Whiskey Rebellion) by attacking federal revenue
officers who attempted to collect it
 The following month President George Washington issued a congressionally
authorized proclamation ordering the rebels to return home and calling for militia
from four neighboring states
 After fruitless negotiations, Washington ordered some 13,000 troops into the area,
but opposition melted away and no battle ensued
 Of course, compared to Shays’ Rebellion which exposed the absence of an army
under the Articles of Confederation, this insurrection was peacefully put down by
the stronger government that existed under the Constitution
Washington’s Farewell Address:
 In his final address as President (Washington’s Farewell Address in 1796), George
Washington cautioned against entering into a permanent alliance with any
European country
 Washington urged Americans to devote themselves to developing trade and
influence in the Western Hemisphere
Neutrality means to not support or help either side in a conflict. It
means to stay out of other nations’ wars or conflicts. We, aliens, are
neutral regarding earthly matters…at least, while our intergalactic
soap opera is airing on our intergalactic television sets.
The XYZ Affair:
 1797
 After a U.S. treaty that favored Britain, the United States sent Secretary of State
John Marshall to France to protect peace
 In response to the American treaty favoring Britain, in 1796, the French had
decided to issue an order allowing for the seizure of American merchant ships,
carefully timed to catch as many as possible by surprise
 When the Americans arrived, the French would not let the Americans talk to a
diplomat named Talleyrand unless a fee of $250,000 was paid
 The Americans would not pay
 “Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute.”
The Alien and Sedition Acts:
This one is not about me.
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Four separate laws that limited free speech against the government and allowed the
President to deport immigrants who were suspected of plotting against the
government
Alien means belonging to a foreign or nation – a foreigner who has not been
naturalized or who has not become a citizen of the new nation yet
Sedition means writing or speaking in a way that encourages revolution or revolt
against the government
These laws were passed after the XYZ Affair
President John Adams and the Federalists wanted to prevent opposition
It is also important to remember the President can suspend habeas corpus in a time
of war and arrest without due process
Habeas Corpus – a writ requiring a person under arrest to be brought before a
judge or into court, especially to secure the person’s release unless lawful grounds
are shown for their detention
Due Process – the official and proper way of doings things in a legal case; fair
treatment through the normal judicial system
The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions:
 Vice President Thomas Jefferson (Kentucky Resolution) and James Madison
(Virginia Resolution) wrote these statements in response to the Alien and Sedition
Acts
 They wrote that state legislatures should have the right to declare these acts of the
federal government “null and void”
The Louisiana Purchase:
 In 1803, France offered to sell the Louisiana Territory to the United States for $15
million
 Although Jefferson, who had become the nation’s third President, was not sure if
the Constitution allowed the federal government to buy territory, he went ahead
with the purchase
 The Louisiana Purchase doubled the size of the United States
 The territory included all the area between the Mississippi River and the Rocky
Mountains
 Jefferson believed American control of the Mississippi River would provide an
opportunity for farmers to move further west and have free transport of the sea
 Thus, Americans gained full control of the Mississippi River, the port of New
Orleans (connecting the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico), and the Great
Plains
Lewis and Clark:
 Meriwether Lewis and William Clark explored the new Louisiana Territory, and
went as far as the Pacific Ocean on the Oregon trail
 They received help from a young Native American, Sacagawea
 Maps were produced of the new territory
 These maps encouraged westward expansion
Marbury v. Madison:
 Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall increased the power of the federal
government
 He was known for judicial review
 Judicial review is the power of the Supreme Court to review a law and determine if
it is constitutional or unconstitutional
The War of 1812:
 The causes: to prevent the British seizure of American sailors in the Atlantic, to stop
British support of Native American Indian raids in the Northwest Territory, and
also to try to seize British Canada
 Congress declared war on Britain in 1812
 The War of 1812 ended in a stalemate in 1815, coinciding with the end of the
Napoleonic Wars in Europe
 During the war, the English burned the capitol, Washington, in a raid but the
United States fought successfully in the Southwest, where the great hero of the war,
Andrew Jackson, defeated the English at the Battle of New Orleans
 Unfortunately, this battle was fought two weeks after the United States and England
signed the peace treaty
 A bit more:
- Impressment of sailors means that the British were seizing Americans who were
presumed deserters of the British navy, and forcing them into service for Britain
- A U.S.A. desire for more land – like Canada
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- A desire to finally remove Britain from the American northwest
Thus, this war is often called the “Second War for American Independence”
The Treaty of Ghent was signed in 1814
The Treaty ended the war but no land changes occurred
Canada is still Canada and not a state of the Union
But Americans gained a sense of pride and respect and nationalistic fervor
Francis Scott Key wrote his poem, Defence of Fort M’Henry (McHenry) – it became
the U.S. National Anthem
Additional outcomes were increased manufacturing in the USA and increased
isolationism as well as the end of the Federalist Party
The Era of Good Feelings:
 After the War of 1812 and the disappearance of the Federalist Party, the
Republicans (Democratic-Republicans) were the only major political party
 Called the Era of Good Feelings because there was only one major political party
 But there were internal divisions within this one party
Some More Supreme Court Cases under Chief Justice John Marshall:
 McCulloch v. Maryland
- 18198
- The State of Maryland taxed a branch of the National Bank in Maryland
- The Supreme Court ruled that a state could not tax a federal entity
 Gibbons v. Ogden
- 1824
- Thomas Gibbons was issued a license from the federal government for a
steamship commerce between New York and New Jersey
- Aaron Ogden was issued a similar license from New York State
- The Supreme Court ruled that Gibbons had the legitimate license
- The Federal Government regulates interstate commerce or commerce between
states
Chief Justice John Marshall strengthened
the power of the Federal Government!
The Monroe Doctrine:
 Spain’s attempts to restore its authority after the Napoleonic Wars triggered
independence movements in its Latin American colonies
 In the Monroe Doctrine, President Monroe announced that the U.S. would oppose
any attempts by European powers to establish new colonies in the Western
Hemisphere or to reconquer former colonies
The Western Hemisphere (the Americas) was off limits
to European powers. The Americas belonged to the
peoples of the Americas. Europe must stay out! - At
least according to the doctrine! No new European
colonies in the Americas and Britain agreed!
Sectionalism:
 Loyalty to a person’s region or section of the United States
 For example, Northerners generally liked tariffs because tariffs raised the prices of
foreign goods thereby making the nation’s domestic (or made in the USA) goods
more affordable – The North favored tariffs because tariffs protected American
goods from foreign competition and most factories were located in the North
 Southerners generally disliked tariffs because Southerners were more dependent on
agriculture and often sold agricultural products to Europe – Thus, tariffs did not
benefit the South; tariffs just made foreign goods more expensive and increased the
possibility that Europeans would place tariffs on Southern agricultural products
 These sectional differences divided the nation
 Clearly, the issue of slavery was the most significant sectional difference as Southern
plantations relied on slave labor but Northerners did not rely on slave labor
Andrew Jackson:
 Elected President in 1828
 A native of Tennessee, Jackson was the first President not born to wealth and not
from an Eastern state
 His main supporters were ordinary people, especially laborers and Western
frontiersmen
 Jackson’s two terms in office saw an expansion of democracy
 States eliminated property qualifications, allowing most adult males to vote.
- Selection of Presidential candidates by party leaders was replaced by nominating
conventions
 Jackson also developed the spoils system; supporters who helped in his election
campaign replaced existing government officials
- Jackson believed it was wise to change office-holders so that more people would
have government experience
 Jackson also forced the National Bank to close, since he believed it gave an unfair
advantage to Eastern bankers and investors
Andrew Jackson vetoed the National Bank or the Second Bank of the United
States! He enacted the Indian Removal Act, removing all Native American
Indians east of the Mississippi River and relocated the Native Americans west
of the Mississippi River. He enforced the tariff – there would be no
nullification or state’s refusal to obey federal law and he implemented the
Spoils System or gave government jobs to supporters.
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Jackson’s “Kitchen Cabinet” referred to his friends and confidants who offered
advice which Jackson sometimes preferred to his actual cabinet
The Whig Party:
 Supporters of the National Bank did not agree with Jackson’s veto
 These National Bank supporters felt that Jackson was acting like a King
 In Britain, individuals who did not support the King called themselves Whigs
 The Whig Party in America was conservative and anti-Jackson
The Treatment of the Native American Indians under Jackson:
 Under Jackson, Congress moved all remaining Native American Indians to
territories west of the Mississippi River
 Jackson refused to help the Cherokees of Georgia even though the Supreme Court
declared that their forcible removal was unconstitutional
 The Indian Removal Act (1830) entitled the president to negotiate with the eastern
nations to affect their removal to tracts of land west of the Mississippi and provided
some $500,000 for transportation and for compensation to native landowners
 In 1838 and 1839, as part of Andrew Jackson’s Indian removal policy, the Cherokee
nation was forced to give up its lands east of the Mississippi River and to migrate to
an area in present-day Oklahoma
 The Cherokee people called this journey the “Trail of Tears,” because of its
devastating effects. The migrants faced hunger, disease, and exhaustion on the
forced march. Over 4,000 out of 15,000 of the Cherokees died
Even though the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Cherokee in
Worcester v. Georgia, the Cherokee were forcibly removed from their
lands. This forced relocation of the Cherokee is called the “Trail of
Tears” because many Cherokee died on the forced march.
“There were ten million
Native Americans on this
continent when the first
non-Indians arrived. Over
the next 300 years, 90% of
all Native American
original population was
either wiped out by
disease, famine, or warfare
imported by the
[Europeans].”
~ Grace Steele Woodward
The Tariff of Abominations:
 A tariff is a tax on imported goods
 A tariff raises the prices of foreign goods
 A tariff makes domestic (or made in the country’s goods) more desirable because
these goods are cheaper than similar foreign goods in the nation
 The South did not have many factories; so, it did not like tariffs
 The North had many factories and liked tariffs
 The 1828 tariff was a particularly high tax
 The South called this tariff, “The Tariff of Abominations”
 The word “abomination” means hated
South Carolina Exposition and Protest, 1828:
 After the Tariff of Abominations, Vice President John C. Calhoun wrote this
document
 It stated that South Carolina and other Southern states should be able to nullify acts
of Congress
 To nullify is to make null and void or to not accept the federal law in the state
 In other words, the state refuses to obey federal law
 This document was similar to the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions which did
challenged the Alien and Sedition Acts or federal laws
 Calhoun though even hinted at secession over the tariff
 Secession is when a state leaves the Union!
The Ordinance of Nullification:
 The Tariff of 1828 was replaced by the Tariff of 1832
 But the South still found the tax rates on imported goods to high
 South Carolina passed the Ordinance of Nullification
 This declared the tariffs of 1828 to be null and void
 Or again, South Carolina refused to obey the federal law
 Of course, President Jackson threatened a Force Bill or that federal troops would
enforce the tariff
 But a compromise was agreed upon and it was agreed that the tariffs would be
reduced over the next few years
More on the Native American Indians under Jackson:
 The Indian Removal Act of 1830 removed Native Americans from the east, and
relocated them west of the Mississippi River
 In Worcester v. Georgia (1832), the Supreme Court ruled that Georgia could not
pass legislation regarding Cherokee lands
 Jackson defiantly said of Chief Justice John Marshall, “John Marshall has made
this decision, now let him enforce it.”
 During the Trail of Tears, in the winter of 1837-38, approximately 15,000 Cherokee
Indians were uprooted from Georgia
- On the western journey, thousands of Cherokee died from starvation and cold
temperatures
Temperance:
 A movement in the mid-nineteenth century that looked to rid society of alcohol
 Alcoholism led to crime and the destruction of the family
 Women were active reformers in the temperance or anti-alcohol movement
 Women had an opportunity through the temperance movement to enter the political
realm
 Years later, the sale of alcohol would be prohibited or banned by the Eighteenth
Amendment, 1919
 Of course, the Eighteenth Amendment was repealed (revoked or reversed) by the
Twenty-First Amendment
Seneca Falls Convention:
 An important meeting at Seneca Falls, New York in 1848
 Issued a proclamation modeled on the Declaration of Independence listing women’s
grievances and calling for action
 Led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott
 A movement for women’s rights
 Challenged the cult of domesticity or the idea that the woman’s sphere was in the
home and that women must be subservient to men
 In the years after the Convention, the women’s movement focused more and more
on gaining the vote for women
 Susan B. Anthony became a leader of the temperance movement in New York State
and later focused her attention on the Women’s Suffrage and National American
Women Suffrage Associations
 Her name is always linked to the movement that won the right to vote for women
Elizabeth Cady Stanton once said, “Woman will always be dependent until
she holds a purse of her own.”
Oh, and suffrage means the right to vote. Thus, a suffragist was a woman
advocating woman’s right to vote!
Dorothea Dix:
 A social reformer
 Fought for the better treatment of mentally ill patients in asylums
“In a world where there is so much to be done, I felt strongly impressed
that there must be something for me to do.” ~ Dorothea Dix
The Hudson River School:
Since I am visiting the beautiful Hudson Valley, I had to include
this!
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An art movement dedicated to landscape painting – of course, of the Hudson River
Valley
The paintings of the Hudson
River School reflect a spirit of
Romanticism or a school of art
that emphasizes human emotion
as opposed to human reason.
Romanticism was a reaction to
earlier Enlightenment thought.
Antebellum:
 Means existing before the war
 In U.S. History, this refers to the period before the Civil War
 Sectionalism was an issue during this time period
 Sectionalism is loyalty to the person’s region or section rather than to the whole
nation
 Slavery was an issue that greatly divided Americans in this period
Abolitionists:
 Abolitionists wanted to end slavery
 Harriet Beecher Stowe’s book Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped spread a sense of moral
outrage against slavery in the North
 Former slaves, such as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, were leading
abolitionists
It is often reported that when President Abraham Lincoln met Harriet
Beecher Stowe, he said, “So you're the little woman who wrote the book
that started this great war.”
The Missouri Compromise:
 The addition of new western territories posed the problem of whether an extension
of slavery should be permitted
 Southerners felt that extending slavery westward would preserve the balance
between slave and free states in Congress
 Northerners opposed the further spread of slavery
 Between 1820 and 1850, national unity was preserved only by admitting new states
in a series of compromises
 The Missouri Compromise allowed Maine to enter the Union as a free state and
Missouri to be admitted without restrictions on slavery
 The area north of the Missouri Compromise line of 36°30′ was to be free of slavery.
Why was it so
important to preserve
the balance between
slave and free states?
Think Congress: The
more slave states, the
more representatives in
Congress and the more
power over the nation’s
laws…but even with a
balance, can a house
divided stand?
The Life of a Slave:
 The Southern economy was based on plantations
 Plantations depended on slave labor
 Slaves were exploited and forced to labor without pay
 Cultural syncretism occurred – slaves blended their African culture with
Christianity
 Eli Whitney’s cotton gin increased the need for slaves
- The cotton gin allowed raw cotton to be cleaned quickly
- Cotton became a profitable crop in the South
- As cotton production increased, more slaves were needed
 Slaves were frequently beaten and lived in poor conditions
 The children of slaves were frequently sold and sent away from their parents
Slavery is a cruel and tragic institution.
The Alamo:
 Americans had settled in Texas before 1836
 Mexico hope American settlers would become Mexicans
 American settlers declared independence from Mexico
 The Alamo was a former mission which was turned into a fort by the Texans
 In 1836, Americans were defeated at the Alamo by the Mexican army under the
leadership of President Santa Anna
 All soldiers within were killed, including frontiersman Davy Crockett
 At the Battle of San Jacinto, a month later, the Americans yelled “Remember the
Alamo”
 President Jackson would not take Texas into the Union because it would disrupt the
free/slave state balance
 In 1845, President John Tyler annexed Texas as a state
 Texas became a slave state
Manifest Destiny:
 The belief that the United States should stretch from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific
coast
 In the 1840s, Americans began to believe it was their “manifest destiny,” or future,
to extend the nation’s borders from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.
 The term was coined by John L. O’Sullivan, a New York editor, in 1845
54º40' or Fight:
 President James K. Polk wanted more land north of Oregon, believing that the
border between the U.S. and Canada was at the 54º40' latitude line
 Britain insisted the border was further south at 42º
 The Americans threatened “54º40' or fight” but settled at 49º latitude line
 Thus, another example of Manifest Destiny
 Another example of westward expansion
The Mexican-American War:
 American settlers in Texas declared their independence in 1835, when Mexico
recognized Texan independence
 In 1845, Congress voted to annex Texas
 In 1846, war broke out between the U.S. and Mexico over the border of Texas
 The Americans believed that the border between Mexico and the United States was
the Rio Grande
 The Mexican government believed that the border was the Nueces River
 War ensued
 In the Mexican-American War (1846 – 1848), Mexico was quickly defeated and
forced to give up California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and parts of Colorado and New
Mexico
The Compromise of 1850:
 To keep a balance between slave and free states
 California was admitted to the Union as a free state after the Gold Rush of 1849
 The slave trade was abolished in the District of Columbia
 The territories of New Mexico and Utah were organized under popular sovereignty
(the people of the state voted on whether or not the state would be slave or free)
 The Fugitive Slave Act was passed
- The Fugitive Slave Act required that all US citizens assist in the return of
runaway slaves
- Runaway slaves had to be returned to their masters
The Underground Railroad, a vast network of people who helped fugitive
slaves escape to the North and to Canada. It was not run by any single
organization or person. Rather, it consisted of many individuals – many
whites but predominantly African Americans – who knew only of the local
efforts to aid fugitives and not of the overall operation. Still, it effectively
moved hundreds of slaves northward each year -- according to one estimate,
the South lost 100,000 slaves between 1810 and 1850.
Harriet Tubman helped run this network of safe-houses for slaves who
were looking to escape to the North and Canada. The Underground
Railroad took on increased importance after the Fugitive Slave Act became
law.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854:
 The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act abandoned the Missouri Compromise
 It established the idea of deciding whether a state should be a free state or a slave
state through popular sovereignty
 The people of the state would vote to determine if they wanted the state to be a free
state or a slave state
 The question now became who would control Kansas
 Pro-slavery and anti-slavery were both strong in Kansas
Bleeding Kansas:
 There was fighting in Kansas over the issue of slavery
 Both pro-slavery and anti-slavery groups were strong in Kansas
 Fighting resulted and Kansas was dubbed “Bleeding Kansas” as a result
The Republican Party:
 This new political party combined Northern Democrats, Free-Soilers (opposed to
the extension of slavery in the USA), Know Nothings (anti-immigrant party), and
former Whigs
 Main goal was to stop the spread of slavery in the west
 Some in the party were abolitionists or wanted to ban or abolish slavery
Abolitionists:
 Wanted to end slavery
 From 1831-1865, William Lloyd Garrison published The Liberator, an anti-slavery
newspaper
- He was the founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society
- He also favored increasing rights for women
 Harriet Beecher Stowe’s book Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped spread a sense of moral
outrage against slavery in the North
- Stowe was the daughter of an abolitionist
- She wrote this book about the horrors of slavery
- In 1862, Abraham Lincoln said to her, “So, you’re the little woman who wrote
the book that made this great war.”
 Former slaves, such as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, were leading
abolitionists
- Frederick Douglass had escaped slavery and revealed the horrors of slavery
through speeches and writings
- Frederick Douglass wrote a slave narrative
- Harriet Tubman helped many slaves gain their freedom through the
Underground Railroad
The American Colonization Society:
 Wanted to return slaves to Africa or the colony of Liberia
 Supported by Northern abolitionists as well as Southerners nervous about the
presence of free African Americans
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to
favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops
without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and
lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many
waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one;
or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power
concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
~ Frederick Douglass
Dred Scott v. Sandford, 1857:
 Dred Scott was a slave who had been taken by his owner to a free state, Illinois, and
a free territory, Wisconsin
 Scott sued for freedom in the Missouri courts and appealed its decision to the
Supreme Court
 Dred Scott claimed that because he lived on free soil for an extended period of time,
he had the legal right to sue for his freedom
 Chief Justice Taney and the Court held that Scott was not a citizen of the United
States or of Missouri and could not sue in federal courts
 Then the Court went on to say that Dred Scott’s temporary residence in a free state
did not make him free, and the Congress could not outlaw slavery in the territories
since it deprived persons of their property, which was unconstitutional under the
Fifth Amendment
 This interpretation made the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional
 After the Civil War, the Dred Scott decision was overturned by the 13th and 14th
Amendments to the U.S. Constitution
John Brown:
 John Brown was an abolitionist who believed one should fight the evil of slavery
 He organized a raid on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, in October
1859, hoping to seize weapons to arm slaves and start an uprising
 John Brown was captured, tried, and executed, but his action epitomizes the
growing split in the nation
 He became a martyr in the North, and verses and songs were written about his
attempts to end slavery
 Meanwhile, Southerners had expanded their rhetoric in defense of the institution of
slavery
 It is important to remember that slave rebellions had occurred in the past
- The Stono Rebellion: in 1740; armed resistance in South Carolina that led to
slaves losing their rights
- Denmark Vesey, 1822: A failed plot in South Carolina, Vesey and others were
executed
- Nat Turner, 1831: A violent rebellion in Virginia that led to almost 200 deaths
…Turner and others were executed
The Presidential Election of 1860:
- When the Republican Presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln was elected in
1860, most Southern states seceded (withdrew) from the United States
- The seceding states formed the Confederate States of America
- Lincoln refused to recognize the secession of the South and resolved to preserve
the unity of the United States
Secession means to leave the Union. Of course, the Southern states did
not physically leave rather than claimed that they were no longer states
of the United States and thus formed their own new nation.
The Causes of the Civil War:
- Slavery
- Sectionalism
- The creation of the Republican party
- Failure of slave compromises
- The election of Lincoln in 1860, and the Republican Party controlling the White
House
- Secession began on December 20, 1860
The Civil War, 1861 – 1865
Fort Sumter, 1861:
 The American Civil War became on April 12, 1861 when the Confederate States of
America attacked the federal fort, Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, South
Carolina
 After two days of shelling, the garrison surrendered and was allowed to leave
 War had begun
The Union v. the Confederacy:
 The North or the Union
- President Abraham Lincoln wanted to preserve the Union
- Union soldiers wore blue uniforms
 The South or the Confederacy
- President Jefferson Davis
- Confederate soldiers wore gray uniforms
- The Army of Northern Virginia was led by Robert E. Lee
 Northern Advantages
- The North had a larger population
- The North had a stronger navy
- The North had greater farm acreage
- The North had more bank deposits
- The North had superior industry and a greater amount of railroad tack
“This is essentially a People’s contest. On the
side of the Union, it is a struggle for
maintaining in the world, that form, and
substance of government, whose leading
object is, to elevate the condition of men -- to
lift artificial weights from all shoulders -- to
clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all -- to
afford all, an unfettered start, and a fair
chance, in the race of life.”
~ Abraham Lincoln
The Anaconda Plan:
 The South needed to export cotton to trade with Europe
 The North placed its navy around Southern ports and enforced a blockade of all
Southern goods coming in and out of the Confederacy
 The idea was to strangle the South like an anaconda (snake)
“This 1861 cartoon propaganda map
published in Cincinnati depicts Union
general-in-chief Winfield Scott’s (1786–
1866) plan to crush the South both
economically and militarily. Scott’s plan
called for a strong blockade of the Southern
ports and a major offensive down the
Mississippi River to divide the Confederacy
and cut off supplies and assistance to its
heartland. The press ridiculed Scott’s
strategy as the “Anaconda Plan,” after the
snake that kills by constriction, but it had its
supporters. This general strategy
contributed greatly to the eventual Northern
victory.” ~ loc.gov
Major Civil War Battles:
 Bull Run/Manassas Junction
- 1861
- Manassas Junction was the Confederate name for the battle
- First major battle
- The Union lost
 Antietam/Sharpsburg
- 1862
- Bloodiest single day with over 23,000 casualties
- No one won but the Union claimed victory
 Battle of Gettysburg
- 1863
- General Robert E. Lee and the Confederacy went as far north as Pennsylvania
- The Union won
- It was a turning point of the Civil War
- George Pickett of the Confederacy led a losing charge across an open field
- There were more casualties in the three days at Gettysburg than any other Civil
War battle
- In November of 1863, Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new
nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are
created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that
nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure…” Lincoln
The Emancipation Proclamation:
 One of the most important events of the Civil War was the issuance of the
Emancipation Proclamation (1862)
 Lincoln announced that all slaves in states still in rebellion on January 1, 1863
would be freed
 The Proclamation gave a moral purpose to the war
 It also kept Britain out of the war
- Britain had strong ties to the South because of the cotton trade
- However, now Britain could not support the Confederacy, as the British had
abolished slavery decades earlier
 However, it soon became unclear whether Lincoln had the constitutional power to
free the slaves
 Congress proposed the Thirteenth Amendment
- When it was ratified in 1865, it abolished slavery throughout the United States.
The 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry:
 The first official African American regiment recognized by the Union Army
 In the Emancipation Proclamation, issued on January 1, 1863, President Lincoln
announced that black men would be accepted into the U.S. Army and Navy
 Of the estimated 2 million people who fought on the Union side, some 180,000 black
soldiers and sailors fought for the Union and for freedom during the Civil War
The Copperheads:
 Peace Democrats in the North and Midwest
 Pro-Union but against the Civil War
 Wore pennies on their lapels in Congress
 Were compared to the poisonous snake by their opponents
 Clement Vallandigham was a leader
 Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and had him deported during the war
 A president can suspend habeas corpus during war
 It is important to remember that habeas corpus means a person must be brought to
the judge or court and be charged with a crime
The New York City Draft Riots:
 The Enrollment Act of 1863 meant that for the first time in history, the United
States could draft troops
 New York City was a Democratic stronghold and there was opposition to the draft
- The draft law favored the rich; a person could pay $300 or find a substitute to
get out of the draft…“A rich man’s war, poor man’s fight”
- There was racial conflict between the Irish and African Americans in New York
City as they often competed for the same jobs and housing
- There was anti-war and anti-Republican sentiment in Democratic New York
City
- The riot erupted in July 1863 and led to violence against poor and affluent
African Americans, Republican supporters, and rich whites
A Bit More on Civil War Battles:
 At the Battle of Shiloh (1862), the Union won on the second day under the
leadership of General Ulysses S. Grant
 At the Battle of New Orleans (1862), Admiral David Farragut won an important
naval battle for the Union
 At the Siege of Vicksburg (1863), the Union won and divided the Confederacy in
half by controlling the Mississippi River
 Between 1864 and 1865, Union General Grant chased Confederate General Lee
through Virginia, fighting at the Battle of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania Courthouse
and Petersburg
 Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865
Some Southern States that Did Not Join the Confederacy:
 Several states that had been considered Southern did not secede
 Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware remained in the Union
 What is now West Virginia broke off from the state of Virginia during the war to
form a new state
The Impact of the Civil War:
 The Civil War was bloody – one million casualties in a population North and South
of approximately 31 million; expensive – the estimated cost of over $20 billion; and
long – it lasted four arduous years
 The South’s strategy was to hold on and wear the North down
 The North’s strategy was to blockade the South in order to isolate it from markets
and potential allies; to capture the capital of the Confederate States of America,
Richmond; and to split the South into two parts along the Mississippi River and
then by a thrust through Georgia to the sea to split it further into three units
 The North won the Civil War
 The North had immense long-term advantages: a larger population, more money,
more railroad lines, greater manufacturing facilities, and superior naval power
 Yet despite these advantages, it took the North four years to defeat the South
“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; to care for him who shall have borne
the battle, and for his widow and his orphan - to do all which may achieve
and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all
nations.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
Reconstruction:
 Reconstruction, the name given to the process of reestablishing the Union to again
include the seceded states, began during the war and lasted until 1877
 The South’s infrastructure had to be rebuilt
 African Americans needed to be given Constitutional rights
 The Southern states had to be readmitted into the Union and agree to follow the
Constitution
Differing Plans for Reconstruction:
 Presidential Reconstruction
- Lenient
- Did not want to punish the South
- Abraham Lincoln believed secession was unconstitutional, and so legally, the
Southern states were still in the Union
- He believed the executive branch, particularly the president, should establish the
process of reconstruction and the terms should be generous
 Radical Reconstruction
- Harsher
- Involved military troops enforcing laws in the South
- The Radical Republicans, led by Senator Charles Sumner and Congressman
Thaddeus Stevens, had been a force in Congress since before the war
- They were intolerant of slavery, strong abolitionists, and prepared to make the
South “pay” for the war
The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln and Conflict over Reconstruction:
- John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865
- Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theater
- After shooting Lincoln, Booth leaped to the stage and broke his leg yet he
managed to escape
- Andrew Johnson became President when Lincoln died the next day
- Both Lincoln and Johnson wanted lenient Reconstruction that would peacefully
bring Southern states back into the union
- The Radical Republican Congress wanted harsh Reconstruction that punished
the South and gave immediate constitutional rights to the newly freed slaves
The Ten Percent Plan or the Wade Davis Bill:
 In December President Lincoln proposed a reconstruction program that would
allow Confederate states to establish new state governments after 10 percent of their
male population took loyalty oaths and the states recognized the “permanent
freedom of slaves.”
 Several congressional Republicans thought Lincoln’s 10 Percent Plan was too mild
 A more stringent plan was proposed by Senator Benjamin F. Wade and
Representative Henry Winter Davis in February 1864
- The Wade-Davis Bill required that 50 percent of a state’s white males take a
loyalty oath to be readmitted to the Union
- In addition, states were required to give blacks the right to vote
 Congress passed the Wade-Davis Bill, but President Lincoln chose not to sign it,
killing the bill with a pocket veto
 Lincoln continued to advocate tolerance and speed in plans for the reconstruction of
the Union in opposition to the Congress
 After Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865, however, the Congress had the upper
hand in shaping Federal policy toward the defeated South
 Congress imposed the harsher reconstruction requirements first advocated in the
Wade-Davis Bill
A pocket veto is an absolute veto that cannot be overridden. The veto becomes
effective when the President fails to sign a bill after Congress has adjourned and
is unable to override the veto.
The Reconstruction Amendments:
 The Thirteenth Amendment
- Abolished slavery throughout the United States
- “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime
whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United
States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction”
 The Fourteenth Amendment
- Equal Rights for Citizens
- “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.”
 The Fifteenth Amendment
- Universal Male Suffrage (voting rights for male citizens)
- “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged
by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous
condition of servitude.”
The Freedmen’s Bureau:
 Established in 1865
 Looked to adjust newly-freed African Americans to Southern society
 The organization aimed to help with housing, education, food, healthcare, and jobs
 President Johnson later vetoed a bill in 1866 that would have increased the Bureau’s
power
Black Codes:
 Southern states passed Black Codes to preserve traditional Southern lifestyles
despite the ban on slavery
 Black Codes made it illegal for freedmen to hold public office, travel freely or serve
on juries
 Black Codes denied freed African Americans their Constitutional rights such as the
freedom of speech and the right to serve on juries
 Southern whites feared that if freed African Americans had rights, they would feel
empowered to dismantle the Southern plantation system
 Radical Republicans looked to end these unfair codes
General William T. Sherman issued a special field order that would have
provided each African American family 40 acres of land and an army mule to
work the land. But President Johnson overturned the order.
The Reconstruction Acts of 1867:
 Passed over President Andrew Johnson’s veto
 Divided the South into five districts occupied by Union troops
 Forced all former Confederate states to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment
 Made the former Confederate states create new state constitutions which would
ensure voting rights of former slaves and the federal government would have to
approve the new state constitutions
 Southern states had to obey these acts to be readmitted to the Union
Carpetbaggers and Scalawags:
 Carpetbaggers were Northerners who went South to profit from Reconstruction
- A carpetbagger was a label for a Northerner who went to the South for political
and/or economic gain during Reconstruction
- Carpetbaggers were resented by Southerners
- Northern travelers to the South often carried carpet bags or luxury bags
 Scalawags were Southern whites who collaborated with northern Republicans
during Reconstruction and freedmen
- A scalawag was a Southerner loyal to the Republican Party
- A scalawag often worked alongside carpetbaggers and newly-freed blacks to
create new state constitutions
- There were more scalawags than carpetbaggers
- It is also important to remember that traditionally Southerners were Democrats
Ku Klux Klan:
 The Ku Klux Klan was founded in 1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee
 It was established as a direct response to the South’s defeat in the Civil War
 As a secret terrorist group, the Klan targeted black freedmen and their allies
 It sought to restore white supremacy by threats and violence, including beatings,
lynching, and murder
 African Americans lived in fear of groups like the Klan who exerted a reign of
terror across the South where their crimes were rarely prosecuted
 The organization disbanded after the Enforcement Act (1870) and the Ku Klux Act
(1871)
 The Klan would make a comeback in the 1920s
 The new KKK’s rapid growth was based not only on the idea of white supremacy,
but also on anti-immigration, anti-Catholicism, Prohibition, and anti-Semitism
 The KKK reached its peak nationwide in the 1920s
The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson:
 The Radical Republicans dislike Johnson, the Democratic President
 When Johnson fired the Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, he violated the
Tenure of Office Act (the President was supposed to consult with Congress first)
 The House of Representatives impeached Johnson (brought him up on charges)
 However, the Senate found him not guilty by one vote
 He was never removed from office
Only two Presidents have ever been impeached: Andrew Johnson and
Bill Clinton. Yet neither was convicted or removed from office.
The End of Reconstruction:
 In 1877, Reconstruction officially ended when the last remaining Northern troops
were withdrawn from the South
 Home rule was restored to Southern state governments
 Former Confederate leaders could now serve in office
 State legislatures quickly moved to bar African Americans from the political
process
 How Reconstruction Ended
- Samuel J. Tilden (Democrat) was leading Rutherford B. Hayes (Republican) in
both the popular and Electoral vote
- But twenty electoral votes were disputed
- A Electoral Commission had to decide who would receive the votes
- A compromise was reached in 1877
 The Republicans received all of the Electoral Votes, which gave Hayes the
Presidential Election
 Union troops were removed from the South, thus ending Reconstruction
The Solid South:
 For over a century after Reconstruction, every Southern State would vote
Democratic in Presidential Elections
 Thus, the South during this period was called the Solid South
The Sharecropping System:
 Without slave labor, the old plantation system could not be restored
 Many plantation owners entered into share-cropping arrangements with their
former slaves
- A sharecropper was a tenant farmer who was provided with credit for seed,
tools, living quarters, and food and who worked the land and received an agreed
share of the value of the crop minus charges
- The charges were usually exceptionally high and thus, the sharecropper lived in
a state of permanent debt and poverty
- Sharecropping meant farming for only a share of harvested crops, with much of
the profit going to the landlord for rent
- In such a “crop-lien” system, the landlord also provided supplies but had a lien
on the crops yet to be grown
- Because of this, sharecroppers experienced “debt peonage,” or poverty
- This practice continued into the twentieth century
A lien is a right to keep possession of property belonging to another person until
a debt owed by that person is discharged. Sharecroppers had to borrow from
landlords for seeds, tools, living quarters and food. They were always in debt.
Freedom without forty acres and a mule often meant debt peonage or
holding a person in servitude until the debt was paid back.
Jim Crow Laws:
 Racial segregation laws in the South after Reconstruction
 Created separate bathrooms, schools, and water fountains
 Jim Crow laws deprived African Americans of their legal rights in the South
Separate facilities in the
South were never equal. Jim
Crow laws deprived African
Americans of their rights.
Preventing African Americans from Voting in the South:
 To deny African American males the right to vote granted by the Fifteenth
Amendment, Southerners used poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses
- A poll tax is a tax on voting.
- The Twenty-Fourth Amendment outlawed this practice in 1964
- A literacy test is a test given to determine if a person can vote
- Literacy tests were very difficult exams for anyone to pass but whites did not
have to take the tests because of grandfather clauses
- A grandfather clause stated that a person could vote if his grandfather voted in
the Election of 1860
- Of course, 1860 was before the Thirteenth Amendment, the amendment that
abolished slavery
- Slaves could not vote in 1860
- Therefore, grandfather clauses allowed whites to vote but not African
Americans
Plessy v. Ferguson:
 In 1896, the Supreme Court upheld racial segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson
 The Court upheld a Louisiana law segregating railroad facilities
 The court held that if facilities were separate but equal, the African-American was
not deprived of equal protection of the law under the Fourteenth Amendment
 Separate was not unequal according to the 1896 Court
 This concept of “separate but equal” remained the “law of the land” until reversed
by the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954
The Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that segregation was legal if the
facilities were “separate but equal.” Later, the Court reversed this decision.
Booker T. Washington:
 African-American leaders offered a variety of responses to unjust conditions in the
South after the end of Reconstruction
 Booker T. Washington, a former slave, believed that African Americans should
concentrate on first trying to achieve economic independence before seeking full
social equality
 In 1881, he founded the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama for vocational or job
training
W.E.B. Du Bois:
 W.E.B. Du Bois believed African Americans should work for full social equality
immediately and not accept an inferior social and economic status
 In 1909, Du Bois helped form the N.A.A.C.P. (the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People) and began editing its journal, The Crisis
“I sit with Shakespeare, and he winces not. Across the color line I move
arm and arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming
women glide in gilded halls. From out of the caves of evening that swing
between the strong-limbed Earth and the tracery of stars, I summon
Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously
with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the
veil. Is this the life you grudge us, O knightly America? Is this the life you
long to change into the dull red hideousness of Georgia? Are you so afraid
lest peering from this high Pisgah, between Philistine and Amalekite, we
sight the Promised Land?” ~ W.E.B. Du Bois
The Gilded Age:
 1870 – 1890
- Mark Twain coined the term, “Gilded Age: to describe this period
- Gilded meant that it appeared to be golden on the outside but that it was not
truly golden
- In this era, “robber barons” or powerful business owners grew rich and
monopolies developed but the vast majority of Americans were laborers or
workers
- Workers were exploited, often overworked and underpaid
- Unions or organization of workers struggled to increase wages and promote
safer working conditions
- Millions of the “new immigrants” arrived to work in factories
- As American became a more industrialized society, many problems developed
“…no country can be well governed unless its citizens as a body keep
religiously before their minds that they are the guardians of the law and that
the law officers are only the machinery for its execution, nothing more.”
~ Mark Twain
The Industrial Revolution:
 The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain in the mid-1700s, and reached the
United States in the early 1800s
 New inventions [Elias Howe: sewing machine; Alexander Graham Bell: telephone;
Thomas A. Edison: electric light bulb; Orville and Wilbur Wright: airplane] were
created
 New ideas introduced new ways of making goods and meeting people’s needs
 Instead of producing goods by hand at home, people worked in factories
 Goods were produced faster and thus could be sold at lower prices
 Water power or steam engines powered the machines in factories
 As goods became cheaper, demand increased, creating more jobs
 Cities grew as people moved into them in order find work
 Movement to cities is called urbanization
 However, cities were often unprepared for so many new arrivals
 Unsanitary conditions often developed in these unprepared cities
Robber Barons:
 Ruthless tactics were used by some business owners to destroy competition and to
keep down worker’s wages
 Two of the most famous entrepreneurs in the Gilded Age were Andrew Carnegie
(1835-1919) and John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937)
 Carnegie worked his way up from a penniless Scottish immigrant to become one of
America’s richest men
 His steel mills ruthlessly undercut all competition
 His workers put in 12-hour shifts at low wages
 Carnegie hired thugs to crush any worker attempts to unionize
 John D. Rockefeller formed the Standard Oil Company in 1870
 Rockefeller forced railroad companies to give him special, secret rates for shipping
his oil, while they charged his competitors higher prices
 Although many considered these successful business owners captains of industry
who were beneficial to the country, others called them robber barons
 A robber baron controlled monopolies or trusts during the Gilded Age
A trust is formed when one company takes over the stock of similar
companies while a monopoly occurs when one seller controls the entire
market for a particular product. Without competition in the market,
products are often inferior in quality and higher in price. Competition is
good for consumers. Monopolies are good for monopolists.
The Gospel of Wealth:
 Andrew Carnegie argued that the rich should administer their wealth through their
lifetime to benefit society
 Andrew Carnegie did so, spending over $350,000,000 he got from the sale of
Carnegie Steel to establish libraries and endow the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace and the Carnegie Foundation for Advancement of Teaching

Following Carnegie, charitable contributions and philanthropy became the way
followed by many of the great entrepreneurs of the age
“This then is held to be the duty of the man of wealth. First: to set an
example of modest, unostentatious living, shunning display; to provide
moderately for the legitimate wants of those dependent upon him, and after
doing so, to consider all surplus revenues which come to him simply as
trust funds, which he is strictly bound as a matter of duty, to administer in
the manner which in his judgment is best calculated to produce the most
beneficial results for the community.” ~ Andrew Carnegie
Social Darwinism:
 Many business leaders in the late 19th and early 20th centuries followed the tenets of
Social Darwinism
 Social Darwinism loosely applied Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution to
economics
 Social Darwinists believed those on top in the business world were there because
they were the fittest
 They had survived the battle of the marketplace because they were the best
 Social Darwinists believed that the state should not interfere in economic life
 Any interference in the free market operation would wreck the economy and upset
its natural evolution
 This view of economics is referred to as laissez-faire or the government does not
intervene in the market
How does this
cartoon reflect
the ideas of
Social
Darwinism?
The Crédit Mobilier Scandal:
 Occurred during the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant
 1872
 A Scandal where the railroad companies and construction suppliers were owned by
the same people
 The supplier, Crédit Mobilier, charged very high or inflated prices for construction
materials
 The government-backed Union Pacific happily paid these prices
 With inflated prices came bribes and kickbacks (a percentage of income given to a
person in a position of power or influence as payment for having made the income
possible) to the Congressmen involved
Boss Tweed:
 William M. Tweed was the head of Tammany Hall, a political machine in New York
City where people voted to support the Democratic Party
 Tweed and his supporters basically ran New York City as members of the
Democratic Party controlled all powerful offices there
 Tammany Hall also helped immigrants find jobs in exchange for votes
 This is an example of municipal (relating to a city or town or its governing body)
corruption as bribery and kickbacks were common
 The New York Times eventually exposed Tweed with the help of cartoonist Thomas
Nast
 After being prosecuted, Tweed went to prison
“Who stole the
people’s money?”
Corruption means
dishonest conduct
in government.
Corruption in
government hurts
the people!
The Pendleton Act:
 After President James Garfield was assassinated by an disgruntled office-seeker,
this act attempted to rid the country of the spoils system
 Do you remember the spoils system? It was created during the presidency of
Andrew Jackson and it rewarded political supporters with government jobs
 This act provided for a civil service test to be taken by all government office-seekers
 A test for government service creates a meritocracy where government service is
based on ability
Of course, the first civil service system was created during the Han
Dynasty of China.
Industrialization and Its Impact on Workers:
 Industrial working conditions in the late 19th century were often quite hazardous
 Safeguards around machinery were inadequate
 Thousands of workers were injured or killed in accidents each year
 Workers faced a six-day work week of 10 to 14 hours per day
 Pay averaged from $3 to $12 weekly
 Industrial workers could be fired for any reason
 There was no unemployment insurance, worker’s compensation, health insurance
or old-age insurance
Unions:
 With the rise of big business, individual workers lost all bargaining power with their
employers
 Many workers realized that some form of labor organization was needed to protect
their interests
 They formed unions so that they could act as a group
 Unions organized strikes and other forms of protest to obtain better working
conditions
 Industrialists like Carnegie used immigrant workers or closed down factories rather
than negotiate with unions
A union is an organization of workers that promotes higher wages and safer
working conditions. A worker alone has little power but workers united are
more powerful. In the early days of industrialization, the government favored
bosses and workers in unions were often punished by government policies.
The Knights of Labor:
 Founded in 1869: An industrial union led by Terence Powderly
 Fought for an end to child labor, an 8-hour workday, and equal pay for equal work
 African Americans and women were allowed to join
 Often used strikes
 A strike occurs when workers refuse to work in protest of working conditions or
wages


The Knights of Labor joined together all skilled and unskilled workers
The Knights of Labor collapsed after a general strike for an eight-hour day failed in
Chicago and the Haymarket Massacre occurred in 1886
The Haymarket Affair:
 1886
 Occurred when labor leaders were blamed when a bomb exploded at a
demonstration of striking workers at Haymarket Square in Chicago
 Seven police were killed
 The remaining police opened fire on the crow
 Eight anarchists were later arrested, accused of the bombing, and tried
 Four were found guilty and hung, yet no one was found guilty of throwing the bomb
 Both political and business leaders were frightened by the incident, and the average
American citizen saw a threat to the traditional standards of society in the actions of
unions
 The rumor that the Knights of Labor were connected to anarchists frightened the
middle class and destroyed the union which was seen as the organizer of the incident
The American Federation of Labor:
 Formed in 1886 by Samuel Gompers
 A craft union where people of a similar craft were grouped together
 United workers with similar economic interests
 Consisted of separate unions of skilled workers joined together into a federation
 Gompers limited his goals to winning improved wages and working conditions for
workers, higher pay, and an 8-hour work day
 Gompers fought hard to improve members’ job security by seeking closed shops
(places where only union members were hired)
 The AFL quickly emerged as the principal voice of organized labor
 Unlike the Knights of Labor, Samuel Gompers urged striking only when necessary
 Gompers fought for “bread and butter” issues such as an 8-hour workday and
higher wages
 The AFL also promoted collective bargaining
Collective Bargaining:
 Collective bargaining is the process in which working people, through their unions,
negotiate contracts with their employers to determine their terms of employment,
including pay, benefits, hours, leave, job health and safety policies, ways to balance
work and family and more
 Collective bargaining is a way for workers and bosses to solve workplace problems
The Industrial Workers of the World (the Wobblies):
 Founded in 1905
 Led by a vocal socialist, Eugene V. Debs
 The most radical of all of the unions
 Largely comprised of the “new immigrants”

Opposed the American Federation of Labor’s acceptance of capitalism and its
refusal to include unskilled workers in craft unions
The
Wobblies
wanted one
big union
for all
workers.
The Molly Maguires:
 Irish-American coal miners in Pennsylvania
 Belonged to a secret society
 Labeled anarchists who opposed established government
 Sought labor rights in the mines
 In the 1870s, were charged with a number of crimes
 With some questionable evidence, several members were executed
The Homestead Strike:
 1892
 Workers at Andrew Carnegie’s steel plant in Homestead, Pennsylvania began to
unionize
 Carnegie opposed unionization
 Violence occurred between strikers and Pinkerton (private) detectives
 A gun battle resulted in which a number of Pinkerton agents and strikers were
killed and many were injured
 Strikers were arrested and tried for treason
The Pullman Strike of 1894:
 Pullman cars were luxury railroad cars
 When wages went down at the Pullman factory, the workers went on strike
 Eugene V. Debs, a socialist, instructed railroad workers to halt trains with Pullman
cars on them
 Much violence and property damage accompanied the strike
 President Grover Cleveland said that the strike actions disrupted federal mail
 The President got a court order (injunction) to end the strike
 Debs went to prison
 Another example in the early years of unions where the government sided with
bosses

Amid the crisis, on June 28th, President Grover Cleveland and Congress created a
national holiday, Labor Day, as a conciliatory gesture toward the American labor
movement
The Interstate Commerce Act:
 This act created the Interstate Commerce Committee that looked to ensure that
railroad shipping fees were fair
 Before the Interstate Commerce Commission was created, farmers pressured
Illinois to create legislation to prevent inflated prices for hauling crops on railroads
 In Munn v. Illinois (1877), the Supreme Court supported state government attempts
to regulate railroads
 The Court reversed itself in Wabash v. Illinois (1886), ending state regulation of
railroads
 In 1887, Congress passed the Interstate Commerce Act, which prohibited railroads
from charging different rates to customers shipping goods an equal distance, and
other unfair practices
 An Interstate Commerce Commission was created to investigate complaints and to
enforce the act
 Thus, a Federal Interstate Commerce Commission was created to address the
controversial issue of railroad pricing
 It is important to remember that Congress regulates interstate commerce or trade
between states
The Sherman Anti-Trust Act:
 1890
 Attempted to break up monopolies and trusts that harmed consumers
 “Any contract or combination in restraint of trade is illegal.”
 Did not define “restraint of trade” well
 Thus, the law was mostly used at first to break up unions
Gilded Age Inventions:
 The incandescent light bulb by Thomas Edison
 Henry Bessemer’s Process or way to eliminate the impurities of pig iron so it could
be mass-produced faster
 In 1869, the Transcontinental Railroad was completed
 In 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge opened in New York City; it was the largest steel
suspension bridge of its time and it connected Brooklyn to Manhattan
 Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone
“When the connection was finally made the Union
Pacific and the Central Pacific engineers ran their
engines up until their pilots touched. Then the engineers
shook hands and had their pictures taken and each
broke a bottle of champagne on the pilot of the other’s
engine and had their picture taken again.”
~ An eyewitness account by Alexander Toponce
The “Old Immigrants” and the “New Immigrants”:
 Late 19th-century America experienced a sudden flood of immigrants
 Up until 1880, most immigrants had come from Northern Europe
- In general, these “Old Immigrants” were Protestant, except for Irish Catholics,
and most spoke English
 Immigration patterns changed in the 1880s
- Railroads and steamships made the voyage to America more affordable
- Most “New Immigrants” came from Southern and Eastern Europe, especially
Poland, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Greece, and Russia
- They were Catholics and Jewish, spoke no English, were poor, and dressed
differently from Northern Europeans
- Asian immigrants also arrived
Two Theories on Immigration:
 The Melting Pot
- Peoples from various cultures come to America and contribute aspects of
their culture to create a new, unique American culture
- The result is that contributions from many cultures are indistinguishable from
one another and are effectively “melted” together
 Cultural Pluralism
- Immigrants maintain their cultural identity as they coexist with other Americans
- According to this “Salad Bowl Theory,” there are times when newly arrived
immigrants do not lose the unique aspects of their cultures
- The unique characteristics of each culture are still identifiable within the larger
American society, much like the ingredients in a salad are still identifiable, yet
contribute to the overall makeup of the salad bowl
Nativism:
 Nativism is an anti-immigrant attitude
 As the flood of immigrants grew at the end of the 1800s, nativist hostility mounted
 Nativists called for the restriction of immigration to the United States
 Nativists argued that “New Immigrants” were inferior to “true” Americans – white,
Anglo-Saxon and Protestant
 Nativists believed that people of other races, religions, and nationalities were
physically and culturally inferior
 The Know Nothing Party was a Nativist Party and it was anti-Irish-Catholic in
sentiment
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882:
 The Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) was passed to pacify anti-Chinese feelings in
California against the flood of Chinese workers: all Chinese immigration was
banned
The Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907:
 The Japanese government promised to limit future Japanese immigration
 Asian immigrants had often faced segregation and discrimination in the U.S.
The Quota Acts of the 1920s:
 Specifically the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and the National Origins Act of 1924
 Set limits on immigration, especially from Southern and Eastern Europe
 This meant that government policy favored more assimilated (Americanized)
immigrants from Western European nations such as Britain
 Immigration from Eastern Europe was greatly curtailed
 The quota acts were inspired by a belief in eugenics
-Eugenics attempted to rank the races
-Proponents of eugenics ranked Southern and Eastern European immigrants lower
than Western Europeans
To us perfectly green aliens, you – humans – are pretty much the same.
Urbanization and the “New Immigrants”:
 Urbanization refers to movement to cities
 “New immigrants” often settled in cities
 “New immigrants” were unfamiliar with American customs, lived in crowded
apartments, and worked as unskilled laborers for long hours at low pay
 They often faced hostility and discrimination from native-born Americans and from
other ethnic groups
 Many of the New Immigrants settled with others of the same nationality in
neighborhoods known as ghettos
 A ghetto is a section of a city in which members of a minority group live especially
because of social, legal, or economic pressure
 However, this isolated many “new immigrants” from mainstream American life
 While some attended night school to learn English, most were too busy working or
caring for families to learn a new language or culture
 It was left to their children to learn English and become familiar with American
customs
 In this way, immigrant children were eventually assimilated or “Americanized.”
I love Little Italy in Manhattan and Chinatown too!
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire:
 The fire occurred on the evening of March 25, 1911, in a New York City sweatshop
 A sweatshop is a shop or factory in which employees work for long hours at low
wages and under unhealthy conditions
 The fire touched off a national movement for safer working conditions
 Almost 150 young women workers died because the factory doors had been bolted
shut from the outside
 Most of the workers were immigrants
 Soon after the fire, Congress passed legislation favorable to unions
The West:
1860-1890
“Where the Indian killed one buffalo, the hide and tongue hunters
killed fifty.” ~ Chief Red Cloud
The Homestead Act:
 Passed during the Civil War
 Provided public land for private use
 “Free Land” became the slogan
 About 270 million acres (10% of the U.S.) were claimed and settled under this act
 A homestead was usually 160 acres in size
 Homesteaders became “sodbusters,” as they had to bust through the thick sod to
plant and build homes
 Many African Americans looked to escape racism in the South and fled to western
states as well
- These “exodusters” hoped for a better opportunity in Kansas
Exodusters in
Kansas wanted to
escape racism in the
South.
The Transcontinental Railroad:
 A railroad that linked the entire country together
 The Central Pacific (built with the labor of Chinese immigrants) built east from
Sacramento, California
 The Union Pacific built west from Council Bluffs, Iowa
 The Golden Spike was hammered at Promontory Summit, Utah on May 10, 1869
 The railroads led to the development of cities in the west
The Dawes Severalty Act of 1887:
 The goal of this act was to assimilate Native American Indians and to break up
reservation tribal lands in favor of individual ownership
 The government granted plots of land and United States citizenship to Native
American Indians who “adopted the habits of civilized life”
 This program failed because the best land was typically granted to whites and the
government would not give full control of the land until 25 years after its issuance

It also failed to respect the indigenous cultures of the Native American Indians
Now that the Buffalo Are Gone:
 Buffalo were vital for Native American Indians on the western plains
 The buffalo provided food as well as materials for shelter, tools, and clothing
 In 1870, there were 13 million buffalo on the plains
 By 1883, there were only a few hundred left
 Buffalo hunters had killed many for sport
 Trains offered voyages where people could fire guns at animals from railroad cars
 By killing the buffalo unnecessarily and for sport, the way of life of the Plains
Indians was destroyed
“Oh, it’s all in the past you can say
But it’s still going on here today
The government now want the Iroquois land
That of the Seneca and the Cheyenne
It’s here and it’s now you can help us dear man
Now that the buffalo’s gone.”
~ Buffy Sainte-Marie
Little Big Horn, 1876:
 The location of General George Custer’s “Last Stand”
 After gold was reportedly spotted in the Black Hills of Montana, the army went to
inspect
 Six tribes outnumbered the American forces, and killed everyone including Custer
 The Battle of Little Big Horn was a short-lived victory for the Native Americans
 Federal troops soon poured into the Black Hills
 While many Native Americans surrendered, Sitting Bull escaped to Canada
The Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee, 1890:
 An American Indian spiritual movement
 The ghost dance began in Nevada in 1889 when a Paiute named Wovoka prophesied
the extinction of white people and the return of the old-time life and superiority of
the Indians
 The Ghost Dance movement taught that the Indians were defeated and confined to
reservations because they had angered the gods by abandoning their traditional
ways
 If they practiced the Ghost Dance ritual and rejected white ways, many Sioux
believed the gods would create the world anew, destroy the unbelievers, and bring
back murdered Indians and the giant herds of bison
 The Indians could return to their lands and the buffalo would once again roam the
Great Plains
 The Ghost Dance Movement spread among Native American Indians
 By late 1890, Pine Ridge Indian agent James McLaughlin was alarmed by the
movement’s increasing influence and its prediction that whites would be wiped out









On December 29, the 7th Cavalry under Colonel James Forsyth surrounded a band
of Ghost Dancers under the Sioux Chief Big Foot near Wounded Knee Creek and
demanded they surrender their weapons
Big Foot and his followers had no intentions of attacking anyone, but they were
distrustful of the army and feared they would be attacked if they relinquished their
guns
Nonetheless, the Sioux agreed to surrender and began turning over their guns
As that was happening, a scuffle broke out between an Indian and a soldier, and a
shot was fired
Though no one is certain which side fired it, the ensuing melee was quick and brutal
Without arms and outnumbered, the Sioux were reduced to hand-to-hand fighting
with knives, and they were cut down in a withering rain of bullets, many coming
from the army’s rapid-fire repeating Hotchkiss guns
By the time the soldiers withdrew, 146 Indians were dead (including 44 women and
18 children) and 51 wounded.
The 7th Cavalry had 25 dead and 39 wounded
The Wounded Knee Massacre became a symbol of Native American discrimination
and oppression
Helen Hunt Jackson:
 In 1881, Helen Hunt Jackson wrote A Century of Dishonor, a nonfiction work that
detailed the horrors of Native American Removal in the nineteenth century
 She documented how thousands of Native Americans were pushed from the eastern
US to the west, and their lack of Constitutional protections
 Like Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Jungle, and Silent Spring, Helen Hunt
Jackson's Century of Dishonor aroused the nation’s conscience and stimulated
political action against injustice, in this case the nation’s unjust treatment of Native
American Indians
“There is not among these three hundred bands of Indians one which has not
suffered cruelly at the hands either of the Government or of white settlers.
The poorer, the more insignificant, the more helpless the band, the more
certain the cruelty and outrage to which they have been subjected....
It makes little difference...where one opens the record of the history of the
Indians; every page and every year has its dark stain. The story of one tribe
is the story of all, varied only by differences of time and place....Colorado is
as greedy and unjust in 1880 as was Georgia in 1830, and Ohio in 1795, and
the United States government breaks promises now as deftly as then, and
with the added ingenuity from long practice.”
~ Helen Hunt Jackson
The Turner Thesis:
 After the closing of the American frontier, Harvard professor, Frederick Jackson
Turner wrote a thesis in 1893 concluding that the West (the frontier) personified the
story of America
 He believed that he West was the most important component of the American story



He displayed the importance of how the frontier line had always sparked individual
strength and democracy
He also argued that the frontier offered free land and promised opportunity which
diffused economic and social conflict
Not all historians agreed with Turner; some argued that Turner failed to emphasize
other critical factors like slavery and industrialization
Grangers, Populists, and Progressives:
1892 – 1920
The Granger Movement:
 In 1867, the Grange Movement was organized by farmers
 Most Grangers blamed the railroads for their difficulties
 Of course, there were several reasons for farmers’ economic problems
- Overproduction of crops due to increased farmland in the West and productive
machinery meant that farmers produced more and thus food prices fell more
- Farmers were also constantly in debt, borrowing money to make improvements
and to buy machinery, or even to get by during a poor harvest
- Finally, farmers had to ship their crops to market
 Railroads used the lack of competition on local routes to charge higher rates for
short distances
- In several Midwestern states, the Grangers elected candidates to state
legislatures who promised to regulate the railroads
- These states passed laws regulating railroad and grain storage rates
“When the farmer comes to town
With his wagon broken down,
Oh, the farmer is the man
Who feeds them all. . . .
The farmer is the man,
The farmer is the man,
Lives on credit till the fall;
Then they take him by the hand
And they lead him from the land,
And the middleman’s the man
Who gets it all. . . .
— American folk song
Munn v. Illinois and Wabash v. Illinois:
 In Munn v. Illinois (1877), the Supreme Court supported state government attempts
to regulate railroads
 The Court reversed itself in Wabash v. Illinois (1886), ending state regulation of
railroads
 The Grangers then turned to Congress
The Interstate Commerce Act:
 In 1887, Congress passed the Interstate Commerce Act, which prohibited railroads
from charging different rates to customers shipping goods an equal distance, and
other unfair practices
- The Interstate Commerce Act addressed the problem of railroad monopolies by
setting guidelines for how the railroads could do business
- Applying only to railroads, the law required “just and reasonable” rate changes;
prohibited special rates or rebates for individual shippers; prohibited
“preference” in rates for any particular localities, shippers, or products; forbade
long-haul/short-haul discrimination; prohibited pooling of traffic or markets;
and most important, established a five-member Interstate Commerce
Commission (ICC)
 An Interstate Commerce Commission was created to investigate complaints and to
enforce the act
The Populist Party:
 The People’s party, more commonly known as the Populist party, was organized in
St. Louis in 1892 to represent the common folk – especially farmers – against the
interests of railroads, bankers, processers, corporations, and the politicians in
league with such interests
 The Populist Party represented laborers, farmers and industrial workers in their
battle against banking and railroad interests
 Populists believed rich industrialists and bankers had a stranglehold on government
 In 1892, the Populists held a national convention to choose a Presidential candidate
 Their party platform had several innovative proposals:
- unlimited coinage of silver to raise farm prices and make loan repayments easier
- direct election of Senators instead of by state legislatures
- term limits for President permitting only a single term in office
- a graduated income tax or taxing wealthy individuals at a higher rate
- Immigration quotas to restrict the influx of newcomers
- A shorter work day of eight hours
 Many ideas of the Populists eventually became laws
 A third party (not Republican/not Democrat) can change Americans’ views and lead
to changes in government
1. RESOLVED, That we demand a free ballot and a fair count in all
elections and pledge ourselves to secure it to every legal voter without
Federal Intervention, through the adoption by the States of the
unperverted Australian or secret ballot system. ~ Populist Party
2. RESOLVED, That the revenue derived from a graduated income tax
should be applied to the reduction of the burden of taxation now levied
upon the domestic industries of this country.
The Cross of Gold Speech:
 The most famous speech in American political history was delivered by William
Jennings Bryan on July 9, 1896, at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago
 The issue was whether to endorse the free coinage of silver at a ratio of silver to gold
of 16 to 1
- Populists originally supported the Silver Standards which would have made
money even cheaper and more available
- This would have created inflationary pressure and raised prices thus aiding
cash-poor and debt-burdened farmers
- Eventually populists endorsed bimetallism
- Bimetallism is the government use of both gold and silver
- This too would have made money cheaper and more available
- Ultimately, bimetallism was not accepted either and the gold standard remained
 After speeches on the subject by several U.S. Senators, Bryan rose to speak
- His dramatic speaking style and rhetoric roused the crowd to a frenzy
- “You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold”
 However, Republican William McKinley defeated William Jennings Bryan for
president in the election of 1896
“You come to us and tell us that the great cities are in favor of the gold
standard. I tell you that the great cities rest upon these broad and fertile
prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will
spring up again as if by magic. But destroy our farms and the grass will
grow in the streets of every city in the country.”
~ William Jennings Bryan
The Sixteenth Amendment:
 1913
 Created a progressive or graduated income tax
- A tax which rises as income rises
- Thus, individuals having the highest income paying the highest percentage of tax
 “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever
source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without
regard to any census or enumeration.”
 It is important to remember that the Populist Party encouraged a progressive
income tax for the nation
The Seventeenth Amendment:
 1913; an amendment calling for the direct election of Senators
- Before this amendment, senators were to be chosen by the legislatures of their
respective states.
Democracy was expanding. In addition, some states allowed individuals to
petition a state legislature to introduce a bill (initiative). Some states allowed
people to vote on laws (referendum) and some states allowed voters to remove
incompetent elected officials (recall). There were even direct primaries where
citizens select canditates for Presidential elections.
The Progressive Party:
 Early decades of the 20th century
 Wanted to reform government and to use government to advance human welfare
 Their goal was to correct political and economic injustices that had resulted from
industrialization
 Opposed to the abuse of power by political machines and monopolies
 Wanted to apply scientific management to government and to use it to solve urban
problems
 Flourished between 1900 and the start of World War I
 Were mostly middle-class city dwellers rather than farmers and workers
 Their activities reflected the rising influence of the middle class
The Muckrakers:
 Among the most influential Progressives were investigative reporters, writers, and
social scientists
 These writers exposed government corruption and the abuses of industry
 They became known as muckrakers
 Muckrakers examined the rise of industry and the abuses that often led to the
accumulation of large fortunes
 They also examined business practices affecting consumers and the lives of the poor
 The muckrakers provided detailed, accurate journalistic accounts of the political
and economic corruption and social hardships caused by the power of big business
in a rapidly industrializing United States
Important Muckrakers:
 Upton Sinclair
- Wrote The Jungle
- Revealed the horrors of the meatpacking industry’
- Described the unsanitary practices of the meat-packing industry
- Led to the passage of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act
of 1906
 To ensure that the nation’s food supply and its drugs are safe for human
consumption
 Jacob Riis
- Wrote How the Other Half Lives
- Photographed and described the appalling conditions of the urban poor
The
other
half
did not
live
well.
“There would be meat that had tumbled out
on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the
workers had tramped and spit uncounted
billions of consumption germs. There would be
meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the
water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and
thousands of rats would race about on it.”
~ Upton Sinclair


Ida B. Wells
- 1893
- Anti-lynching crusader, suffragist, women’s rights advocate, and journalist
- As editor and co-owner of the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight, Wells
championed African American rights, especially after whites lynched three black
Memphis grocers in 1892
 Whites used lynching “to get rid of [African Americans] who were
acquiring wealth and property,” Wells concluded, “and thus keep the
race terrorized…”
Ida Tarbell
- Wrote The History of the Standard Oil Company
- Showed how John D. Rockefeller’s rise was based on ruthless business practices
The
monopolist
controls the
market!

“In all of the
cities, the better
classes – the
business men –
are the sources
of corruption.”
~ Lincoln
Steffens
Lincoln Steffens
- The Shame of the Cities
- Exposed political corruption across America’s greatest cities at the turn of the
twentieth century
Teddy Roosevelt:
 1901 – 1909
 Believed that the President should exercise vigorous leadership in the public interest
- In his view, the President acted as the “steward” of the people’s interest
 As President, Roosevelt revived the use of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act
- He launched the break-up of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company
- Roosevelt distinguished “good trusts” from “bad trusts,” rather than condemn
all trusts.
 Roosevelt proposed new laws to protect consumer health, to regulate some
industries, and to conserve the nation’s natural resources
- The Meat Inspection Act (1906) provided government inspection of meat
- The Pure Food and Drug Act (1906) regulated food preparation and sales of
medicines
- Roosevelt also drew national attention to the need to conserve forests

Roosevelt also cited his fondness for a West African proverb, “Speak softly and
carry a big stick; you will go far.”
- The phrase was also used later by Roosevelt to explain his relations with
domestic political leaders and his foreign policy especially in Latin America and
the Caribbean.
- Roosevelt’s Big Stick Policy asserted U.S. domination when such dominance was
considered the moral imperative
“We have become great because of the lavish use of our resources. But the time
has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when
the coal, the iron, the oil, and the gas are exhausted, when the soils have still
further impoverished and washed into the streams, polluting the rivers, denuding
the fields and obstructing navigation.”
~ Theodore Roosevelt
- Teddy Roosevelt was a dynamic force for conservationism
- During his presidency, Roosevelt made conservation a major part of his
administration
 As the new century began, the frontier was disappearing
 Once common animals were now threatened
 He wanted to protect animals and land from businesses that he saw as a
threat
 Roosevelt said, “The rights of the public to the natural resources
outweigh private rights, and must be given its first consideration.”
 As President, he created five national parks, four game refuges, fifty-one
national bird reservations as well as the National Forest Service
And don’t forget
that Teddy
Roosevelt ensured
the building of the
Panama Canal,
providing faster
travel from the
Atlantic to Pacific
coasts of the nation.
Clayton Anti-Trust Act:
 1914
 An Act to supplement existing laws against unlawful restraints and monopolies, and
for other purposes
 Prohibits mergers or acquisitions that are likely to lessen competition
 Under this Act, the Government challenges those mergers that are likely to increase
prices to consumers
Federal Reserve Act:
 Created a central bank for a nation
 Congress approved the Act, and President Wilson signed it into law on December
23, 1913
 The Federal Reserve System – often referred to as the Federal Reserve or simply
“the Fed” – is the central bank of the United States
 It was created by the Congress to provide the nation with a safer, more flexible, and
more stable monetary and financial system
Federal Trade Commission:
 The Federal Trade Commission was created on September 26, 1914, when President
Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Trade Commission Act into law
 The mission of the Federal Trade Commission is to protect consumers and promote
competition
 To prevent business practices that are anticompetitive or deceptive or unfair to
consumers; to enhance informed consumer choice and public understanding of the
competitive process
The Temperance Movement:
 The temperance movement was an anti-alcohol movement
 Drinking had increased during the Civil War, and many immigrants came from
cultures where drinking was an accepted part of life
 A National Prohibition Party was formed in 1869 and ran candidates for office in
many elections
 Women’s Christian Temperance Union (W.C.T.U.) was founded in 1874
 Under the leadership of Frances Willard and Carrie Nation, who gained fame for
smashing bottles in bars with her hatchet, the organization grew, and in 1893 the
Anti-Saloon League was formed
 The peak of the temperance movement was reached in 1919, when Amendment
XVIII to the Constitution was ratified
 The Eighteenth Amendment prohibited the sale and consumption of alcohol, and
Congress was empowered to make laws to enforce it
 However, the Amendment was repealed in 1933.
Eighteenth Amendment:
 “After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or
transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the
exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the
jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.”
 The Prohibition or Temperance Amendment
 No alcohol
We tried an intergalactic ban on alcohol too. Our ban didn’t work
either!
Jane Addams:
 Worked to help the poor and to stop the use of children as industrial laborers
 Ran Hull House in Chicago, a center which helped immigrants in particular
 Hull House provided such services as child care, nursing the sick, and teaching
English to immigrants
 An activist, social worker, author, and Nobel Peace Prize winner
 She is best remembered as the founder of Hull House in Chicago, a progressive
social settlement that sought to reduce poverty through offering social services and
educational opportunities to the poor immigrants and laborers of working-class
Chicago
“Action indeed is the sole medium of expression for ethics.”
~ Jane Addams
“Mother Jones” (Mary Harris Jones):
 Typically clad in a black dress, her face framed by a lace collar and black hat, the
barely five-foot tall Mother Jones was a fearless fighter for workers’ rights
 She was once labeled “the most dangerous woman in America” by a U.S. district
attorney
 Mary Harris “Mother” Jones rose to prominence as a fiery orator and fearless
organizer for the Mine Workers during the first two decades of the 20th century
Nineteenth Amendment:
 “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by
the United States or by any state on account of sex.”
 The woman’s suffrage or right to vote amendment
“Our ‘Pathway’ is straight to the ballot box, with no variableness nor shadow
of turning.” ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Imperialism:
 Imperialism is the domination of one country by another
 Imperialism occurs when a militarily stronger nation conquers and controls a
weaker region
 Some Americans opposed imperialism; they felt it violated democratic principles
 However, many Americans supported imperialism
- The United States was an industrial power
- Colonies could provide needed raw materials for factories, a guaranteed market
for manufacturers, and a place for farmers to sell surplus crops
- Some saw colonial expansion as a way of showing that USA was a great nation
“I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on
any other land.” ~ Mark Twain
Spanish-American War:
 An insurrection against Spain began in Cuba in the early 1890s
 The treatment of the rebels by the Spanish seemed intolerable to the United States
 After the sinking of the U.S. battleship Maine in Havana harbor in February 1898,
matters reached a crisis [recent research suggests the explosion may have been an
accident, involving a spontaneous combustion fire in the ship’s coal bunker]
 President McKinley in April 1898 asked Congress for permission to use “forcible
intervention” in Cuba
 The Spanish-American War lasted eight months
 The United States won the war, and in the process occupied Wake Island and
annexed Hawaii, both of which provided good harbors for fleet
 The Treaty that ended the war stated that Spain would free Cuba and cede
(formally surrender) Puerto Rico and Guam to the United States
 Spain also agreed to cede the Philippines to the United States in return for $20
million
 The outcome of the war led to U.S. imperialism
Yellow Journalism:
 Yellow journalism is the use of sensationalized news in newspaper publishing to
attract readers and increase circulation
 The phrase was coined in the 1890s to describe the tactics employed in furious
competition between two New York City newspapers, the World and the Journal
 The Spanish-American War is often referred to as the first “media war”
 During the 1890s, journalism that was sensationalized – and sometimes even
manufactured – helped propel the United States into war with Spain
 Led by newspaper owners William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer,
journalism of the 1890s used melodrama, romance, and hyperbole to sell millions of
newspapers – a style that became known as yellow journalism
Here is an
example of
Yellow
Journalism!
Platt Amendment:
 Approved on May 22, 1903, the Platt Amendment was a treaty between the U.S. and
Cuba that attempted to protect Cuba’s independence from foreign intervention
 It, however, permitted extensive U.S. involvement in Cuban international and
domestic affairs for the enforcement of Cuban independence
“What do nations care about the cost of war, if by spending a few hundred
millions in steel and gunpowder they can gain a thousand millions in diamonds
and cocoa?” ~ W.E.B. Du Bois
Open Door Policy:
 While many Western European nations had gained spheres of influence in China,
the United States wanted to make certain that it could trade with China
 The principle stated that all nations should have equal access to any of the ports
open to trade in China
 The Open Door Policy was a statement of principles initiated by the United States
for the protection of equal privileges among countries trading with China
U.S. Secretary of State John Hay asked
that each great power should maintain
free access to a treaty port within its
sphere, only the Chinese government
should collect taxes on trade, and no
great power having a sphere should be
granted exemptions from paying
harbor dues or railroad charges.”
Big Stick Diplomacy:
 Was the slogan describing U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt’s foreign policy
 The term originated from the African proverb “Speak softly and carry a big stick”
 Teddy Roosevelt believed that if the U.S. made a show of force to the rest of the
world, other nations might be more hesitant to challenge the American military
 As a corollary to this, he also understood that the threat of force rather than force
itself was often sufficient to deter military conflict
Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine:
 President Theodore Roosevelt’s assertive approach to Latin America and the
Caribbean has often been characterized as the “Big Stick” and his policy came to be
known as the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.
 Although the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 was essentially passive (it asked that
Europeans not increase their influence or recolonize any part of the Western
Hemisphere), by the 20th century a more confident United States was willing to take
on the role of regional policeman
 This corollary basically asserted that the U.S.A. could intervene in Latin American
affairs when it was in the best interest of the U.S.A.
Of course, Latin Americans did
not like the Roosevelt Corollary
to the Monroe Doctrine!
Panama Canal:
 President Theodore Roosevelt oversaw the realization of a long-term United States
goal – a trans-isthmian canal
 Throughout the 1800s, American and British leaders and businessmen wanted to
ship goods quickly and cheaply between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts
 Following heated debate over the location of the proposed canal, on June 19, 1902,
the U.S. Senate voted in favor of building the canal through Panama
 Within 6 months, Secretary of State John Hay signed a treaty with Colombian
Foreign Minister Tomás Herrán to build the new canal
 The financial terms were unacceptable to Colombia’s congress, and it rejected the
offer
 President Roosevelt responded by dispatching U.S. warships to Panama City (on the
Pacific) and Colón (on the Atlantic) in support of Panamanian independence
 Colombian troops were unable to negotiate the jungles of the Darien Strait and
Panama declared independence on November 3, 1903
 The newly declared Republic of Panama immediately named Philippe BunauVarilla (a French engineer who had been involved in the earlier de Lesseps canal
attempt) as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary.
 In his new role, Bunau-Varilla negotiated the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty of 1903,
which provided the United States with a 10-mile wide strip of land for the canal, a
one-time $10 million payment to Panama, and an annual annuity of $250,000
 The United States also agreed to guarantee the independence of Panama
 Completed in 1914, the Panama Canal symbolized U.S. technological prowess and
economic power
 Although U.S. control of the canal eventually became an irritant to U.S.Panamanian relations, at the time it was heralded as a major foreign policy
achievement.
Dollar Diplomacy:
 President Taft’s policy of encouraging economic development in Central America
and also in Asia has been called Dollar Diplomacy
 As United States investments grew in the Americas, any threat to them would bring
in the United States Marines to protect business interests
 The goal of dollar diplomacy was 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
U.S. military
intervention in other
nations was not
always welcomed!
Causes of World War I:
 There were many causes for the First World War (1914-1918)
 However, the primary causes were militarism, imperialism, alliances, and
nationalism (MAIN)
 The fighting in the First World War began in Europe in August 1914
 The event that triggered the war was the assassination on June 28, 1914 of
Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire
 Negotiations also followed the assassination, but this time no solution except
military action could be found
 The assassination had triggered the alliance system when Austria tried to avenge the
assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand by attacking Serbia
U.S. Involvement in the First World War:
 The United States became involved in the First World War due to several factors
 Americans were shocked at the German invasion of neutral Belgium
 Americans were also shocked when the Zimmerman Telegram, a secret message
from a high German official promised to return territories to Mexico if Mexico
helped Germany against the United States
 However, the main reason for American entry into World War I was unrestricted
German submarine warfare
 In 1915, a German submarine sank the British passenger ship Lusitania, killing over
1,000 passengers, including 128 Americans
 Wilson threatened to break off relations with Germany
 Germany pledged not to sink any ocean liners without prior warning
 However, German submarines began to attack American merchant vessels again in
1917 – In response, Wilson asked Congress to declare war
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
~ John McCrae
Espionage Act (1917):
 In 1917, some two months after America’s formal entrance into World War I
against Germany, the United States Congress passed the Espionage Act
 Enforced largely by A. Mitchell Palmer, the United States attorney general under
President Woodrow Wilson, the Espionage Act made it a crime for any person to
convey information intended to interfere with the U.S. armed forces prosecution of
the war effort or to promote the success of the country’s enemies
 Anyone found guilty of such acts would be subject to a fine of $10,000 and a prison
sentence of 20 years
 In June 1917, shortly after U.S. entry into World War I, Congress passed the
Espionage Act, which made it illegal during wartime to interfere with the recruiting
of troops or the disclosure of information dealing with national defense
Sedition Act (1918):
 The Sedition Act of 1918, enacted during World War I, made it a crime to “willfully
utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language
about the form of the Government of the United States” or to “willfully urge, incite,
or advocate any curtailment of the production” of the things “necessary or essential
to the prosecution of the war.”
 The act, along with other similar federal laws, was used to convict at least 877
people in 1919 and 1920, according to a report by the attorney general
 In 1919, the Court heard several important free speech cases – including Debs v.
United States and Abrams v. United States – involving the constitutionality of the law
 In both cases, the Court upheld the convictions as well as the law
Schenck v. United States:
 In Schenck v. U.S. (1919), the Supreme Court upheld restrictions on freedom of
speech if such speech caused a “clear and present danger” to the nation
 Charles T. Schenck was general secretary of the U.S. Socialist Party, which opposed
the implementation of a military draft in the country
 The party printed and distributed some 15,000 leaflets that called for men who were
drafted to resist military service
 Schenck was subsequently arrested for having violated the Espionage Act; he was
convicted on three counts and sentenced to 10 years in prison for each count
 Writing for the court, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., argued: “Words which,
ordinarily and in many places, would be within the freedom of speech protected by
the First Amendment may become subject to prohibition when of such a nature and
used in such circumstances as to create a clear and present danger that they will
bring about the substantive evils which Congress has a right to prevent.”
“The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in
falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.”
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes
Selective Service Act (the Draft):
 Some six weeks after the United States formally entered the First World War, the
U.S Congress passed the Selective Service Act on May 18, 1917, giving the U.S.
president the power to draft soldiers
 Immediately began to increase the armed services from about 200,000 to over
4,500,000
Great Migration:
 The Great Migration was the mass movement of about five million southern blacks
to the north and west between 1915 and 1960
 African American laborers moved northward and westward in search of higher
wages in industrial jobs and better social and political opportunities
 This Great Migration led to the rapid growth of black urban communities in cities
like New York, Chicago, St. Louis, and Los Angeles.117
 To escape Jim Crow segregation and disfranchisement in the South, a large
numbers of African Americans left their homes and families to search elsewhere for
a better life
Liberty Bonds:
 In Economics, it is easiest to remember this rhyme:
- A Stock you own but a bond you loan
- When an investor prucahses a bond, the investor is loaning money
- The investor will be repaid with interest
 During the First World War, the government sold Liberty Bonds to raise money for
the war
Stocks You
Own
Bonds You
Loan
Treaty of Versailles:
 The Treaty of Versailles was the treaty the Allied victors wrote for Germany
 It was harsh
 Germany was forced to pay reparations for the war, lost colonies, and was forced to
demilitarize
 However, the League of Nations was established although the U.S. did not join the
organization.
Fourteen Points:
 In a January 8, 1918, speech on War Aims and Peace Terms, President Wilson set
down 14 points as a blueprint for world peace that was to be used for peace
negotiations after World War I.
 U.S. President Wilson announced America’s war aims in his Fourteen Points –
calling for freedom of the seas, reduced armaments, and an end to secret diplomacy
as well as self-determination or governments determined by the people of the land
 Wilson felt the most important part of his plan was a League of Nations, an
international peace-keeping organization that would discourage future wars and
promote collective security
 Wilson traveled to Europe to help negotiate the peace treaties
 However, the final terms of the peace treaties did not conform to the goals of the
Fourteen Points
League of Nations:
 The League of Nations was an international peacekeeping organization created at
the end of the First World War
 However, the League of Nations was weak
- It lacked a military force
- The United States refused to join the League of Nations
- Wilson’s opponents believed the League of Nations might drag Americans into
unnecessary warfare overseas
- Although Wilson needed the Senate to ratify the Versailles Treaty, he rejected
any compromises proposed by the Senators
- Wilson failed to gauge the feelings of most Americans, who were disillusioned
with involvement in world affairs
- The Senate rejected the treaty, and the United States never joined the League of
Nations
- This move marked a U.S. return to a policy of isolationism – refusing to become
involved in other countries’ conflicts
The sign reads “This
League of Nations
Bridge was designed
by the President of
the U.S.A.”
Yet the U.S. Senate
refused to join the
League of Nations.
Red Scare:
 The Bolshevik Revolution occurred in Russia in 1917
 The collapse of Russia’s Tsarist system of government and the emergence of a
communist government in Russia (the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics)
frightened many Americans
 Americans feared the spread of communism
 When a wave of strikes hit the nation in 1919, American citizens feared they were
seeing the beginning of a Communist revolution
 This “Red Scare” led Attorney General Palmer to arrest radicals accused of plotting
to overthrow the government
 During the Red Scare, civil liberties were sometimes grossly violated and many
innocent aliens were deported
“By stealing, murder and lies,
Bolshevism has looted Russia
not only of its material
strength but of its moral
force. A small clique of
outcasts from the East Side of
New York has attempted this,
with what success we all
know. Because a disreputable
alien—Leon Bronstein, the
man who now calls himself
Trotzky—can inaugurate a
reign of terror from his
throne room in the Kremlin,
because this lowest of all
types known to New York
can sleep in the Czar’s bed,
while hundreds of thousands
in Russia are without food or
shelter, should Americans be
swayed by such doctrines?
~ A. Mitchell Palmer
The Roaring Twenties:
 The 1920s were an age of dramatic social and political change
 For the first time, more Americans lived in cities than on farms
 The nation’s total wealth more than doubled between 1920 and 1929, and many
Americans were brought into an affluent society as well as a “consumer society”


People from coast to coast bought the same goods (due to advertising and the spread
of chain stores), listened to the same music, did the same dances and even used the
same slang
Many Americans were uncomfortable with this new, urban, sometimes racy “mass
culture”; in fact, for many–even most–people in the United States, the 1920s
brought more conflict than celebration
The Flapper:
 Flappers were northern, urban, single, young, middle-class women
 Many held steady jobs in the changing American economy
- The clerking jobs that blossomed in the Gilded Age were more numerous than
ever
- Increasing phone usage required more and more operators
- The consumer-oriented economy of the 1920s saw a burgeoning number of
department stores
 At night, flappers engaged in the active city nightlife
- They frequented jazz clubs and vaudeville shows
- Speakeasies were a common destination, as the new woman of the twenties
adopted the same carefree attitude toward prohibition as her male counterpart
- Ironically, more young women consumed alcohol in the decade it was illegal than
ever before
- Smoking, another activity previously reserved for men, became popular among
flappers
- With the political field leveled by the Nineteenth Amendment (Women’s
suffrage), women sought to eliminate social double standards
- Consequently, the flapper was less hesitant to experiment sexually than previous
generation
“Now I am old-fashioned. A woman,
I consider, should be womanly. I
have no patience with the modern
neurotic girl who jazzes from
morning to night, smokes like a
chimney, and uses language which
would make a billingsgate
fishwoman blush!”
~ Agatha Christie, Murder on the
Links
The Lost Generation:
 The “Lost Generation” is a term used to refer to the generation that came of age
during World War I
 A group of U.S. writers who came of age during the war and established their
literary reputations in the 1920s
 The term stems from a remark made by Gertrude Stein to Ernest Hemingway,
“You are all a lost generation.”
 The generation was “lost” in the sense that its inherited values were no longer
relevant in the postwar world
 And its spiritual alienation from a U.S. that, basking under President Warren G.
Harding’s “back to normalcy” policy, seemed to its members to be hopelessly
provincial, materialistic, and emotionally barren
The Great Migration:
 Hoping to escape tenant farming, sharecropping, and peonage or debt servitude, 1.5
million Southern blacks moved to cities
 During the 1910s and 1920s, Chicago’s black population grew by 148 percent;
Cleveland’s by 307 percent; Detroit’s by 611 percent
 Access to housing became a major source of friction between blacks and whites
during this massive movement of people
 Many cities adopted residential segregation ordinances to keep blacks out of
predominantly white neighborhoods
 Confined to all-black neighborhoods, African Americans created cities-within-cities
during the 1920s
 The largest was Harlem, in upper Manhattan, where 200,000 African Americans
lived in a neighborhood that had been virtually all-white 15 years before
The Harlem Renaissance:
 An awakening of African-American culture became known as the “Harlem
Renaissance”
 African-American writers such as Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen expressed
a new pride in their heritage, while attacking racism
 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 African American
writers, artists, musicians, photographers, poets, and scholars
 Many had come from the South, fleeing its oppressive caste system in order to find a
place where they could freely express their talents
 Among those artists whose works achieved recognition were Langston Hughes and
Claude McKay, Countee Cullen and Arna Bontemps, Zora Neale Hurston and Jean
Toomer, Walter White and James Weldon Johnson
 W.E.B. Du Bois encouraged talented artists to leave the South
 Du Bois, then the editor of THE CRISIS magazine, the journal of the NAACP, was
at the height of his fame and influence in the black community

Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal
stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the
floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So, boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps.
'Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now—
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal
stair.
~ Langston Hughes
Marcus Garvey:
 Marcus Garvey was a Jamaican-born black nationalist who created a “Back to
Africa” movement in the United States
 He became an inspirational figure for later civil rights activists
 In 1914, he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA)
 In 1916, Garvey moved to Harlem in New York where UNIA thrived
 By now a formidable public speaker, Garvey spoke across America
 He urged African-Americans to be proud of their race and return to Africa, their
ancestral homeland and attracted thousands of supporters
The Eighteenth Amendment:
 “After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or
transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the
exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the
jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.”
 The prohibition of alcohol amendment; the Temperance Movement amendment
 Temperance means abstinence (practice of not doing something) from alcoholic
drink
The Volstead Act:
 U.S. law enacted in 1919 (and taking effect in 1920) to provide enforcement for
the Eighteenth Amendment, prohibiting the manufacture and sale of alcoholic
beverages
 It was named for Minnesota Representative Andrew Volstead, chairman of the
House Judiciary Committee, who had championed the bill and prohibition
 The act was vetoed by President Woodrow Wilson, but it became law
after Congress voted to override the veto
 Enforcing Prohibition proved to be extremely difficult
 The illegal production and distribution of liquor, or bootlegging, became rampant,
and the national government did not have the means or desire to try to enforce
every border, lake, river, and speakeasy (an illegal liquor store or nightclub) in
America
 In fact, by 1925 in New York City alone there were anywhere from 30,000 to
100,000 speakeasy clubs
 The demand for alcohol was outweighing the demand for sobriety (the state of being
sober or drug-free)
 People found clever ways to evade Prohibition agents
 They carried hip flasks, hollowed canes, false books, and the like
 Prohibition made life in America more violent, with open rebellion against the law
and organized crime
“Why don’t they pass a constitutional amendment
prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as
well as prohibition did, in five years Americans would be the
smartest race of people on Earth.”
~ Will Rogers
The Scopes Trial:
 Religious Fundamentalists in Tennessee brought to trial in 1925 John C. Scopes for
breaking a Tennessee state law forbidding the teaching of evolution
 These Fundamentalists advocated traditional values and condemned Darwin and
evolution as against the Bible’s story of creation in seven days
 Fundamentalists saw a breakdown in the traditional attitudes and believed these
had been brought about because Darwinian philosophy made people doubt the
truths of the Bible
 The Scopes trial (nicknamed the Monkey Trial by the press because evolution
suggested humans were descended from monkeys and not created by God) attained
national prominence
 William Jennings Bryan, Fundamentalist and three-time presidential candidate,
testified as an expert on the Bible
 Scopes was found guilty, but the trial lawyers made Bryan appear ridiculous, and
the Fundamentalist cause was temporarily set back nationally
“If today you can take a
thing like evolution and
make it a crime to teach it
in the public school,
tomorrow you can make it
a crime to teach it in the
private schools, and the
next year you can make it
a crime to teach it to the
hustings or in the church.
At the next session you
may ban books and the
newspapers. Soon you
may set Catholic against
Protestant and Protestant
against Protestant, and try
to foist your own religion
upon the minds of men. If
you can do one you can do
the other. Ignorance and
fanaticism is ever busy
and needs feeding. Always
it is feeding and gloating
for more. Today it is the
public school teachers,
tomorrow the private.”
~ Charles Darrow
Sacco and Vanzetti:
 Soon after the “Red Scare,” two Italian immigrants, Sacco and Vanzetti were
convicted of murder to get funds for an anarchist revolution
 Although the evidence was insufficient, they were found guilty and executed
 Socialists and radicals protested the men’s innocence
 Many people felt that the trial had been less than fair and that the defendants had
been convicted for their radical, anarchist beliefs rather than for the crime for
which they had been tried
 All attempts for retrial on the ground of false identification failed
 The “Red Scare” and the Sacco and Vanzetti trial greatly contributed to the rise of
nativism – a dislike of foreigners
 The Immigration Acts of 1921, 1924, and 1929 restricted immigration from
Southern and Eastern Europe (the “New Immigrants”) by establishing quotas for
each nationality based on America’s existing ethnic composition
 The Sacco and Vanzetti case was an example of nativism

“But what good is the evidence and what good is the argument? They are
determined to kill us regardless of evidence, of law, of decency, of everything. If
they give us a delay tonight, it will only mean they will kill us next week. Let us
finish tonight. I’m weary of waiting seven years to die, when they know all the time
they intend to kill us.”
~ Sacco, August 22, 1927, fifteen hours before he and Vanzetti were executed.
“Two good men a long time gone,
Two good men a long time gone
(Two good men a long time gone,
oh, gone),
Sacco, Vanzetti a long time gone,
Left me here to sing this song.
Say, there, did you hear the news?
Sacco worked at trimming shoes;
Vanzetti was a peddling man,
Pushed his fish cart with his
hands.
Sacco was born across the sea
Somewhere over in Italy;
Vanzetti was born of parents fine,
Drank the best Italian wine.
Sacco sailed the sea one day,
Landed up in Boston Bay;
Vanzetti sailed the ocean blue,
Landed up in Boston, too.
Sacco’s wife three children had,
Sacco was a family man;
Vanzetti was a dreaming man,
His book was always in his hand.”
~ Woody Guthrie
The Resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan:
 The Ku Klux Klan was a racist terrorist group founded in 1866 by ex-Confederate
soldiers and other Southerners opposed to Reconstruction after the Civil War
 In the waning years of Reconstruction the Klan disbanded
 Nearly 50 years later, in 1915, “Colonel” William Joseph Simmons, revived the Klan
after seeing D. W. Griffith’s film Birth of A Nation, which portrayed the Klansmen
as great heroes
 In his first official act, he climbed to the top of a local mountain and set a cross on
fire to mark the rebirth of the Klan
 In its second incarnation, the Klan moved beyond just targeting blacks, and
broadened its message of hate to include Catholics, Jews and foreigners
 The Klan promoted fundamentalism, devout patriotism and white supremacy




They blasted bootleggers, motion pictures and espoused a return to “clean” living
Appealing to Americans uncomfortable with the shifting nature of America from a
rural agricultural society to an urban industrial nation, the Klan attacked the elite,
urbanites and intellectuals
Membership in the Klan greatly increased in the 1920s
By the middle of the decade, estimates for national membership in this secret
organization ranged from three million to as high as eight million Klansmen
Democracy cannot thrive when it is not based on respect
for our fellow men…and women – those suffragists have
made me more conscious of being more inclusive!
The Teapot Dome Scandal:
 During the Twenties, Republicans regained the Presidency
 In general, Presidents Harding, Coolidge and Hoover supported laissez-faire
economic policies, with minimal interference in business activities
 President Warren Harding (1921 – 1923) captured the national spirit by calling for
a “return to normalcy”
 However, the Teapot Dome Scandal revealed that a high-ranking administration
official had been bribed to lease oil-rich government lands at Teapot Dome,
Wyoming, to businessmen
 The Teapot Dome Scandal was a scandal of the early 1920s surrounding the secret
leasing of federal oil reserves by the secretary of the interior, Albert Bacon Fall
 After President Warren G. Harding transferred supervision of the naval oil reserve
lands from the navy to the Department of the Interior in 1921, Fall secretly granted
to Harry F. Sinclair of the Mammoth Oil Company exclusive rights to the Teapot
Dome (Wyoming) reserves (April 7, 1922)
 He granted similar rights to Edward L. Doheny of Pan American Petroleum
Company for the Elk Hills and Buena Vista Hills reserves in California (1921–22)
 In return for the leases, Fall received large cash gifts and no-interest “loans”
I have said it before and I will
say it again: Corruption in
government harms government
by the people.
And as Abraham Lincoln said,
“No man has a good enough
memory to make a successful
liar.”
The Causes of the Great Depression:
 Overproduction: the 1920s saw the rapid introduction of many new products like
cars, radios and refrigerators
- Companies were soon producing more goods than people could afford to buy
 An uneven distribution of income: not all groups shared in the national prosperity –
many African Americans, Hispanics, Native American Indians, farmers and
industrial workers still faced hard times
 Speculation: in the 1920s, stocks soared in value – many people bought stocks on
margin (paying only a small percentage of a stock’s value while promising to pay the
rest later)
- During the years of business prosperity in the 1920s, the value of stock on the New
York stock market climbed steadily
- Many people bought stock “on margin,” investing a small amount of cash and
borrowing the rest to be paid back when the stock price went up, as everyone came
to believe it was bound to do
 For example, if a share of stock sold for $100, a buyer might put up $10 in
cash and borrow $90
 When the stock rose to, say, $120, he could sell, pay back the borrowed $90
(with interest), and still pocket a comfortable profit on his $10 investment
 But what if stock prices dropped?
 If the share he bought at $100 dropped to $80, he not only lost the $10
investment but could not pay back the full loan
 The investor lost the investment, the person from whom he borrowed lost,
and both were headed for bankruptcy
 As a result, many banks failed during the Great Depression
 Unsound banking practices
- The government failed to regulate effectively either the banking system or the
stock market – bankers often invested their depositors’ money in unsound
investments
- Many consumers were buying more than they could afford on credit – the
overextension of debt made the entire economy vulnerable
Banks loan out the money of savers to
borrowers. When borrowers default
on their loans or fail to pay back their
loans, banks lose money. If a bank
loses too much money, it can go
bankrupt! If a bank goes bankrupt, a
bank failure occurs and savers lose all
of their savings. Today, the
government insures or protects bank
deposits.
President Herbert Hoover’s Response to the Great Depression:
 Before President Herbert Hoover, there was President Calvin Coolidge (1923 –
1929) who symbolized old-fashioned values like honesty and thrift; Coolidge’s motto
embodied his philosophy: “The business of America is business.”
 President Herbert Hoover believed America’s achievement in raising living
standards was the result of a system in which individuals were given equal
opportunities, a free education, and a will to succeed
- This “rugged individualism,” as Hoover called it, spurred progress
 He strongly felt that government interference in business could threaten
the nation’s prosperity
 “Rugged individualism” was Hoover’s belief that individuals could
succeed on their own with minimal help from the government
 Hoover firmly believed that he could not act to control or infringe the
freedom enjoyed by business and business interests
 Hoover believed that prosperity depended on freedom
 Hoover also believed that the problems of poverty and unemployment
were best left to “voluntary organization and community service”
 He feared that federal relief programs would undermine individual
character by making recipients dependent on the government
 He continued to prioritize the concept of “rugged individualism” even in
the face of monumental economic catastrophe
“You cannot extend the
mastery of government over
the daily working life of the
people without, at the same
time, making it the master of
the people’s souls and
thought.”
~ President Herbert Hoover
The idea expressed in the
quotation is a basis for
President Hoover’s belief that
the problems of Depression
could best be solved by relying
mostly on private enterprises
and individuals.
The Smoot-Hawley Tariff:
 Raised U.S. tariffs to historically high levels in 1930
 The original intention behind the legislation was to increase the protection afforded
domestic farmers against foreign agricultural imports
 Massive expansion in agriculture outside of Europe during World War I led, with
the post-war recovery of European producers, to massive agricultural
overproduction during the 1920s


This in turn led to declining farm prices during the second half of the decade
During the 1928 election campaign, Republican presidential candidate Herbert
Hoover pledged to help the beleaguered farmer by, among other things, raising
tariff levels on agricultural products
 But once the tariff schedule revision process got started, it proved impossible to stop
 Calls for increased protection flooded in from industrial sector special interest
groups, and soon a bill meant to provide relief for farmers became a means to raise
tariffs in all sectors of the economy
 The Smoot-Hawley Tariff was more a consequence of the onset of the Great
Depression than an initial cause
 But while the tariff might not have caused the Depression, it certainly did not make
it any better
 It provoked a storm of foreign retaliatory measures
 Such policies contributed to a drastic decline in international trade
 For example, U.S. imports from Europe declined from a 1929 high of $1,334 million
to just $390 million in 1932, while U.S. exports to Europe fell from $2,341 million in
1929 to $784 million in 1932
 Overall, world trade declined by some 66% between 1929 and 1934
 More generally, Smoot-Hawley did nothing to foster trust and cooperation among
nations in either the political or economic realm during a perilous era in
international relations
The Dust Bowl:
 A series of droughts in the early 1930s dried up crops and topsoil, turning the soil
into dust
 Occurred during the drought years of the 1930s
 The dry weather began in the early 1930s and persisted through the early 1940s for
some areas, with the most intense drought years occurring in 1934 and 1936
 Heavy winds destroyed harvests and carried soil away in huge clouds of dust that
darkened their land
 Many farmers moved west to California
 As John Steinbeck wrote in his 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath: “And then the
dispossessed were drawn west – from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from
Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out, tractored out. Car-loads,
caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a hundred
thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry
and restless – restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do – to lift, to push, to pull,
to pick, to cut – anything, any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got
no place to live. Like ants scurrying for work, for food, and most of all for land.”
“Here comes the dust storm
Watch the sky turn blue
You better git out quick
Or it will smother you”
~ Flora Robertson
-Flora Robertson
The Bonus Army:
 As World War I drew to a close in 1918, millions of American veterans returned
home to the promise of a cash bonus — compensation for their overseas service
 There was a catch, though: The money would not be paid out until 1945
 Then, the Great Depression struck
 In 1932, a group of veterans in Portland, Oregon, led by a man named Walter
Waters, decided to go to Washington to lobby for early payment of their promised
bonus
 They called themselves the Bonus Army
 Veterans from all over the country began jumping on freight trains and heading for
the capital to join the Bonus Army
 The first Bonus Marchers arrived in Washington, D.C., on May 25, demanding
payment of their bonuses
 Within weeks, there were 20,000 veterans in town
 On June 15, the House of Representatives passed a bill to pay out the bonus but then
the Senate turned it down
 Officials in Washington expected that the Bonus Marchers would all go home
 But they didn’t
 Herbert Hoover was in the White House, and his administration began to panic
 On July 28, officials sent in the Washington police to evict the marchers
 The action was peaceful, until someone threw a brick, the police reacted with force,
and two bonus marchers were shot
 The situation quickly spiraled out of control, and the Hoover administration sent in
the Army
 The situation quickly spiraled out of control, and the Hoover administration sent in
the Army, led by Gen. Douglas MacArthur
A “Hooverville” was
a term for a
shantytown or an
area with poorly
made houses or
shacks during the
Great Depression.
These towns were
named Hoovervilles
because many
Americans believed
President Hoover was
not enacting enough
legislation to help
Americans during the
Great Depression.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal of the 1930s
Franklin Delano Roosevelt:
 The Governor of New York, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, easily defeated Hoover in
the Presidential election of 1932
 Roosevelt promised Americans a “New Deal,” to put them back to work
 The New Deal was a major turning point in American history
 It established the principle that the federal government bears the chief
responsibility for ensuring the smooth running of the American economy
 President Roosevelt saw that the Great Depression was a national emergency
 He believed the President’s task was to find a way for the economy to return to
prosperity
 The New Deal marked an end to the long-held view that government and the
economy should be separated
 The New Deal permanently increased the size and power of the federal government,
making it primarily responsible for managing the nation’s economy
Fireside Chats:
 While developing programs to help America emerge from the Great Depression,
Roosevelt also needed to calm the fears and restore the confidence of Americans and
to gain their support for the programs of the New Deal
 One of the ways FDR chose to accomplish this was through the radio, the most
direct means of access to the American people
 During the 1930s almost every home had a radio, and families typically spent
several hours a day gathered together, listening to their favorite programs
 Roosevelt called his radio talks about issues of public concern “Fireside Chats”
 Informal and relaxed, the talks made Americans feel as if President Roosevelt was
talking directly to them
 Roosevelt continued to use fireside chats throughout his presidency to address the
fears and concerns of the American people as well as to inform them of the positions
and actions taken by the U.S. government
Keynesian Economics:
 John Maynard Keynes was an economist
 As the worldwide depression became more severe, Keynes concluded that the freemarket capitalist system had no remedy for a long and deep economic decline
 Keynes argued that the government must save capitalism
 In 1932, Keynes began to argue publicly that the solution to mass unemployment
depended on more, not less, government spending.
 This would require the government to borrow money and temporarily run a deficit
“The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are
all dead.”
~ John Maynard Keynes (in response to the economy fixing itself)
New Deal Programs:
 As soon as President Roosevelt took office, he called Congress into special session
and pushed through legislation in his first 100 days in office that would have been
difficult to pass in less critical times
 Roosevelt explained the New Deal measures in terms of three R’s – Relief, Recovery,
and Reform.
 Relief measures were short-term actions to tide people over until the economy
recovered
- Over one-quarter of the nation’s workforce was unemployed
- There was no unemployment insurance
- Many people who were out of work had no food or shelter
- Roosevelt favored giving people emergency public jobs
 The Civilian Conservation Corps (1933) gave jobs to young people, such
as planting trees and cleaning up forests
o Members of the C.C.C. lived in camps and received free food
o Most of their pay was sent to their parents
 The Works Progress Administration (1935) created jobs by hiring artists,
writers and musicians to paint murals, write plays and compose music
o Both the C.C.C. and W.P.A. put Americans back to work
 Recovery measures were designed to restore the economy by increasing incentives to
produce and by rebuilding people’s purchasing power
- The National Recovery Administration (1933) asked businesses to voluntarily
follow codes which set prices, production limits and a minimum wage
 However, in 1935, the Supreme Court found the N.R.A. unconstitutional
- In the first Agricultural Adjustment Act (A.A.A.), the government paid farmers
to plant less in hope of increasing crop prices
 In 1936, the Supreme Court declared the A.A.A. unconstitutional
 In 1938, the second A.A.A. succeeded in raising farm prices by having the
government buy farm surpluses and sorting them until prices went up
 Reform measures were aimed at remedying defects in the structure of the nation’s
economy, to ensure another depression would never strike again
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC):
1- Important reform legislation during the New Deal included the Federal Deposit
Insurance Corporation or F.D.I.C. in 1933
2- The F.D.I.C. insured bank deposits so that people would not lose their savings in
case a bank failed
“No country, however rich, can afford the waste of its
human resources. Demoralization caused by vast
unemployment is our greatest extravagance. Morally,
it is the greatest menace to our social order.”
~ Franklin Delano Roosevelt
The Securities and Exchange Commission:
 The Securities and Exchange Commission (1934) was created to oversee the
operations of the stock market, prevent fraud, and guard against another stock
market collapse
The National Labor Relations Act:
 The National Labor Relations Act (1935) was often called the Wagner Act
 It gave workers the right to form unions and to bargain collectively with their
employers
The Social Security Act:
 The Social Security Act (1935) provided workers with unemployment insurance, old
age pensions, and insurance if they died early
Schechter Poultry Corp. v. US:
 In 1935, in Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, the Supreme Court declared
unconstitutional a central piece of the New Deal
 In reviewing the conviction of a poultry company for breaking the Live Poultry
Code, the Court held that the code violated the Constitution’s separation of powers
because it was written by agents of the president with no genuine congressional
direction
 The Court also held that much of the code exceeded the powers of Congress because
the activities it policed were beyond what Congress could constitutionally regulate
 The Live Poultry Code, written and promulgated by the Roosevelt administration in
1934, was a part of the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), a law passed by
Congress to regulate companies as a means to combat the Great Depression
 Section 3 of NIRA gave the president authority to approve such “codes of unfair
competition”
 Roosevelt’s poultry code fixed the maximum number of hours a poultry employee
could work, imposed a minimum wage for poultry employees, and banned certain
methods of “unfair competition”
 By unanimous vote, the Supreme Court held that Congress had exceeded its
authority by delegating too much legislative power to the president
The Constitution is the supreme law of the land!
And separation of powers must exist even in a
time of crisis.
Court Packing Scheme:
 In 1937, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt announced a controversial plan to
expand the Supreme Court to as many as 15 judges, allegedly to make it more
efficient
 Critics immediately charged that Roosevelt was trying to “pack” the court and thus
neutralize Supreme Court justices hostile to his New Deal.
- During the previous two years, the high court had struck down several key
pieces of New Deal legislation on the grounds that the laws delegated an
unconstitutional amount of authority to the executive branch and the federal
government
- In April, however, before the bill came to a vote in Congress, two Supreme
Court justices came over to the liberal side and by a narrow majority upheld as
constitutional the National Labor Relations Act and the Social Security Act
 The majority opinion acknowledged that the national economy had grown to
such a degree that federal regulation and control was now warranted
 Roosevelt’s reorganization plan was thus unnecessary, and in July the Senate
struck it down by a vote of 70 to 22
 Soon after, Roosevelt had the opportunity to nominate his first Supreme Court
justice, and by 1942 all but two of the justices were his appointees
You can’t
change the rules
just because you
don’t like the
outcome of the
game.
Congress of Industrial Organizations:
 Union presidents, including John L. Lewis of the United Mine Workers, founded the
Committee for Industrial Organization in November 1935
 The CIO was a union for unskilled and semiskilled factory workers


The committee formalized its break with the AFL when it held its first convention in
1938, renaming itself the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO)
In 1955, the CIO merged with the AFL to form the AFL-CIO.
Fair Labor Standards Act:
 Also called Wages and Hours Act
 The first act in the United States prescribing nationwide compulsory
federal regulation of wages and hours and signed in 1938
 The law, applying to all industries engaged in interstate commerce, established a
minimum wage of 25 cents per hour for the first year, to be increased to 40 cents
within seven years
 No worker was obliged to work, without compensation at overtime rates, more than
44 hours a week during the first year, 42 the second year, and 40 thereafter
 Ended oppressive child labor
The Wagner Act:
 1935
 Established the federal government as the regulator and ultimate arbiter of labor
relations
 Set up a permanent, three-member National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) with
the power to protect the right of most workers (with the notable exception of
agricultural and domestic laborers) to organize unions of their own choosing and to
encourage collective bargaining
 Collective bargaining occurs when representatives of the workers and bosses meet
to discuss wages and working conditions
- Talks between an employer and the leaders of a union about how much a group
of workers will be paid, how many hours they will work, etc.
 The act prohibited employers from engaging in such unfair labor practices as
setting up a company union and firing or otherwise discriminating against workers
who organized or joined unions
 Under the Wagner Act, the NLRB was given the power to order elections whereby
workers could choose which union they wanted to represent them
 The act prohibited employers from refusing to bargain with any such union that
had been certified by the NLRB as being the choice of a majority of employees
“All government, indeed every human benefit
and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent
act, is founded on compromise and barter.”
~ Edmund Burke
Father Charles Coughlin:
 Catholic priest
 Used the radio to broadcast his opposition to the New Deal
 Expressed reactionary views that were increasingly anti-New Deal and anti-Semitic
 He turned on Roosevelt, and a magazine he had founded, Social Justice, carried
shrill attacks on communism, Wall Street, and Jews
 The magazine was banned from the mails for violating the Espionage Act and
ceased publication in 1942
 In the same year, the Catholic hierarchy ordered him to stop broadcasting
Huey Long:
 Governor of Louisiana in 1928 and U.S. Senator in 1930
 He ruled Louisiana as a virtual dictator, but he also initiated massive public works
programs, improved public education and public health, and even established some
restrictions on corporate power in the state
 While Long was an early supporter of Franklin Roosevelt, by the fall of 1933, he
became critical of the New Deal
 In 1934 Long organized his own, alternative political organization, the Share-OurWealth Society, through which he advocated a populist program for redistributing
wealth through sharply graduated income and inheritance taxes
 As his national recognition (and ambitions) grew, he spoke with increasing
frequency to national radio audiences
 No politician in this era – except Roosevelt himself and Long’s sometime ally, Father
Charles Coughlin – used radio as frequently and effectively
“I’m for the poor man – all poor men, black and white, they all gotta have a
chance. They gotta have a home, a job, and a decent education for their
children. ‘Every man a king’ – that’s my slogan.” ~ Huey P. Long
World War II, 1941-1945
The Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928:
 In the 1920s the U.S. returned to its traditional policy of isolationism
 America refused to join the League of Nations, passed high tariffs on European
goods, and restricted European immigration
 But there were some exceptions to this trend
 In 1921, Americans hosted the Washington Naval Conference, in which major
powers agreed to limit the size of their navies
 In 1928, the U.S. joined 61 nations in signing the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact,
renouncing the use of war as an instrument of national policy
 The Kellogg-Briand Pact renounced war as a form of national policy
The Stimson Doctrine:
 In 1931, a dispute near the Chinese city of Mukden (Shenyang) precipitated events
that led to the Japanese conquest of Manchuria
 In response, U.S. Secretary of State Henry Stimson issued what would become
known as the Stimson Doctrine, stating that the United States would not recognize
any agreements between the Japanese and Chinese that limited free commercial
relations in the region
 The U.S. refused to recognize aggressive Japanese conquests in China
The Good Neighbor Policy:
 Presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt rejected Theodore
Roosevelt’s “Big Stick” policy and tried to improve relations with Latin America
 Under the “Good Neighbor Policy,” the U.S. agreed not to interfere in the internal
affairs of Latin American nations
The Causes of World War II:
 Fascist aggression
 The Great Depression led to the rise of fascist dictatorships in Nazi Germany and
Fascist Italy
 Nazi aggression was the major cause of World War II
- In 1938, Hitler demanded the Sudetenland – a part of Czechoslovakia
- At the Munich Conference, British and French leaders gave in to Hitler’s
demand in order to avoid war
- This policy of giving in to the demands of a potential enemy is known as
appeasement
- Appeasement only encouraged Hitler to make further territorial demands
- In 1939, Hitler made new demands in Poland
- Fearing Hitler intended to dominate Europe, Britain and France refused to give
in
- When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Britain and France felt they had no
choice but to declare war
 The League of Nations, the international peace-keeping organization formed at the
end of World War I, proved incapable of preventing another war
- The idea of collective security – that peaceful nations would band together to
stop aggressors – failed because major powers like the United States and the
Soviet Union had refused to join the League of Nations
Ultimately, the policy
of appeasement failed
to prevent war.
The Neutrality Acts of 1935, 1937, and 1939:
 As tensions rose in Europe, Congress passed a series of acts to keep the country out
of war
 America had been drawn into World War I when German submarines attacked
American ships
 To avoid a repetition of this problem, the Neutrality Acts prohibited Americans
from selling arms to warring nations or traveling on their ships.
“Cash and Carry”:
 The Neutrality Act of 1937 did contain one important concession to President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt: belligerent nations were allowed, at the discretion of the
President, to acquire any items except arms from the United States, so long as they
immediately paid for such items and carried them on non-American ships – the socalled “cash-and-carry” provision
 Since vital raw materials such as oil were not considered “implements of war,” the
“cash-and-carry” clause would be quite valuable to whatever nation could make use
of it
 Roosevelt had engineered its inclusion as a deliberate way to assist Great Britain
and France in any war against the Axis Powers, since he realized that they were the
only countries that had both the hard currency and ships to make use of “cash-andcarry.”
The Selective Service Act of 1940:
 In 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Selective Service and Training
Act, which required all male citizens between the ages of 26 and 35 to register for
the military draft
 The act had been passed by Congress 10 days earlier
 America was not yet involved in the Second World War, but Roosevelt considered it
a prudent step to train American men for military service in case the U.S. would
have to defend itself against the growing threat of fascist and militarist regimes in
Europe and Japan
 At the time, Poland, Holland, Belgium, France and Norway had been invaded by
Germany and word had begun to spread of Hitler’s persecution of Jews and other
minorities in concentration camps
 It appeared that Great Britain would be next on the list of Nazi casualties
 From July 1940, Hitler’s Air Force bombarded England and the German navy
blockaded the island nation in preparation for a planned invasion
- Fortunately, the valiant Brits prevented this from occurring
I agree with Woody Guthrie.
Fascism is a harmful philosophy.
Just say “No” to Fascism!
The Destroyers for Bases Deal of 1940:
 Britain had purchased US small arms in the summer of 1940, but needed an
alternative to cash transactions
 The Roosevelt administration came up with the straight trade concept, and in
September 1940, Roosevelt signed the Destroyers-for-bases Agreement
 This gave 50 US naval destroyers - generally referred to as the 1,200-ton type - to
Britain in exchange for the use of naval and air bases in eight British possessions: on
the Avalon Peninsula, the coast of Newfoundland and on the Great Bay of Bermuda
 During negotiations, US access to bases was extended to include several locations in
the Caribbean
Lend-Lease Act of 1941:
 Americans hoped to avoid war but began making preparations in case they were
dragged into the conflict
 Congress increased spending on the army and navy
 In 1940, just after Nazi Germany defeated France, Congress enacted the first
peacetime draft
 Roosevelt pushed through the Lend-Lease Act to sell, lease, or lend war materials to
“any country whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United
States.”
 Under this act, the United States gave more than 450 million to Britain
 American battleships began protecting British ships crossing the Atlantic
 In 1941, Roosevelt told Americans he hoped in the future to establish a world based
on “Four Freedoms:” freedom of speech and expression, freedom of religion,
freedom from want, and freedom from fear
 Roosevelt and Churchill signed the Atlantic Charter later that year, laying the
foundation for the future United Nations.
Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941:
 Japanese leaders conquered Indonesia to obtain oil for their war effort
 Realizing that such a move might bring America into war, they decided to attack the
United States first
 Japanese leaders believed that Americans would quickly tire of the war and
negotiate a compromise peace – leaving Japan in control of East Asia
 On December 7, 1941, Japanese airplanes attacked the U.S. Pacific fleet stationed in
Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, destroying many ships and causing a large number of deaths
 The next day, President Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan
 Four days later, Germany and Italy, allies of Japan (the Axis Powers), declared war
on the United States; Americans were now engaged in a war on two fronts – in
Europe and in the Pacific
“No man can tame a tiger into a kitten by stroking it. There can be no appeasement
with ruthlessness. There can be no reasoning with an incendiary bomb. We know
now that a nation can have peace with the Nazis only at the price of total surrender.”
~ Franklin Delano Roosevelt
The War at Home:
 The war effort transformed the home front
 A draft was implemented and all men between 18 and 45 were liable for military
service
 For the first time, women could enlist
 One out of every ten Americans served in the war
 The draft and the expansion of production brought a final end to the Great
Depression
 Women, African Americans, and other minorities filled the gap in available jobs, as
other workers went to war
 The war cost Americans $350 billion – ten times the cost of World War I
 Americans bought war bonds, to be repaid with interest by the government after the
war
 The United States changed from a creditor to a debtor nation
D-Day:
 Normandy Invasion, also called Operation Overlord
 During World War II, the Allied invasion of western Europe, which was launched
on June 6, 1944 (the most celebrated D-Day of the war), with the simultaneous
landing of U.S., British, and Canadian forces on five separate beachheads
in Normandy, France
 By the end of August 1944 all of northern France was liberated, and the invading
forces reorganized for the drive into Germany, where they would eventually meet
with Soviet forces advancing from the east to bring an end to the Nazi Reich
 On June 6, 1944, D-Day, United States, British and Canadian forces under the
supreme command of General Dwight David Eisenhower invaded the Normandy
peninsula of France
 After heavy fighting on the beaches, the United States Third Army under command
of the flamboyant General George S. Patton broke out at St. Lo
 The French capital, Paris, was captured on August 25
 Another Allied army invaded southern France on August 15
 By September, American forces entered Germany
 In April of 1945, Hitler had committed suicide
 The next months, the Soviets captured Berlin and Germany surrendered.
“This operation is not being planned with
any alternatives. This operation is planned
as a victory, and that’s the way it’s going to
be. We’re going down there, and we’re
throwing everything we have into it, and
we’re going to make it a success.”
~ General Dwight D Eisenhower
The Battle of the Bulge:
 The last major German offensive on the Western Front during World War II
 An unsuccessful attempt to push the Allies back from German home territory
 The “bulge” refers to the wedge that the Germans drove into the Allied lines
 But the Germans were halted by Christmas by the inadequacy of German supplies
and by Allied resistance
 So, although initially successful, the battle ended up being a decisive Allied victory,
depleting an already weakened German army as both valuable reserves and
equipment were lost
V-E Day:
 Tuesday, May 8, 1945 was Victory in Europe (VE) Day
 It marked the formal conclusion of Hitler’s war
 With it came the end of six years of misery, suffering, courage and endurance across
the world
It is
important
to
remember
the brave
men and
women
who fought
to stop
fascist
aggression
and foster
democracy
in the
world!
The Yalta Conference:
 February 4 – 11, 1945)
 Major World War II conference of the three chief Allied leaders, Pres. Franklin D.
Roosevelt of the United States, Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Great Britain,
and Premier Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union, which met at Yalta in Crimea to
plan the final defeat and occupation of Nazi Germany
 It had already been decided that Germany would be divided into occupied zones
administered by U.S., British, French, and Soviet forces



Agreed that major war criminals would be tried before an international court,
which subsequently presided at Nuremberg
How to deal with the defeated or liberated countries of Eastern Europe was the
main problem discussed at the conference
The Americans and the British generally agreed that future governments of the
Eastern European nations bordering the Soviet Union should be “friendly” to the
Soviet regime while the Soviets pledged to allow free elections in all territories
liberated from Nazi Germany
Sadly,
those “free
elections”
did not
really
happen!
Island Hopping:
 In these same years, the United States was also at war with Japan
 At first, the Japanese made significant gains in Asia and the Pacific
 In 1943, the tide began to turn
 The United States regained naval superiority in the Pacific, and the American forces
began “island-hopping” – liberating Pacific islands from Japanese control, one
island at a time
The Dropping of the Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki:
 Meanwhile, American scientists developed the atomic bomb, which was ready for
use by 1945
 With Germany defeated, America was preparing to invade Japan
 Harry Truman, who had become President when Roosevelt died, feared an invasion
of Japan might lead to a million American casualties
 Truman decided to use the atomic bomb rather than risk sustaining such losses
 On August 6, 1945, an atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima
 Three days later, Nagasaki was bombed
 Japan surrendered after the second explosion, when U.S. leaders agreed to allow the
Japanese emperor to remain on his throne
A Thousand Paper Cranes. Peace on Earth and in the Heavens.
“Inscribed, in the handwriting of Yukawa, on the surface of the bell inside the
Children’s Peace Monument at Hiroshima, Japan. The crane is a symbol of
longevity and happiness in Japan. The monument to mourn all the children
whose death was caused by the atomic bomb was inspired by 12-year-old
Sadako Sasaki, who believed that if she could fold 1000 paper cranes she
would be cured of the leukemia that resulted from her exposure to the
radiation of the atomic bomb when two years old. She died before completing
them.” ~ Hideki Yukawa
“Rosie the Riveter”:
 American women entered the workforce in unprecedented numbers during World
War II, as widespread male enlistment left gaping holes in the industrial labor force
 Between 1940 and 1945, the female percentage of the U.S. workforce increased from
27 percent to nearly 37 percent, and by 1945 nearly one out of every four married
women worked outside the home
 “Rosie the Riveter,” star of a government campaign aimed at recruiting female
workers for the munitions industry, became perhaps the most iconic image of
working women during the war
Women
helped
win the
Second
World
War!
Internment Camps for Japanese Americans:
 Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, President
Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which permitted the military to






circumvent the constitutional safeguards of American citizens in the name of
national defense
The order set into motion the exclusion from certain areas, and the evacuation and
mass incarceration of 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry living on the West
Coast, most of who were U.S. citizens or legal permanent resident aliens
These Japanese Americans, half of whom were children, were incarcerated for up to
4 years, without due process of law or any factual basis, in bleak, remote camps
surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards
They were forced to evacuate their homes and leave their jobs; in some cases family
members were separated and put into different camps
President Roosevelt himself called the ten facilities “concentration camps”
Some Japanese Americans died in the camps due to inadequate medical care and
the emotional stresses they encountered
Several were killed by military guards posted for allegedly resisting orders
Korematsu v. United States:
 In Korematsu v. United States (December 18, 1944), the U.S. Supreme Court upheld
the conviction of Fred Korematsu – a son of Japanese immigrants who was born in
Oakland, California – for having violated an exclusion order requiring him to
submit to forced relocation during World War II
 The Court upheld the relocations of Japanese Americans during the Second World
War
 However, more recently, the U.S. Congress apologized for these forced relocations
Discrimination is
wrong! Japanese
Americans are
American
citizens.
The Nuremberg Trials:
 The Nuremberg Trials were a series of trials held in Nuremberg, Germany in 1945 –
1946, in which former Nazi leaders were indicted and tried as war criminals by the
International Military Tribunal
 The indictment lodged against them contained four counts: (1) crimes against peace
(i.e., the planning, initiating, and waging of wars of aggression in violation of
international treaties and agreements), (2) crimes against humanity (i.e.,
exterminations, deportations, and genocide), (3) war crimes (i.e., violations of the
laws of war), and (4) “a common plan or conspiracy to commit” the criminal acts
listed in the first three counts
 During the war, Hitler had murdered millions of European Jews and others in the
Holocaust
 The liberation of concentration camps revealed the full extent of Nazi brutality
 The Allies put Nazi leaders on trial for “crimes against humanity” in Nuremberg
 Those on trial claimed they were only following orders
 Many were found guilty and were hanged or imprisoned
 The Nuremberg Trials established that individuals are responsible if they commit
atrocities, even during war
Individuals are responsible if they
commit atrocities, even during war.
The Occupation of Japan:
 The occupation of Japan at the end of World War II transformed Japan’s
government and society
 General Douglas MacArthur, who commanded the Allied forces in the Pacific, was
assigned the task of rebuilding and reforming post-war Japan
 Under his leadership, Japan’s overseas empire was taken away, and military leaders
were tried and punished
 Japan renounced nuclear weapons and waging war
 The country was forbidden from having a large army or navy
 A new constitution in 1947 made Japan a democracy
Zoot Suit Riots:
 The Zoot Suit Riots were influenced by the 1942 Sleepy Lagoon Trial that fostered
an atmosphere of hate and prejudice towards the Mexican American community
 In 1943, conflict broke out on the streets of Los Angeles between servicemen and
young Pachucos and Pachucas (young Mexican-Americans having a taste for stylish
clothing, a special jargon and usually belonging to a neighborhood gang)
 During the riots which broke out on May 31, 1943 in Los Angeles, servicemen
targeted Pachuco youth wearing zoot suits, who were all underage youth too young
to be drafted by the service
 Zoot-suiters were beaten while the police watched

Servicemen physically beat zoot-suiters, stripped them of their zoot suits, cut their
duck tails and destroyed their clothing as the Los Angeles Police Department stood
by and watched
Bracero Program:
 In 1942, facing labor shortages caused by World War II, the United States initiated
a series of agreements with Mexico to recruit Mexican men to work on U.S. farms
and railroads
 These agreements became known as the bracero program
 Bracero is a term used in Mexico for a manual laborer
 Mexican peasants were hard-working, highly skilled agricultural laborers
 As a result of the Bracero Program, thousands of impoverished Mexicans
abandoned their rural communities and headed north to work as braceros
The Twenty-Second Amendment:
 Effectively limiting to two terms, the number of terms an individual may serve as
president of the United States
 Ratified in 1951
 “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no
person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two
years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to
the office of the President more than once.”
Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956:
 Popularly known as the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956, the
Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 established an interstate highway system in the
United States
 The movement behind the construction of a transcontinental superhighway started
in the 1930s when President Franklin D. Roosevelt expressed interest in the
construction of a network of superhighways that would provide more jobs
 But with America on the verge of joining the war in Europe, the time for a massive
highway program had not arrived
 When President Dwight D. Eisenhower took office in January 1953, however, the
states had only completed 6,500 miles of the system improvements
 During World War II, Eisenhower saw the German advantage that resulted from
their autobahn highway network, and he also noted the enhanced mobility of the
Allies, on those same highways, when they fought their way into Germany
 In the act, the interstate system was expanded to 41,000 miles
 The pattern of community development in America was fundamentally altered and
was henceforth based on the automobile
“President Eisenhower… gave the nation its biggest construction project, the huge
interstate-highway program that changed the shape of American society and made
possible the expansion of the suburban middle class.” ~ James M. Perry
The Beat Generation:
 A literary group – also known as the Beats or Beatniks – that flourished from the
mid-1950s until the early 1960s
 Its most prominent members were the novelist Jack Kerouac and the poets Allen
Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gary Snyder, and Gregory Corso
 The group was mainly located in San Francisco and in Greenwich Village, New
York City
 Much Beat poetry was published by Ferlinghetti's “City Lights” imprint, and his
“City Lights” bookstore in San Francisco was an important meeting-place for the
group
 Beat poetry evolved during the 1940s in both New York City and on the west coast,
although San Francisco became the heart of the movement in the early 1950s
 Interested in changing consciousness and defying conventional writing
 Battled against social conformity and literary tradition
My personal favorite is Gary Synder’s Smokey the Bear Sutra. I will only
provide the first stanza; you can find the rest:
“Once in the Jurassic about 150 million years ago,
the Great Sun Buddha in this corner of the Infinite
Void gave a Discourse to all the assembled elements
and energies: to the standing beings, the walking beings,
the flying beings, and the sitting beings -- even grasses,
to the number of thirteen billion, each one born from a
seed, assembled there: a Discourse concerning
Enlightenment on the planet Earth.”
The Sunbelt:
 A region comprising 15 southern states in the United States and extending from
Virginia and Florida in the southeast through Nevada in the southwest, and also
including southern California
 Between 1970 and 1990, the South grew in population by 36 percent and the West
by 51 percent, both well above the national average
 Large in-migration, along with a high birth rate and a decline in out-migration, all
contributed to rapid growth of both the Sun Belt’s population and manufacturing
activities
 Improvements in transportation and communications, abundant air conditioning in
summer, and a favorable winter climate are attractive forces for retirees as well as
workers
Rock and Roll:
 A style of popular music that originated in the United States in the mid-1950s and
that evolved by the mid-1960s





The roots of rock and roll lay in African American Blues and Gospel music
As the Great Migration brought many African Americans to the cities of the north,
the sounds of rhythm and blues attracted suburban teens
Due to segregation and racist attitudes, however, none of the greatest artists of the
genre could get much airplay
Disc jockey Alan Freed began a rhythm-and-blues show on a Cleveland radio
station; soon his audience grew and Freed coined the term “rock and roll”
Elvis Presley was an early example of a rock and roll singer who managed to
successfully merge African American rhythm-and-blues, gospel and country music
into a rock and roll sound
The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947:
 Enacted over the veto of Pres. Harry S. Truman; Amended much of the pro-union
Wagner Act of 1935
 A variety of factors, including the fear of Communist infiltration of labor unions,
the tremendous growth in both membership and power of unions, and a series of
large-scale strikes, contributed to an anti-union climate in the United States
 Preserved the rights of workers to organize and to bargain collectively
 But also guaranteed employees the right not to join unions (outlawing the closed
shop)
 Required unions to give 60 days’ advance notification of a strike
 Authorized 80-day federal injunctions when a strike threatened to imperil national
health or safety
 Narrowed the definition of unfair labor practices; specified unfair union practices;
restricted union political contributions; and required union officers to deny under
oath any Communist affiliations
The United Nations:
 The United Nations is an international peacekeeping organization
 The name “United Nations” was coined by United States President Franklin D.
Roosevelt in January 1942 during the Second World War
 The forerunner of the United Nations was the League of Nations, an organization
conceived in similar circumstances during the first World War, and established in
1919 under the Treaty of Versailles “to promote international cooperation and to
achieve peace and security”
 The League of Nations ceased its activities after failing to prevent World War II
 The United Nations officially came into existence in October 1945
 The United Nations is an association of independent countries that have agreed to
work together to prevent and end wars (collective security)
 The UN also attempts to improve social conditions by promoting cooperation,
economic development, public health, conservation, and human rights
“More than ever before in human history, we share a common destiny. We can
master it only if we face it together. And that, my friends, is why we have the
United Nations.” ~ Kofi Annan
The Cold War, 1945 - 1991
The Cold War:
 The end of World War II left the United States and Soviet Union as two
superpowers in command of the world
 The U.S. had tremendous economic power and control of the atomic bomb
 The Soviet Union had the world’s largest army, which occupied most of Eastern
Europe
 Although allies during the war, these two superpowers soon became rivals in the
“Cold War”
 The war was “cold” only in the sense that, because of nuclear weapons, the two
superpowers never engaged one another in open warfare
 The roots of the Cold War lay in competing ideological systems
 The United States wanted to spread its democratic capitalist system
 The Soviet Union wanted to spread its Communist system
 It was inevitable that these superpowers would soon clash
Two famous Winston Churchill
Quotes regarding the Cold War:
“From Stettin in the Baltic to
Triesete in the Adriatic, an iron
curtain has descended across the
Continent.”
“Socialism would gather all
power to the supreme party and
party leaders, rising like stately
pinnacles above their vast
bureaucracies of civil servants no
longer servants, no longer civil.”
The “Iron Curtain”:
 When Stalin refused to allow free elections in Poland and Truman refused to share
the secrets of the atomic bomb, the “Cold War” began in earnest
 Instead of withdrawing, the Soviet army continued to occupy Eastern Europe
 Stalin put Communist puppet governments in power in all of Eastern Europe,
making these countries Soviet “satellites”

As if an “Iron Curtain” had fallen between Eastern and Western Europe, contact
between Eastern Europe and Western Europe was limited over the next forty years.
“By order Joe” refers to
Joseph Stalin, the
leader of the USSR.
And the man trying to
look under the Iron
Curtain is Winston
Churchill.
The Truman Doctrine:
 One of the most significant events illustrating the separation between the Soviet
Union and its former allies occurred in Greece
 In some analyses, it is noted as the first event of the Cold War
 It was precipitated by the economic situation of Western Europe, which was
deteriorating rapidly
 In 1947, England announced she could no longer support the Greek government the
English had been subsidizing
 A civil war was raging in Greece between the government and Communist forces
 President Truman decided Greece and Turkey should be helped
 Announcing the Truman Doctrine, he asked Congress for funds to aid Greece and
Turkey, replacing the aid from England
 The Truman Doctrine declared the United States would aid any free peoples who
resisted armed minorities attempting to overthrow an established government
 With this support from the United States, the Greek government defeated the
Communist guerrillas
 Throughout the conflict, there was no evidence of direct Soviet support for the
Greek Communists
 The acceptance of the Truman Doctrine illustrates the fear of communism, an
important factor in Cold War decisions
The Truman Doctrine declared the United States would aid any free peoples
who resisted armed minorities attempting to overthrow an established
government. The Truman Doctrine vowed to stop the spread of communism.
Containment:
 American leaders responded to the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe by
developing the policy of containment
 Under this policy, American leaders would not attempt to overturn Communism
where it already existed, but resolved to prevent Communism from spreading to
new areas
Why did the
U.S. want to
stop the spread
of communism
to new areas?
Communism is
anti-democratic
and antiprivate
property.
Truman’s Fair Deal:
 A “Fair Deal” is what President Harry Truman called his plan for America
 He announced it in a speech on January 5, 1949
 His Fair Deal recommended that all Americans have health insurance, that the
minimum wage (the lowest amount of money per hour that someone can be paid) be
increased, and that, by law, all Americans be guaranteed equal rights
 Truman’s plans were not popular with the members of Congress
 They rejected his plans for national health insurance though they did raise the
minimum wage
The Marshall Plan:
 U.S. aid to rebuilt war-torn Europe
 Was designed to aid the recovery of the economies of Western European nations still
suffering from the war
 The Marshall Plan, named for President Truman’s Secretary of State, George C.
Marshall, who had served as Chief of Staff of the United States Army during World
War II, revitalized the European economy
 In doing so it provided one example of a “counter force” to the Soviets since
capitalist or socialist prosperity in Western Europe reduced the attractiveness of
communism as an economic system
 Under George Marshall’s original invitation, Eastern European nations could have
joined the Marshall Plan, but none did so at the insistence of the Soviet Union
Berlin Airlift:
 In 1948, the French, British and Americans decided to merge their occupation zones
of Germany into a single West German state
 As a result, two separate German nations emerged after World War II –
Democratic West Germany and Communist East Germany
 The Soviets reacted to this merging of the French, British, and American sectors of
Germany into West Germany by announcing a blockade of West Berlin, closing all
highway and railroad links to the West
 Again the Soviets reacted to this merging by closing all highway and railroad links
to West Berlin
 The city of Berlin was divided because it was too significant of a city for the West or
the Soviets to completely control
 Thus, there was a West Berlin and an East Berlin but the city of Berlin was located
in Communist East Germany
 By blockading the roads into West Berlin, the Soviets hoped to starve the city and
ultimately take control of West Berlin
 However, the Western Allies refused to abandon Berlin, and began a massive airlift
to feed and supply the city
 Within a year, Stalin lifted the Soviet blockade
 The Berlin Airlift of 1948 was a success for the Western Allies
If you
blockade
the roads,
we will fly
over the
roads!
NATO:
 A military alliance established during the Cold War between the United States and
its Western European allies
 Following the policy of containment, NATO – the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization – was established in 1949 after the ending of the Berlin Blockade
 Breaking with the precedent set by George Washington of not signing peacetime
alliances, the United States joined NATO
 United States troops were to be stationed in Europe, guaranteeing that the United
States was prepared to counter a military thrust by the Soviet Union into Western
Europe
Warsaw Pact:
 The Soviet Union organized her allies into a military alliance, the Warsaw Pact, to
counter the strength of NATO
 The Warsaw Pact was an alliance between the Soviet Union and its Eastern
European Satellite Nations (Eastern European Communist Nations)
 Of course, the governments of Eastern Europe were created by the Soviet Union
McCarthyism:
 In 1950, Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy from Wisconsin used the national
mood of fear of communism to project himself onto the political stage
 In a speech he claimed he had the names of Communists in the State Department
 He never produced the names and kept changing the numbers, but he captured
national attention
 McCarthy then expanded his accusations to include scholars and the U.S. Army
 His accusations against the Army led to a Senate hearing
 It was televised nationally – the first Senate hearing to get such publicity
 McCarthy’s tactics at the hearing disgusted many viewers, who responded
favorably to the Army’s Chief legal counsel, Joseph Welch
 The hearings backfired
 No clear proof of misdeeds by the army was produced, so McCarthy’s case was
destroyed
 In 1954, the Senate censored McCarthy for discrediting the Senate
 Yet the Senate never condemned McCarthy for the methods he used, which violated
the Bill of Rights
 The term McCarthyism has come to mean making wild accusations without proof
 McCarthyism showed the extent of anxiety caused by the Cold War
“I do not agree
with what you
have to say, but
I'll defend to the
death your right
to say it.”
~ Voltaire
The Rosenbergs:
 In 1950, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were indicted for selling secret information
about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union
 The Rosenbergs were executed for treason, even though many Americans had
doubts about their guilt
 The Rosenbergs were the first American civilians to be executed for espionage and
the first to suffer that penalty during peacetime
“At the present moment, with little or no detail to hand, it is difficult for me to
make any comment, beyond the expression of horror at the shameless haste with
which the government appears to be pressing for our liquidation.”
~ Ethel Rosenberg
Sputnik:
 The Soviet launched Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite, in 1957
 The spacecraft was named Sputnik after the Russian word for satellite
 Many Americans were worried about the Soviets’ new rocket and satellite
technology
 Sputnik was some 10 times the size of the first planned U.S. satellite, which was not
scheduled to be launched until the next year
 The U.S. government, military, and scientific community were caught off guard by
the Soviet technological achievement, and their united efforts to catch up with the
Soviets heralded the beginning of the “space race”
 The first U.S. satellite, Explorer, was launched on January 31, 1958
 By then, the Soviets had already achieved another victory when they launched a dog
into orbit aboard Sputnik 2
 The Soviet space program went on to achieve a series of other space firsts in the
late 1950s and early 1960s: first man in space, first woman, first three men, first
spacewalk, first spacecraft to impact the moon, first to orbit the moon, first to
impact Venus, and first craft to soft-land on the moon
 However, the United States took a giant leap ahead in the space race in the late ‘60s
with the Apollo lunar-landing program, which successfully landed two Apollo
11 astronauts on the surface of the moon in July 1969
Francis Gary Powers:
 An American pilot
 Captured during the Cold War (in 1960) while on a reconnaissance flight deep
inside the Soviet Union
 The capture, known as the U-2 Affair, resulted in the cancellation by the Soviet
Union of a conference with the United States, Great Britain, and France
 After serving two years in prison, the Soviets exchanged Powers for captured Soviet
spy Rudolf Abel
Brinkmanship:
 A foreign policy practice in which one or both parties force their interaction to the
threshold of confrontation in order to gain an advantageous negotiation position
over the other
 The technique is characterized by aggressive risk-taking policy choices that court
potential disaster
 The origin of the word comes from a 1956 Life magazine interview with former U.S.
secretary of state John Foster Dulles, in which he claimed that, in diplomacy, “if you
are scared to go to the brink [of war], you are lost.”
“The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the
necessary art. If you cannot master it, you inevitably get into war.
If you try to run away from it, if you are scared to go to the brink,
you are lost.” ~ John Foster Dulles
The Hydrogen Bomb:
 On November 1, 1952, the United States conducted its first nuclear test of a fusion
device, or “hydrogen bomb,” at Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands
 After the Soviets successfully detonated an atomic bomb in 1949, President Harry S.
Truman ordered the creation of a hydrogen bomb project
 In this type of bomb, deuterium and tritium (hydrogen isotopes) are fused into
helium, thereby releasing energy
 There is no limit on the yield of this weapon
 Men like J. Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, and I.I. Rabi opposed its
development
 Fermi and Rabi wrote, “Since no limit exists to the destructiveness of this weapon,
its existence and knowledge of its construction is a danger to humanity as a whole.”
The Domino Theory:
 U.S. foreign policy theory during the Cold War
 Stated that if one country in a region fell to communism, then the surrounding
countries would follow in a domino effect
 The domino effect states that change in one nation will cause a similar change in
neighboring nations like a row of falling dominoes
 The domino theory was used to explain the need for American intervention in other
nations during the Cold War
The Eisenhower Doctrine:
 U.S. foreign-policy doctrine promulgated by President Dwight D. Eisenhower
 Promised military or economic aid to any Middle Eastern country in need of help
resisting communist aggression
 The doctrine was intended to check increased Soviet influence in the Middle East
 Eisenhower proclaimed, with the approval of Congress, that he would use the armed
forces to protect the independence of any Middle Eastern country seeking American
help
 The Eisenhower Doctrine represented no radical change in U.S. policy; the Truman
Doctrine had pledged similar support to Greece and Turkey 10 years earlier
 It was a continuation of the U.S. policy of containment of or resistance to any
extension of the Soviet sphere of influence
“These things stress the immense importance of the Middle East. If the nations of
that area should lose their independence, if they were dominated by alien forces
hostile to freedom, that would be both a tragedy for the area and for many other
free nations whose economic life would be subject to near strangulation. Western
Europe would be endangered just as though there had been no Marshall Plan, no
North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The free nations of Asia and Africa, too,
would be placed in serious jeopardy. And the countries of the Middle East would
lose the markets upon which their economies depend. All this would have the most
adverse, if not disastrous, effect upon our own nation’s economic life and political
prospects.” ~ President Dwight D. Eisenhower
The Suez Crisis:
 In 1956, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser announced the nationalization of
the Suez Canal Company, the joint British-French enterprise which had owned and
operated the Suez Canal since its construction in 1869
 To nationalize is the process of a government taking control of a company
 The British and French were outraged by the nationalization but the Egyptian
leader resented what he saw as European efforts to perpetuate colonial domination
 The U.S., concerned about dissociating the United States from European colonialism
– especially in light of its condemnation of Soviet intervention in Hungary the same
year – as well as the possibility that the Soviets would intervene to assist Nasser,
pressured Britain and France to accept the nationalization process
The Military Industrial Complex:
 In 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower gave the nation a warning about what he
believed was a threat to democracy – the military-industrial complex
 The military-industrial complex was a uniting of defense contractors and the armed
forces
 Eisenhower was worried about the costs of an arms race with the Soviet Union, and
the resources it would take from other areas – such as building hospitals and schools
 World War II and the ensuing Cold War had resulted in the development of a large
and powerful defense establishment
 Necessary though it might be, Eisenhower warned that this new military-industrial
complex could weaken or destroy the very institutions and principles it was
designed to protect
The Korean War:
 After World War II, Korea had been divided into two zones: a communist North
Korea and a non-Communist South Korea
 In 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea in an attempt to unify the Communists
 President Truman ordered U.S. forces to South Korea to resist the invasion
 When the Soviet Union boycotted the United Nations, the United States was able to
pass a resolution authorizing the operation of U.N. troops in South Korea
 Truman sent General Douglas MacArthur to Korea to command U.N. forces
 MacArthur landed his forces at Inchon and then attacked North Korea, bringing
the Chinese army into the war
 MacArthur wanted to recapture China from the Communists
 When Truman refused, MacArthur publicly criticized the President
 Truman fired MacArthur, successfully asserting civilian control over the military
 In 1952, Dwight Eisenhower was elected President after pledging to end the war
 An armistice was signed that left Korea, with minor border adjustments, divided as
it had been before the war
“I fired him because he wouldn’t respect the authority of the President. That’s
the answer to that. I didn’t fire him because he was a dumb…although he was,
but that’s not against the laws for generals.” ~ President Harry S. Truman
The New Frontier:
 In 1960, John F. Kennedy was elected President
 During his campaign, Kennedy had stated that America was “on the edge of a New
Frontier”
 In his inaugural speech, Kennedy spoke of “a new generation of Americans” and
during his presidency he seemed to be taking government in a new direction
 As part of his New Frontier, Kennedy proposed a tax cut to stimulate the economy,
the creation of Medicare, civil rights legislation, and increased aid to education
 However, only the tax cut was passed by Congress
The Peace Corps:
 Kennedy’s idealism and goals for America were illustrated in his inaugural address
and in his establishment of the Peace Corps
 The Peace Corps enrolled young Americans to work as volunteers on projects in
undeveloped countries to aid the people, not the government, of those countries
 In 1961, Kennedy issued an executive order establishing the Peace Corps
 The Peace Corps proved to be one of the most innovative and highly publicized Cold
War programs set up by the United States
 During the 1960s and 1970s, thousands of Americans served in dozens of nations in
Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East
 Working side by side with the people of these nations, Peace Corps volunteers
helped build sewer and water systems; constructed and taught in schools; assisted in
developing new crops and agricultural methods to increase productivity; and
participated in numerous other projects
 The program was judged a success in terms of helping to "win the hearts and
minds" of people in the underdeveloped world
The Alliance for Progress:
 President John F. Kennedy proposed a 10-year, multibillion-dollar aid program for
Latin America in 1961
 The president stressed the need for improved literacy, land use, industrial
productivity, health, and education in Latin America
 Objectives stated in the charter centered on the maintenance of democratic
government and the achievement of economic and social development
 Its success was marginal
 American congressmen were reluctant to provide funds for land redistribution
programs and Latin American elites directed most of the funds into projects that
enriched themselves but did little to help the vast majority of their people
“And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask
what you can do for your country.” ~ President John F. Kennedy
The Bay of Pigs Invasion:
 In 1959, a communist revolution occurred in Cuba which brought Fidel Castro to
power
 As Castro began to nationalize land and industry (government ownership of
property), many Cubans left the island nation and immigrated to the United States
 Cuban exiles in the United States longed to return to Cuba and overthrow the
Castro regime
 Some Cuban exiles were trained in the United States for an invasion of the island
 In 1961, these trained Cuban exiles invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs
 While the United States tacitly (without stating it) supported the invasion, President
Kennedy feared Soviet involvement and thus, refused to give the exiles air support
 The Cuban exiles were defeated by Castro’s army
 This was a major foreign policy failure for the Kennedy Administration
One product Cuba is known
for is the Cuban cigar. Notice
how in this political cartoon
the Cuban cigar explodes on
Kennedy! The Bay of Pigs
invasion was a foreign policy
failure for the Kennedy
Administration.
The Cuban Missile Crisis:
 In 1962, the United States discovered that Cuba was secretly trying to build bases
for Soviet nuclear missiles
 Kennedy imposed a naval blockade on Cuba and threatened to invade if the missiles
were not withdrawn
 For several days the world stood on the brink of nuclear war
 Soviet leader Khrushchev agreed to withdraw the missiles for a pledge that the
United States would not invade Cuba
 The Cuban Missile Crisis was a major foreign policy success for the Kennedy
Administration
The “dentist” in the political cartoon is Khrushchev, the
leader of the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The “patient” is Fidel Castro, the leader of communist
Cuba. The “dentist” is removing the “patient’s” teeth but
the teeth are actually missiles. The “dentist” says, “This
hurts me more than it hurts you!”
The Assassination of John F. Kennedy:
 Tragically, on a political campaign trip to Dallas, Texas, Kennedy was assassinated
on November 22, 1963
 Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested as the suspect but was shot and killed by Jack
Ruby while being transferred from jail
 The events of the assassination traumatized the nation and plunged it into a period
of grief and mourning
The Vietnam War:
 Vietnam was once a French colony in Indochina
 In 1954, the Vietnamese defeated the French
 At the Geneva Conference that followed, Vietnam was divided into two nations: A
communist North Vietnam and a non-communist South Vietnam
 The country was to be reunited after elections were held in 1956
 However, South Vietnamese leaders later refused to hold the elections because they
feared elections in the North would not be free.
 South Vietnamese Communists (Vietcong), with North Vietnamese support, began a
guerrilla war against the government of South Vietnam to reunify the nation under
the communist leadership in North Vietnam
 Kennedy, responding to requests from the South Vietnamese government for help,
sent aid and 16,000 military advisers to train the Vietnamese army to fight the
Vietcong
 U.S. leaders believed in the domino theory: they thought if South Vietnam fell to
Communism, other Southeast Asian countries might also fall, like a row of dominos
The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution:
 In 1964, President Johnson announced that the North Vietnamese had attacked U.S.
ships in the Gulf of Tonkin
 Congress gave the President power to stop this aggression
 Johnson used the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution to escalate the war, ordering massive
bombing raids of North Vietnam
 Lyndon Baines Johnson also sent more combat troops to South Vietnam
 Yet despite the large American force, the Vietcong launched the Tet Offensive in
South Vietnam in 1968, seizing many cities
 This convinced Americans that victory was far off
 The war grew increasingly unpopular, and opponents held anti-war rallies
“Television brought the brutality of war
into the comfort of the living room.
Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of
America -- not on the battlefields of
Vietnam.” ~ Marshall McLuhan
The Vietcong:
 Vietnamese Communists
 The military branch of the National Liberation Front (NLF)
 Commanded by the Central Office for South Vietnam which was located near the
Cambodian border
 For arms, ammunition and special equipment, the Vietcong depended on the Ho Chi
Minh trail
 Other needs were met inside South Vietnam
The Counterculture:
 In the 1960s, the baby boom (a marked rise in birthrate in the United States
immediately following the end of World War II) entered its teen years and
represented a larger force of young people than any prior generation in the history
of the United States
 As more and more children of middle-class Americans entered college, many
rejected the suburban conformity designed by their parents
 Long‐held values and norms of behavior seemed to break down, particularly among
the young
 Many college‐age men and women became political activists and active in the civil
rights and antiwar movements
 Other young people simply “dropped out” and separated themselves from
mainstream culture through their appearance and lifestyle
 Attitudes toward sexuality appeared to loosen, and women began to openly protest
the traditional roles of housewife and mother that society had assigned to them
The Hippies:
 During the 1960s, some individuals rejected mainstream American life
 The name derived from “hip,” a term applied to the Beats of the 1950s, such
as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac – the precursors of hippies
 Hippies felt alienated from middle-class society and its materialism and repression
 They favored long hair and casual dress; men grew beards; hippies wore beads
 Took up communal or cooperative living and adopted vegetarian diets
 Tended to be dropouts from society, forgoing regular jobs and careers, although
some developed small businesses that catered to other hippies
 Hippies advocated nonviolence and love, a popular phrase being “Make love, not
war,” for which they were sometimes called “flower children”
“If everyone demanded peace
instead of another television set,
then there would be peace.”
~ John Lennon
Kent State:
 In 1970, President Nixon appeared on television to announce the U.S. invasion of
Cambodia and the need to draft 150,000 more soldiers for the war in Vietnam
 This provoked massive anti-war protests on college campuses throughout the U.S.
 At Kent State University in Ohio, protesters launched a demonstration that included
setting fire to the ROTC building, prompting the governor of Ohio to dispatch 900
National Guardsmen to the campus
 During the protests, twenty-eight guardsmen opened fire on a crowd, killing four
students and wounding nine
Vietnamization:
 During Nixon’s term the war dragged on for five more years
 Under his “Vietnamization” policy, the South Vietnamese army gradually took over
the brunt of fighting, allowing U.S. forces to gradually withdraw
 “Vietnamization” was the process of transferring war responsibilities from the
Americans to the South Vietnamese during the Vietnam War
 In 1973, Nixon’s negotiators in Paris worked out a cease-fire agreement with the
North Vietnamese
 After the U.S. withdrew, fighting continued
 South Vietnam fell to Communist forces in 1975, and Vietnam was reunited under
Communist rule
The Nixon Doctrine:
 In 1969, President Nixon announced that the United States would expect its Asian
allies to tend to their own military defense
 The Nixon Doctrine clearly indicated Nixon’s determination to Vietnamization
 The Nixon Doctrine marked the formal announcement of the president’s
“Vietnamization” plan, whereby American troops slowly withdraw from Vietnam
and be replaced by South Vietnamese troops
 The policy declared by President Nixon in 1969 that the U.S. would
supply arms but not military forces to its allies in Asia and elsewhere
“The defense of freedom is everybody’s business not
just America’s business.
And it is particularly the responsibility of the people
whose freedom is threatened.
In the previous administration, we Americanized the
war in Vietnam. In this administration, we are
Vietnamizing the search for peace.”
~ President Richard M. Nixon
Détente:
 Détente was a relaxation of tensions during the Cold War
 After the Vietnam War and with the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the United
States and the Communist powers of the Soviet Union and China sought to reduce
tensions during the Cold War
 However, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 ended the period of Détente
The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan:
 In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to support a Communist government
that did not have the full support of the Afghani people
 With the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the period of Détente ended
 The United States secretly provided economic and military assistance to the
mujahidin, the anti-Communist, pro-Islamic forces in Afghanistan
Mikhail Gorbachev and the Collapse of the Soviet Union:
 The Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991
 The last Communist leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, had introduced
reforms that ultimately led to the collapse of communism and democratic elections
 Gorbachev’s policies of Glasnost (“Openness”) or allowing freedom of speech and
press as well as Perestroika (“Restructuring”) or allowing some elements of free
market capitalism encouraged Soviets to demand more freedoms
 With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, Americans
entered a new period in history
The Civil Rights Movement:
 One of the most important developments of the 1950s and 1960s was the struggle for
equal rights by African Americans
 The United States had once held out the promise of equality to African Americans at
the end of the Civil War but this promise had been cut short in the aftermath of
Reconstruction
 In the 1950s and 1960s, Americans began to demand equal rights
Jackie Robinson:
 In 1947, Jackie Robinson became the first African-American baseball player to
cross the “color line” and join the major leagues
 The next year, President Truman signed an executive order to desegregate the
armed forces and end racial discrimination in the hiring practices of the federal
government
“He led America by example. He reminded our people of what was right and
he reminded them of what was wrong. I think it can be safely said today
that Jackie Robinson made the United States a better nation.” ~ Gene Budig
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, 1954:
 In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (May 17, 1954), the Supreme Court
ruled unanimously (9–0) that racial segregation in public schools violated the
Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
- The Fourteenth Amendment prohibits states from denying equal protection of
the laws to any person within their jurisdictions
 The decision declared that separate educational facilities for white and African
American students were inherently unequal
 It thus rejected as inapplicable to public education the “separate but equal”
doctrine, advanced by the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
 Although the 1954 decision strictly applied only to public schools, it implied that
segregation was not permissible in other public facilities
 Considered one of the most important rulings in the court’s history, Brown v. Board
of Education of Topeka helped to inspire the American civil rights movement of the
late 1950s and 1960s
“We come then to the question
presented: Does segregation of
children in public schools solely
on the basis of race, even though
the physical facilities and other
‘tangible’ factors may be equal,
deprive the children of the
minority group of equal
educational opportunities? ? We
believe that it does.”
~ Brown v. Board of Education
The Little Rock Nine:
 In 1957, the city of Little Rock in Arkansas became the focus of world attention over
the right of nine black students to attend Central High School under a gradual
desegregation plan adopted by the city school board in accordance with the 1954
decision of the U.S. Supreme Court holding racial segregation in public schools
unconstitutional
 The result was a test of power between the federal and state governments
 Governor Orval E. Faubus ordered the state militia to prevent blacks from entering
the school, but the state was enjoined from interfering by U.S. President Dwight D.
Eisenhower, who sent federal troops to the city to maintain order
 Within the next decade, desegregation was accomplished in all public schools
“They used to call Arkansas ‘the land of opportunity,’
and black people said, ‘Opportunity for whom’ ...
Today, we can say ‘opportunity for all,’ and Arkansas
can be proud of this moment.” ~ Ernest Green
Rosa Parks:
 In Montgomery, Alabama, in December 1955, the Civil Rights Movement took a
new direction away from the courts and into direct action
 Rosa Parks, a tired seamstress who had worked for the N.A.A.C.P., refused to give
up her seat to a white man on the city’s segregated private bus line
 Local African-American leaders had been waiting for an opportunity to make a case
against segregated buses
 When Rosa Parks was arrested, they began court proceedings, and at the same time
a bus boycott was organized by African-Americans in Montgomery
 African-Americans, who far outnumbered whites as riders, stayed off the buses for
almost a year
 A young minister, Martin Luther King. Jr., emerged as the spokesperson for the
boycott and went on to become a leader and hero of the Civil Rights Movement until
his assassination in 1968
“[Rosa Parks’] life and her
brave actions reminded each
and every one of us of our
personal responsibilities to
stand up for what is right and
the central truth of the
American experience that our
greatness as a nation derives
from seemingly ordinary people
doing extraordinary things.” ~
Then Senator Barack Obama
The Montgomery Bus Boycott:
 After the arrest of Rosa Parks in 1955, the Montgomery bus boycott began
 It was a 13-month boycott of the busses that ended with the U.S. Supreme Court
ruling that segregation on public buses is unconstitutional
 The Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) coordinated the boycott, and its
president, Martin Luther King, Jr., became a prominent civil rights leader as
international attention focused on Montgomery
 The bus boycott demonstrated the potential for nonviolent mass protest to
successfully challenge racial segregation
 To boycott is to refuse to buy; in the case of the bus boycott, African Americans and
their supporters refused to ride the buses until segregation ended
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:
 Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968) was a Baptist minister and social activist who
played a key role in the American civil rights movement from the mid-1950s until
his assassination in 1968
 Inspired by the nonviolent actions and philosophy of Mohandas K. Gandhi, Dr.
King sought equality for African Americans, the economically disadvantaged and
victims of injustice through peaceful protest


He was the driving force behind important events in the Civil Rights Movement
such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the March on Washington, which helped
bring about such landmark legislation as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the
Voting Rights Act of 1965
Dr. King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and is remembered each year
on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a U.S. federal holiday since 1986
“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning
of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal.’
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves
and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of
brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with
the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed
into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where
they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their
character.” ~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Civil Disobedience:
 To intentionally break an unjust law and willingly face the consequences in order to
reveal the injustice of the law
 The refusal to comply with certain laws or to pay taxes and fines, as a peaceful form
of political protest
 Mohandas K. Gandhi used civil disobedience in his campaigns to liberate India
from British colonialism
 In the United States, civil disobedience was used to demonstrate the injustice of Jim
Crow segregation
Freedom Riders and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE):
 In 1961, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) – a Civil Rights organization –
undertook a new tactic aimed at desegregating public transportation in the south
 These tactics became known as the “Freedom Rides”
 The first Freedom Ride took place on May 4, 1961 when seven blacks and six whites
left Washington, D.C., on two public buses bound for the Deep South
 They intended to test the Supreme Court’s ruling in Boynton v. Virginia (1960),
which declared segregation in interstate bus and rail stations unconstitutional
 Outside Anniston, Alabama, one of their buses was burned, and in Birmingham
several dozen whites attacked the riders only two blocks from the sheriff’s office




CORE Leaders decided that letting violence end the trip would send the wrong
signal to the country
The group traveled from Birmingham to Montgomery without incident, but on their
arrival in Montgomery they were savagely attacked by a mob of more than 1000
whites
The extreme violence and the indifference of local police prompted a national outcry
of support for the riders, putting pressure on President Kennedy to end the violence
By the end of the summer, the protests had spread to train stations and airports
across the South, and in November, the Interstate Commerce Commission issued
rules prohibiting segregated transportation facilities
Sit-ins:
 In 1960, African-American students held a “sit-in” at a “Whites Only” lunch
counter in North Carolina
 Roommates Joseph McNeil and Izell Blair, and Franklin McCain and David
Richmond, students at predominately black North Carolina Agricultural and
Technical College were the participants
 They planned the night before, purchased some small things at the Woolworth’s
store in Greensboro, and then sat down at the lunch counter reserved for whites
 The students asked for coffee and when service was refused, they sat patiently
 Despite threats and intimidation, the students sat quietly and waited to be served.
 The tactic was soon copied throughout the South by students who supported the
Civil Rights Movement
 The instructions for a sit-in were simple: sit quietly and wait to be served
 Often the participants would be jeered and threatened by local customers
 Sometimes they would be pelted with food or ketchup
 Angry onlookers tried to provoke fights that never came
 In the event of a physical attack, the student would curl up into a ball on the floor
and take the punishment
 Any violent reprisal would undermine the spirit of the sit-in
 When the local police came to arrest the demonstrators, another line of students
would take the vacated seats
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC):
 The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was founded in early
1960 in Raleigh, North Carolina, to capitalize on the success of a surge of sit-ins in
Southern college towns, where black students refused to leave restaurants in which
they were denied service based on their race
 This form of nonviolent protest brought SNCC to national attention, throwing a
harsh public light on white racism in the South
“If we accept and acquiesce in the face of discrimination,
we accept the responsibility ourselves. We should,
therefore, protest openly everything ... that smacks of
discrimination or slander.” ~ Mary McLeod Bethune
Malcolm X:
 Malcolm X was a leader in the Nation of Islam, an African American movement
that combined elements of Islam with black nationalism
 Malcolm X changed his surname from “Little” to “X,” a custom among Nation of
Islam followers who considered their family names to have originated with white
slaveholders
 Malcolm helped to lead the Nation of Islam during the period of its greatest growth
and influence.
 Malcolm X and other Black Muslim leaders were preaching a new approach to
gaining equality
 They called on African-Americans to be sober and thrifty and to seize freedom
 They inspired and encouraged self-awareness and a sense of self-respect and power
for people in the ghettos
 They also spoke of using violence as a legitimate response to oppression rather than
using civil disobedience
 Malcolm X criticized the mainstream civil rights movement, challenging Martin
Luther King, Jr.’s central notions of integration and nonviolence
 Malcolm argued that more was at stake than the civil right to sit in a restaurant or
even to vote – the most important issues were black identity, integrity, and
independence
 Malcolm X’s ideas inspired some members of the Black Power and black
consciousness movements in the United States in the late 1960s and 1970s
 Tragically, Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965
“Power never takes a back step only in the face of more power.”
~ Malcolm X
Civil Rights Act of 1964:
 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on
July 2, 1964
 It prohibited discrimination in public places, provided for the integration of schools
and other public facilities, and made employment discrimination illegal
 This document was the most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction
 The act outlawed segregation in businesses such as theaters, restaurants, and hotels
 It banned discriminatory practices in employment and ended segregation in public
places such as swimming pools, libraries, and public schools
 In 1964, President Johnson was able to push a bill through Congress
 In addition, the federal government was given power to register voters and to
establish a commission to enforce the act
 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement
Voting Rights Act of 1965:
 After the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Civil Rights leaders turned their
energies to registering black voters and encouraging them to vote
 The Twenty-fourth Amendment (1964) eliminated poll taxes in federal elections
 The following year, the Voting Rights Act (1965) ended poll taxes and suspended
literacy tests where they were being used to prevent African Americans from voting
 This act was signed into law on August 6, 1965, by President Lyndon Johnson
 It outlawed the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states
after the Civil War, including literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting
 This “act to enforce the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution” was signed into
law 95 years after the amendment was ratified
Stokely Carmichael:
 Stokely Carmichael was a U.S. civil-rights activist who in the 1960s originated the
black nationalism rallying slogan, “black power”
 Born in Trinidad, he immigrated to New York City in 1952
 While attending Howard University, he joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee and was jailed for his work with Freedom Riders
 He slowly moved away from Dr. Martin Luther King’s nonviolence approach to
self-defense
 The Black Panthers were organized in 1966 to patrol the streets in the ghettos
 They quickly became urban revolutionaries and used violence to call attention to the
conditions in the ghetto
 In 1968, Stokely Carmichael joined the Black Panthers organization as the Prime
Minister
 Stokely Carmichael spoke of the need to achieve Black Power
 The Black Power movement emphasized the need for African-Americans to gain
political and economic power
“Racism is both overt and covert. It takes two, closely related forms: individual
whites acting against individual blacks, and acts by the total white community against
the black community. We call these individual racism and institutional racism. The
first consists of overt acts by individuals, which cause death, injury or the violent
destruction of property. This type can be recorded by television cameras; it can
frequently be observed in the process of commission. The second type is less overt, far
more subtle, less identifiable in terms of specific individuals committing the acts. But
it is no less destructive of human life. The second type originates in the operation of
established and respected forces in the society, and thus receives far less public
condemnation than the first type…when in … - Birmingham, Alabama - five hundred
black babies die each year because of the lack of proper food, shelter and medical
facilities, and thousands more are destroyed and maimed physically, emotionally and
intellectually because of conditions of poverty and discrimination in the black
community, that is a function of institutional racism.” ~ Stokely Carmichael
Black Power:
 “Black Power”, as a term, is most associated with Stokeley Carmichael, the
1960’s civil rights leader
 The phrase “black power” quickly caught on as the rallying cry of a younger, more
radical generation of civil rights activists
 The term also resonated internationally, becoming a slogan of resistance to
European imperialism in Africa
 In his 1968 book, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation, Carmichael explained the
meaning of black power: “It is a call for black people in this country to unite, to
recognize their heritage, to build a sense of community. It is a call for black people
to define their own goals, to lead their own organizations.”
Kerner Commission:
 Appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson, a commission chaired by Governor
Otto Kerner of Illinois explored the reasons behind the Detroit riots of 1967
 The commission presented a report in February 1968
 From the report: “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white - separate and unequal.”
 From the report: “What white Americans have never fully understood -- but what
the Negro can never forget -- is that...white institutions created [the ghetto], white
institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.”
 President Lyndon Johnson formed an 11-member National Advisory Commission
on Civil Disorders in July 1967 to explain the riots that plagued cities each summer
since 1964 and to provide recommendations for the future
 The Kerner report delivered an indictment of “white society” for isolating and
neglecting African Americans and urged legislation to promote racial integration
and to enrich slums—primarily through the creation of jobs, job training programs,
and decent housing
 President Johnson, however, rejected the recommendations
 In April 1968, one month after the release of the Kerner report, rioting broke out in
more than 100 cities following the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther
King, Jr.
The Warren Court:
 Under Chief Justice Earl Warren, the Supreme Court became an instrument of
social change – protecting individual rights, minority groups and the accused
- Mapp v. Ohio:
 The Supreme Court ruled that evidence obtained by the police through
an illegal search could not be used in court
“I believe the preservation of our civil liberties to be the most fundamental and
important of all our governmental problems, because it always has been with us
and always will be with us and if we ever permit those liberties to be destroyed,
there will be nothing left in our system worthy of preservation” ~ Earl Warren

-
-
Dollree Mapp was convicted of possessing obscene materials after an
admittedly illegal police search of her home for a fugitive
 She appealed her conviction on the basis of freedom of expression
 The Court brushed aside the First Amendment issue and declared that
“all evidence obtained by searches and seizures in violation of the
Constitution is, by [the Fourth Amendment], inadmissible in a state
court.”
Gideon v. Wainwright:
 Clarence Earl Gideon was charged in Florida state court with a felony:
having broken into and entered a poolroom with the intent to commit a
misdemeanor offense
 When he appeared in court without a lawyer, Gideon requested that the
court appoint one for him
 According to Florida state law, however, an attorney may only be
appointed to an indigent defendant in capital cases, so the trial court did
not appoint one
 Gideon represented himself in trial
 He was found guilty and sentenced to five years in prison
 Gideon filed a habeas corpus petition in the Florida Supreme Court and
argued that the trial court’s decision violated his constitutional right to be
represented by counsel
 The Florida Supreme Court denied habeas corpus relief
 However, the Supreme Court ruled in Gideon v. Wainwright (1963) that
states must provide a free lawyer to any criminal defendant facing
imprisonment who could not afford one
Miranda v. Arizona:
 In Miranda v. Arizona (1966), a man confessed to a rape without being
informed that he could have a lawyer present
 The Court overturned his conviction, ruling that the police must inform
suspects of their “Miranda” rights: to remain silent, to have a lawyer
present during questioning, and that what they say can be used against
them
“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used
against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot
afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand the rights I
have just read to you? With these rights in mind, do you wish to speak to me?”
~ Miranda Rights
George Wallace:
 On January 14, 1963, George Wallace was inaugurated as the governor of Alabama,
promising his followers, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation
forever!”
 He was a four-time governor of Alabama and four-time candidate for president of
the United States who became known as the embodiment of resistance to the civil
rights movement of the 1960s
To the Present
The Election of 1960:
 The 1960 election campaign was dominated by rising Cold War tensions between
the United States and the Soviet Union
 It was one of the closest elections in American history.
 The Republican candidate was Richard Nixon of California, experienced as the
nation’s Vice-President for eight years under Dwight Eisenhower
 The Democratic newcomer was John F. Kennedy, a senator from Massachusetts,
who at the age of 43 could become the youngest person ever to be elected President
 Kennedy was also Roman Catholic
 It was the first election where television played a significant role
 Coming into the first televised Presidential debate, John F. Kennedy had spent time
relaxing in Florida while Richard Nixon maintained a hectic campaign schedule
 As a result, Kennedy appeared tan and relaxed during the debate while Nixon
seemed a bit worn down
 Radio listeners proclaimed Nixon the better debater, while those who watched on
television made Kennedy their choice
The “Checkers Speech”:
 At the 1952 Republican National Convention, presidential candidate Dwight D.
Eisenhower chose Nixon as his running mate
 Two months later, the New York Post ran the headline “Secret Rich Men’s Trust
Fund Keeps Nixon in Style Far Beyond His Salary”
 It claimed that campaign donors were buying influence with Nixon by keeping a
secret fund for his personal expenses (some $140,000 in today’s dollars
 Outrage followed, and many Republicans urged Eisenhower to take Nixon off the
ticket
 On September 23, Nixon appeared on national television to defend himself
 He said that the fund did exist, but the money wasn’t secret, was strictly for
covering campaign expenses, and that no contributor to the campaign fund ever
received any special treatment
 There was one campaign donation that Nixon did admit to receiving and keeping for
himself – Lou Carrol, a traveling salesman from Texas, had heard Nixon’s wife
mention during a radio interview how much the Nixon children wanted a dog; so he
sent them a black and white spotted American Cocker Spaniel that Nixon’s
daughter Tricia named Checkers
 Nixon admitted that the dog could become an issue, but said he didn’t care; his kids
loved the dog and no matter what his critics said, they were keeping it
“And you know, the kids, like all kids, loved the dog, and I just want to say this,
right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we’re going to keep it.”
~ Then running mate Richard M. Nixon
The Presidency of Lyndon Baines Johnson:
 The nation was shocked when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on
November 22, 1963 while visiting Dallas, Texas
 Vice President Lyndon Johnson was immediately sworn in as the next President
 As President, Johnson proposed to Congress the most far-ranging legislation since
the New Deal
 Johnson’s aim was to turn the United States into a “Great Society” by opening up
opportunities for all citizens and improving the quality of American life
 Johnson passed a broad program of civil rights legislation including the Civil Rights
Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965
 Social Security was expanded to provide medical care, hospital insurance, and posthospital nursing for people over age 65 with the Medicare Act of 1965
 Johnson also called for a “war on poverty”
- He created new programs to help the poor, such as the Job Corps to train
underprivileged youths, and a domestic “Peace Corps” to help in depressed
areas
- Money was also provided for urban planning, slum clearance, rental assistance
to the poor, and the reconstruction of buildings
- Despite these Great Society programs, many Americans remained in poverty
 In addition, the high cost of spending caused by U.S. involvement in the Vietnam
War eventually forced Johnson to withdraw much of the funding for his new
domestic programs
The Great Society:
 President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s vision for America
 An America in which there was an end to poverty, equality, improved education,
rejuvenated cities, and protection for the environment
 This became the blueprint for the most far-reaching agenda of domestic legislation
since the New Deal – legislation that has had a profound effect on American society
The War on Poverty:
 President Johnson also signed the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964
- The law created the Office of Economic Opportunity aimed at attacking the
roots of American poverty
- A Job Corps was established to provide valuable vocational training
- Head Start, a preschool program designed to help disadvantaged students arrive
at kindergarten ready to learn, was put into place
- The Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) was set up as a domestic Peace
Corps
- Federal funds were sent to struggling communities to attack unemployment and
illiteracy
“This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty
in America. I urge this Congress and all Americans to join with me in that effort.”
~ President Lyndon Baines Johnson
Medicare:
 In 1965, the passage of the Social Security Act Amendments, popularly known as
Medicare, resulted in a basic program of hospital insurance for persons aged 65 and
older, and a supplementary medical insurance program to aid the elderly in paying
doctor bills and other health care bills
 It was funded by a tax on the earnings of employees, matched by contributions by
employers, and was well received
 It was signed into law by President Lyndon Baines Johnson
The American Indian Movement:
 The Civil Rights Act banned discrimination against Native American Indians
 In 1970, President Nixon announced the government would honor its treaty
obligations, but many tribes still felt mistreated
 Under the slogan “Red Power,” they formed the American Indian Movement
(A.I.M.)
- Their leaders sought respect for the Indian heritage
- They introduced the term “Native American” and protested racial biases and
stereotypes against their ethnic group
- To bring attention to their cause, they temporarily occupied government
property like Alcatraz Island in California
“The insult of Rushmore
to some Sioux is at least
three-fold:
1. It was built on land the
government took from
them. 2. The Black Hills
in particular are
considered sacred ground.
3. The monument
celebrates the European
settlers who killed so
many Native Americans
and appropriated their
land.” ~ pbs.org
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New York Times v. US:
In what became known as the “Pentagon Papers Case,” the Nixon Administration
attempted to prevent the New York Times and Washington Post from publishing
materials belonging to a classified Defense Department study regarding the history
of United States activities in Vietnam
The President argued that prior restraint was necessary to protect national security
The Court ruled that the government violated the First Amendment’s protection
of freedom of the press
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The Court ruled that the government’s attempt to stop newspaper publication of
classified documents about the Vietnam War was unconstitutional
This case was decided together with United States v. Washington Post Co.
The Court ruled that the government violated the First Amendment’s protection
of freedom of the press when it attempted to stop newspaper publication of
classified documents about the Vietnam War
The Court argued that the vague word “security” should not be used “to abrogate
[repeal or do away with] the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment”
Justice Brennan reasoned that since publication would not cause an inevitable,
direct, and immediate event imperiling the safety of American forces, prior restraint
was unjustified
Presidency of Richard Nixon:
 Nixon was President from 1969 to 1974
 Believed that federal social programs were often inefficient, and that most social
problems were best dealt with at the local level
 Under his policy of New Federalism, Nixon reversed the trend of increasing federal
control by turning over some federal tax revenues to state governments
 Nixon believed the President’s major role was to direct the country’s foreign policy
 Ever since the Communist Revolution in China in 1949, U.S. leaders had refused to
establish diplomatic relations with the Chinese
 Instead, they treated the Nationalist Chinese government on Taiwan as the official
government of China
 Nixon finally visited mainland China and restored diplomatic relations with the
Chinese
 Nixon also introduced Détente – a relaxing of tensions – with the Soviet Union
 In 1972, Nixon visited Moscow and singed the SALT I Accord, which limited the
development of certain types of missile systems
 Nixon also used a policy of “Vietnamization” in the Vietnam War, turning over the
responsibility of fighting the war to the South Vietnamese
War Powers Act:
 Law passed by the U.S. Congress on November 7, 1973, over the veto of President
Richard Nixon
 The act sought to restrain the president’s ability to commit U.S. forces overseas by
requiring the executive branch to consult with and report to Congress before
involving U.S. forces in foreign hostilities
 Widely considered a measure for preventing “future Vietnams,” it was nonetheless
generally resisted or ignored by subsequent presidents, many of whom regarded it
as an unconstitutional usurpation of their executive authority
“The Founding Fathers understood the impossibility of foreseeing every
contingency that might arise in this complex area. They acknowledged the need
for flexibility in responding to changing circumstances.”
~ President Nixon’s explanation of his veto of the War Powers Act
Watergate:
 On June 17, 1972, during the presidential campaign, five men were caught after
breaking into the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate apartment
complex in Washington
 On June 22, Nixon said his administration was in no way involved in the Watergate
break-in
 Thus began the Watergate scandal and cover-up
 It would unwind slowly over the next two years and culminated in the resignation of
President Nixon
 In spite of his brilliant moves in foreign policy, Nixon did not trust either the
American people or his own abilities to appeal to them
 He resorted to underhanded and illegal measures (like the Watergate break-in),
apparently convinced they were the only way to protect the nation from those he
perceived as radicals and un-American – the student protesters, the civil rights
leaders, the hippies, and those not part of the “silent majority”
 Nixon even had an “enemies” list – a classic example of dividing the world into us
and them
“Early on June 17, 1972, police apprehended
five burglars at the office of the DNC in the
Watergate complex. Four of them formerly
had been active in Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) activities against Fidel Castro in
Cuba…The arrest was reported in the next
morning’s Washington Post in an article
written by Alfred E. Lewis, Carl Bernstein,
and Bob Woodward…Presidential Press
Secretary Ron Ziegler responded that the
president would have no comment on a “thirdrate burglary attempt”…In July 16,
Alexander P. Butterfield, formerly of the
White House staff, disclosed that all
conversations in the president’s offices had
secretly been recorded on tape.” ~ Britannica
Equal Rights Amendment:
 First proposed by the National Woman’s political party in 1923, the Equal Rights
Amendment was to provide for the legal equality of the sexes and prohibit
discrimination on the basis of sex
 More than four decades later, the revival of feminism in the late 1960s spurred its
introduction into Congress
 Under the leadership of U.S. Representative Bella Abzug of New York and feminists
Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, it won the requisite two-thirds vote from the U.S.
House of Representatives in October 1971


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In March 1972, it was approved by the U.S. Senate and sent to the states
Hawaii was the first state to ratify what would have been the 27th Amendment,
followed by some 30 other states within a year
However, during the mid-1970s, a conservative backlash against feminism eroded
support for the Equal Rights Amendment, which ultimately failed to achieve
ratification by a requisite 38, or three-fourths, of the states
“Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the
United States or by any state on account of sex.”
~ Proposed Equal Rights Amendment
Betty Friedan:
 An American feminist
 Wrote The Feminine Mystique in 1963 which explored the causes of the frustrations
of many American women in traditional roles
 Many women were dissatisfied with their roles as housewives and sought to express
themselves in careers and work
 Ms. Friedan’s book, The Feminine Mystique, revealed the frustration many women
felt at being restricted to homemaking and motherhood
“If I am right, this problem stirring in the minds of so many American women
today is not a matter of loss of femininity or too much education, or the demands of
domesticity. It is far more important than anyone recognizes. It may well be the
key to our future as a nation and a culture. We can no longer ignore that voice
within women that says: ‘I want something more than my husband and my
children and my home.’
The problem that has no name—which is simply the fact that American women
are kept from growing to their full human capacities—is taking a far greater toll
on the physical and mental health of our country than any known disease. If we
continue to produce millions of young mothers who stop their growth and
education short of identity, without a strong core of human values to pass on to
their children, we are committing, quite simply, genocide, starting
with the mass burial of American women and ending with the progressive
dehumanization of their sons and daughters. These problems cannot be solved by
medicine or even by psychotherapy.” ~ Betty Friedan
National Organization for Women (NOW):
 A Feminist organization founded in 1966 that promotes equal rights for women
 The National Organization for Women or NOW was established by a small group of
feminists dedicated to challenging sex discrimination in all areas of American
society but particularly in employment

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Among the issues that NOW addresses by means of lobbying and litigation are child
care, pregnancy leave, and abortion and pension rights
Its major concern during the 1970s was passage of a national Equal Rights
Amendment to the Constitution; the amendment failed to gain ratification in 1982
NOW has also campaigned for passage of state equal rights amendments
and comparable-worth legislation (equal pay for work of comparable value) and has
met with greater success on the state level
Phyllis Schlafly:
 An American writer and political activist known for her opposition to the women’s
movement and especially the Equal Rights Amendment
 In 1972, she announced her opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA),
which passed Congress that year
 Believing that women enjoyed unique privileges that the amendment would abolish
– among other things, she contended it would lead to military conscription for
mothers and obligate women to financially contribute to their families – she then
established the lobbying organization Stop ERA, with chapters across the country
 When the ERA failed to be ratified by the requisite majority of states, she was
widely credited with having helped to bring about its collapse
Roe v. Wade:
 In the Supreme Court case of Roe v. Wade (1973), the U.S. Supreme Court held the
unduly restrictive state regulation of abortion to be unconstitutional
 In a 7 – 2 vote the Supreme Court held that a set of Texas statutes criminalizing
abortion in most instances violated a woman’s constitutional right of privacy, which
the court found implicit in the liberty guarantee of the due process clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment
 Since many states had laws banning abortion and feminists believed that women
should have the right to choose whether or not to have an abortion, Roe v. Wade was
a significant case
 While abortion became one of the most divisive issues in American history, the
Court ruled that women’s constitutional right to privacy guaranteed the right to an
abortion in early pregnancy
 “Pro-choice” groups advocate a woman’s right to privacy and a woman’s right to
abortion
 “Pro-life” groups believe that human life begins at conception and oppose the Roe v.
Wade ruling
Feminism:
 Feminism is the belief that men and women should have equal rights and
opportunities
 The first-wave feminism of the 19th and early 20th centuries focused on women’s
legal rights, such as the right to vote
 The second-wave feminism of the “women’s movement” peaked in the 1960s and
1970s
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The Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1960s was directed at achieving
economic and social equality
Sex education course began to be taught in the schools
Birth control pills protected women from pregnancy
As a result of affirmative action, universities could no longer discriminate on the
basis of gender in their admissions policy
- As a result, colleges became co-educational and hired women professors
- Gender equality was achieved in military academies (West Point and Annapolis)
and in law and medical schools
In 1963, Congress passed the “Equal Pay” Act requiring companies to pay women
the same as men for the same work
Feminists introduced the title Ms. to replace Miss and Mrs.
They opposed sexist language (“policeman” and “fireman”) and textbooks that
ignored women’s contributions to society
They lobbied Congress for more funds to research women’s diseases
“For what is done or learned by one
class of women becomes, by virtue
of their common womanhood, the
property of all women.”
~ Elizabeth Blackwell
“We’ve chosen the path to equality,
don't let them turn us around.”
~ Geraldine Ferraro
Title IX:
 Of the Education Amendments of 1972 protects people from discrimination based
on sex in education programs and activities that receive federal financial assistance
 Title IX is the federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in schools
that receive federal funding – including in their athletics programs
“I went from being a
kid who lost her father
[at age 8] and who lived
in the South Bronx to
almost going in to live in
the White House…That
just tells you what this
country is all about.”
~ Geraldine Ferraro,
first woman nominated
for Vice President
Rachel Carson:
 An American biologist known for her writings on environmental pollution and the
natural history of the sea
 Her book, Silent Spring, suggested that the planetary ecosystem was reaching the
limits of what it could sustain
 Carson stood behind her warnings of the consequences of the threat of pesticide use
despite the threat of lawsuits from the chemical industry and accusations
 Some critics even claimed that she was a communist
 Carson died before she could see any substantive results from her work on this
issue, but she left behind some of the most influential environmental writing ever
Silent Spring:
 Rachel Carson in Silent Spring (1962) called attention to the use of pesticides in
agriculture and the damage they had done
 It was a stimulus to the growth of environmental awareness
 In 1970, the first Earth Day was organized to draw attention to the environment
“No witchcraft, no
enemy action had
silenced the rebirth of
new life in this stricken
world. The people had
done it themselves.”
~ Rachel Carson
Clean Air Act of 1970:
 The enactment of the Clean Air Act of 1970 resulted in a major shift in the federal
government’s role in air pollution control
 This legislation authorized the development of comprehensive federal and state
regulations to limit emissions from both stationary (industrial) sources and mobile
sources
“So, it seems very appropriate that in this
room, the Roosevelt Room… in view of the fact
that Theodore Roosevelt, who was the man
most remembered in American history for his
interest in conservation, his interest in the
environment, that this bill is being signed here;
this, it seems to me, is most appropriate.”
~ President Richard M. Nixon
Benjamin Spock:
 American pediatrician whose books on child rearing, especially his Common Sense
Book of Baby and Child Care (1946; 6th ed., 1992), influenced generations of parents
and made his name a household word
 Spock encouraged understanding and flexibility on the part of parents
 He stressed the importance of listening to children and appreciating their individual
differences
 Baby and Child Care served as the definitive child-rearing manual for millions of
American parents in the “baby boom” (a marked rise in birthrate in the United
States immediately following the end of World War II)
 Spock’s approach was criticized as overly permissive by a minority of physicians,
and he was even blamed for having helped form the generation of young Americans
that protested the Vietnam War and launched the youth counterculture movement
of the 1960s
“The children who are appreciated for what they are…will grow up with
confidences in themselves - happy. They will have a spirit that will make the
best of all the capacities that they have, and of all the opportunities that come
their way. They will make light of any handicaps.” ~ Dr. Benjamin Spock
César Chávez:
 Mexican-American union leader and labor organizer
 Due to his early experiences as a migrant farm worker, Chávez founded the
National Farm Workers Association in 1962
 His union joined with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee in its first
strike against grape growers in California, and the two organizations later merged
to become the United Farm Workers
 Stressing nonviolent methods, Chavez drew attention for his causes via boycotts,
marches and hunger strikes
 Chávez was able to secure raises and improve conditions for farm workers
“[Farm Workers] bring in
so much food to feed you
and me and the whole
country and enough food to
export to other places. The
ironic thing and the tragic
thing is that after they make
this tremendous
contribution, they don’t
have any money or any food
left for themselves.”
~ César Chávez
Ralph Nader:
 An American lawyer and consumer advocate
 In 1965 he published Unsafe at Any Speed, which criticized the American auto
industry in general for its unsafe products and attacked General Motors’ Corvair
automobile in particular
 The book became a best seller and led directly to the passage of the 1966 National
Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act which gave the federal government the power
to enact safety standards for all automobiles sold in the U.S.
Andy Warhol:
 American artist and leading exponent of the Pop art movement of the 1960s
 Pop art is now most associated with the work of New York artists of the early 1960s
such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist, and Claes Oldenburg
 Artists drew on popular imagery
 Pop artists celebrated commonplace objects and people of everyday life, in this way
seeking to elevate popular culture to the level of fine art
“. ..Pop Art looks out into the world;
it appears to accept its environment,
which is not good or bad, but
different – another state of mind.”
~ Roy Lichtenstein
Affirmative Action:
 Affirmative action is a policy that tries to make up for past discrimination, or unfair
treatment, against certain groups of people
 It gives such groups certain advantages when they apply for work or schools or try
out for sports teams
 An active effort to improve employment or educational opportunities for members
of minority groups and for women
 The typical criteria for affirmative action are race, disability, gender, ethnic origin,
and age
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke:
 Allan Bakke, a thirty-five-year-old white man, had twice applied for admission to
the University of California Medical School at Davis
 He was rejected both times
 The school reserved sixteen places in each entering class of one hundred for
“qualified” minorities in an effort to redress longstanding, unfair minority
exclusions from the medical profession
 Bakke’s qualifications (college GPA and test scores) exceeded those of any of the
minority students admitted in the two years Bakke’s applications were rejected
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Bakke contended that he was excluded from admission solely on the basis of race
Four of the justices contended that any racial quota system supported by
government violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964
Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr., agreed, casting the deciding vote ordering the medical
school to admit Bakke
The remaining four justices held that the use of race as a criterion in admissions
decisions in higher education was constitutionally permissible
The Court managed to minimize white opposition to the goal of equality (by finding
for Bakke) while extending gains for racial minorities through affirmative action
Presidency of Gerald Ford:
 When Nixon resigned, Gerald Ford became president, the first not elected by the
Electoral College.
 One of Ford’s first acts was to pardon Nixon for any crimes he had committed
 This caused severe public criticism
 As President, Ford’s main worries were over the economy. The nation suffered
from stagflation – high unemployment because of a stagnant economy, and high
inflation
 The problem was caused by the reduction in government defense spending after the
Vietnam War and by drastic increases in international oil prices
 In 1975, South Vietnam finally fell to the Communists
- Ford had asked Congress for funds to try to save the South Vietnamese
government, but Congress refused
 Ford continued Nixon’s policy of détente with the Soviet Union
 In 1975, the U.S., the Soviet Union and other nations signed the Helsinki Accords,
recognizing post-World War II borders and pledging to respect human rights
 During the Ford Presidency, the OPEC oil embargo pushed inflation from 3 percent
in 1972 to 11 percent in 1974
 Increased foreign competition, particularly from Japan in autos and electronics,
hurt the economy
 Many new jobs were added, but they were in service industries – restaurants and
selling – rather than in heavy manufacturing
“A government big enough to give you
everything you want is a government big
enough to take from you everything you have.”
~ President Gerald Ford
Presidency of Jimmy Carter:
 Democrat Jimmy Carter was elected President as an “outsider” who promised to
clean up Washington
 Carter was President of the United States from 1977 to 1981
 Like Ford, Carter’s chief problems were economic
 The U.S. was heavily dependent on imported oil
 As oil prices skyrocketed, inflation went over 10%, interest rates rose to 20%, and
unemployment grew
- To deal with the crisis, Carter created the Department of Energy and increased
the nation’s fuel reserves
- Carter sought a special tax on large automobiles and the power to ration
gasoline, but Congress refused
- High oil prices and shortages continued throughout the Carter years
- Carter cut federal spending, but inflation did not come down until two years into
the Reagan Presidency
 President Carter made human rights a high priority: he condemned apartheid in
South Africa, pressured the Soviet Union to allow Jews to emigrate, and cut aid to
dictatorships that violated human rights
 Carter also signed a treaty returning the Panama Canal to Panama in 1999 (the
Panama Canal Treaty)
 In 1977, Carter invited Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Prime Minister
Menachem Begin to Camp David, where an agreement was reached
 Israel returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in exchange for a peace treaty and the
establishment of normal relations
Stagflation:
 Stagflation is a period of rising inflation and falling output
- With falling output, unemployment will tend to be rising
 A combination of economic stagnation and inflation
- During the 1970s in the United States
“A recession
is a
downward
trend in the
business
cycle – with
a decline in
production
and
employment
- causing
the incomes
and
spending of
households
to decline.”
~Britannica
Camp David Accords:
 The Camp David Accords were agreements between Israel and Egypt signed on
September 17, 1978
 Led in the following year to a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, the first treaty
between Israel and any of its Arab neighbors
 Brokered by President Jimmy Carter between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem
Begin and Egyptian President Anwar el-Sādāt and officially titled the “Framework
for Peace in the Middle East,” the agreements became known as the Camp David
Accords because the negotiations took place at the U.S. presidential retreat at Camp
David, Maryland
 Sādāt and Begin were awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1978 for their
contributions to the agreements
Three Mile Island Nuclear Disaster:
 The Three Mile Island Unit 2 (TMI-2) reactor, near Middletown, Pennsylvania,
partially melted down on March 28, 1979
 This was the most serious accident in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant
operating history, although its small radioactive releases had no detectable health
effects on plant workers or the public
 Its aftermath brought about sweeping changes involving emergency response
planning, reactor operator training, human factors engineering, radiation
protection, and many other areas of nuclear power plant operations
 It also caused the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to tighten and heighten its
regulatory oversight
“Here is your country. Cherish these
natural wonders, cherish the natural
resources, cherish the history and
romance as a sacred heritage, for your
children and your children's children.
Do not let selfish men or greedy
interests skin your country of its
beauty, its riches or its romance.”
~ President Theodore Roosevelt
“The environment is where we all meet;
where all have a mutual interest; it is
the one thing all of us share.”
~ Lady Bird Johnson
Iranian Revolution:
 The Shah of Iran was a brutal dictator, but also a U.S. ally
 In 1978, widespread demonstrations broke out against the Shah
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When the Shah fled Iran, religious leaders hostile to Western influences seized
control
They resented America for helping the Shah and backing Israel
In retaliation, Iranian students seized the staff of the U.S. embassy in Iran, holding
them hostage for 444 days
Negotiations finally led to their release, but only on the day Ronald Reagan became
President
Presidency of Ronald Reagan:
 Carter was defeated by Ronald Reagan in the Presidential election of 1980
 Reagan believed strongly that individuals and businesses were better able to solve
economic problems than the government was
 Reagan supported the policy of New Federalism first begun under President Nixon.
Reagan tried to solve stagflation with supply-side economics
- He believed a large supply of goods would decrease prices and stop inflation
- Under “Reaganomics,” he cut taxes on businesses and the wealthy
- He felt these groups would invest their tax savings to raise productivity and
increase employment, resulting in benefits that would “trickle down”
- To finance the tax cut, Reagan reduced spending on welfare and disability
programs
 He also eliminated many regulations on industry
 Reagan increased military spending, which he financed by borrowing
 This spending stimulated the economy, but led to an increased federal deficit and
doubled the national debt
 Reagan set out to rebuild American confidence in the aftermath of Vietnam and
Watergate
 He believed that the United States should continue to act as the world’s defender of
freedom and democracy
 In 1983, Reagan sent U.S. Marines to the island of Grenada to defeat Communists
who had taken control
 The action showed Reagan’s willingness to use force to protect Americans on the
island and to prevent the Soviet Union from exporting Communism to countries in
the Western Hemisphere
 To carry out this new foreign policy, Reagan sharply increased military spending
“How do you tell a
communist? Well, it’s
someone who reads Marx
and Lenin. And how do you
tell an anti-Communist? It's
someone who understands
Marx and Lenin.”
~ President Ronald Reagan
Reaganomics:
 Was the most serious attempt to change the course of U.S. economic policy of any
administration since the New Deal
 Reagan’s 1981 Program for Economic Recovery had four major policy objectives:
reduce the growth of government spending, reduce the marginal tax rates on income
from both labor and capital, reduce regulation, and reduce inflation by controlling
the growth of the money supply
 These major policy changes, in turn, were expected to increase saving and
investment, increase economic growth, balance the budget, restore healthy financial
markets, and reduce inflation and interest rates
 Reagan proposed a phased 30% tax cut for the first three years of his Presidency
- Called Supply-Side or Trickle-Down Economics
- Tax relief for the rich would enable them to spend and invest more
- This new spending would stimulate the economy and create new jobs
Supply-Side Economics:
 Economic theory that focuses on influencing the supply of labor and goods, using
tax cuts and benefit cuts as incentives to work and produce goods
 It was expounded by the U.S. economist Arthur Laffer (b. 1940) and implemented
by President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s
 Supporters point to the economic growth of the 1980s as proof of its efficacy;
detractors point to the massive federal deficits and speculation
Reagan Doctrine:
 In 1986, President Reagan announced the Reagan Doctrine – the U.S. would no
longer just contain Communism, but would roll it back by aiding anti-Communist
“freedom fighters”
“The ‘trickle-down’ theory: The principle that
the poor, who must subsist on table scraps
dropped by the rich, can best be served by giving
the rich bigger meals.”
~ William Blum
“President Reagan, Jack Kemp and other
advocates of supply-side economics understood
that pro-growth tax, spending and economic
policies were essential to America’s long-term
economic and fiscal health.”
~ Bob Beauprez
Iran-Contra Affair:
 Under this policy, the Reagan Administration secretly sold arms to Iran
 Profits from the sale were used to support the “Contra” rebels fighting the
Communist government of Nicaragua, even though Congress had passed a law
forbidding aid to the Contras
 An investigation cleared the President but led to several Reagan officials being sent
to prison
 The Iran-Contra Affair was a political scandal in which the National Security
Council (NSC) became involved in secret weapons transactions and other activities
that either were prohibited by the U.S. Congress or violated the stated public policy
of the government
The End of the Cold War:
 The last years of Reagan’s Presidency saw the beginning of an end to the Cold War
 The economic failures of Communism forced Soviet leaders to introduce new
reforms
 Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to withdraw troops from Afghanistan and
to allow a peaceful transition to democracy in Eastern Europe
 Reagan and Gorbachev held a series of summit conferences, and signed an
agreement to dismantle thousands of nuclear missiles
“General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek
peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet
Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek
liberalization, come here to this gate.
Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate!
Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
~ President Ronald Reagan
Presidency of George H.W. Bush:
 Reagan’s Vice President, George H.W. Bush, campaigned in the 1988 election on a
promise to continue Reagan’s policies, but with an emphasis on improving
education, fighting drug use, and greater compassion for the poor and the
disadvantaged
 In 1990, Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act prohibiting discrimination
against people with disabilities in the areas of employment and public
accommodations
 Bush’s greatest domestic challenge was to reduce the growing budget deficit
- He was blamed when the nation slipped into a recession in 1990.
 Bush proved more successful in his foreign policy initiatives
- In 1989, Bush sent U.S. forces to Panama against the drug-dealing dictator
Manuel Noriega


- Noriega was taken to the United States and convicted on drug charges
However, the most important event of the Bush Presidency was the end of the Cold
War
- From 1989 to 1991, Eastern Europe moved from Communism to democracy, the
Berlin Wall was torn down, and East and West Germany were reunited
- Gorbachev’s reforms set in motion a series of events that, by 1991, led to the
collapse of the Soviet Union and its replacement by the Commonwealth of
Independent States
The Gulf War (1990 – 1991) was Bush’s greatest single foreign policy success
- In 1990, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, seizing its vast oil
wealth and extending Iraq’s borders
- Hussein refused demands by the United Nations to withdraw
- In response, U.N. forces under U.S. leadership attacked Iraq
- The invasion quickly succeeded
- In February 1991, all Iraqi troops were driven out of Kuwait, and Hussein
agreed to pay Kuwait for damages
Americans with Disabilities Act:
 In 1990, Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act prohibiting discrimination
against people with disabilities in the areas of employment and public
accommodations
“Read my lips:
no new taxes.”
~ President
George H.W.
Bush
Presidency of Bill Clinton:
 Partly due to the recession, Bush lost the election of 1992 to Bill Clinton
 Clinton promised health care reform, but could not get a plan through Congress
 However, his economic policies and advances in computer technology were
successful in restoring the economy
 By the end of his Presidency (1993 – 2001), the economy was enjoying its best period
in history – employment and business profits were at all-time highs, and the
government had a series of budget surpluses
 The scandal that drew the most attention during the Clinton Presidency began when
Paula Jones, an Arkansas State employee accused Clinton of sexual misconduct in
1991 and sued him while he was president
The Supreme Court rejected Clinton’s plea to postpone the case until the end of
his term and required that he give testimony
- In the course of the investigation information emerged concerning a possible
sexual affair between Monica Lewinsky, a former White House intern, and the
president
- After finding Clinton had lied about the relationship under oath, the prosecutor
recommended impeachment
- The House voted along party lines to impeach the President, but the Senate vote
fell short of the two-thirds required to convict him.
When Serb nationalists persecuted Muslims in Kosovo, Clinton spearheaded the use
of NATO forces to bomb Serbia, and ended the bloodshed
Clinton was a tireless negotiator in the peace talks between Israel and the
Palestinians
He tried using economic threats against China to force them to improve their
human rights, but he abandoned this approach when it met with little success
-



“If you live long
enough, you’ll
make mistakes.
But if you learn
from them,
you’ll be a
better person.”
~ President Bill
Clinton
North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement:
Clinton pushed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) through Congress.
First proposed during the Bush Administration, it created a trade association between the
U.S., Canada, and Mexico. NAFTA is a free trade association and has eliminated most
tariffs and other trade barriers on products and services passing between the United States,
Canada, and Mexico.
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”:
 Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) was the name for the former official U.S. policy
(1993–2011) regarding the service of homosexuals in the military
 The term was coined after President Bill Clinton in 1993 signed a law directing that
military personnel “don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue, and don’t harass”
 When it went into effect on October 1, 1993, the policy theoretically lifted a ban on
homosexual service that had been instituted during World War II, though in effect
it continued a statutory ban



In December 2010 both the House of Representatives and the Senate voted to repeal
the policy, and President Barack Obama signed the legislation on December 22
The policy officially ended on September 20, 2011
Today gay men and lesbians are allowed openly serve in the military
Contract with America:
 A document signed in 1994 on the Capitol steps in Washington, D.C., by members of
the Republican minority before the Republican Party gained control of Congress in
1994
 The “Contract with America” outlined legislation to be enacted by the House of
Representatives within the first 100 days of the 104th Congress (1995–96)
- Among the proposals were tax cuts, a permanent line-item veto, measures to
reduce crime and provide middle-class tax relief, and constitutional amendments
requiring term limits and a balanced budget
- With the exception of the constitutional amendment for term limits, all parts of
the “Contract with America” were passed by the House, under the leadership of
the speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich
Election of 2000:
 The 2000 election proved the closest in U.S. history
 On election night it was clear that Al Gore had carried the Northeast (except New
Hampshire) and Pacific Coast and scattered states in the Midwest
- He was ahead in the popular and electoral votes, but three states were too close
to call – Oregon, New Mexico, and Florida
- George W. Bush, son of former President H.W. Bush, had won the entire South
and many states in the Mountain West and the large states of Missouri, Ohio,
and Indiana
- Finally, the election depended on who carried Florida and its 25 electoral votes
- On November 8, Bush led in Florida by 1,784 votes
- However, a recount of machine-cast votes cut the lead to 327
- There appeared to be some irregularities in ballot design and punching of ballots
- The two candidates then resorted to lawsuits to seek recounts or to block them as
seemed best for their side
- The Florida Supreme Court became involved
- Finally, the U.S. Supreme Court took the case on December 12 voted 5 – 4 in
Bush v. Gore to end the Florida recount
- In effect, this gave Florida’s electoral votes to Bush, for a total of 271 to Gore’s
266
- Thus, Bush was elected president although Gore had won the popular vote
- Gore conceded the election
- After five weeks of uncertainty, the nation had a new president
- The Court’s decision was accepted.
Presidency of George W. Bush:
 As President, George W. Bush pushed through tax cuts to stimulate a lagging
economy

He also introduced the No Child Left Behind Act, requiring states to test students in
both English and mathematics
9/11:
 The most dramatic event of Bush’s presidency occurred on September 11, 2001
when terrorists from the radical Islamic al-Qaeda network hijacked U.S. airliners
and crashed them into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center
 About three thousand people were killed
 Bush immediately declared a “War on Terrorism”
 Federal agents replaced private security agents at U.S. airports and the Office of
Homeland Security was created
 When the Taliban government of Afghanistan refused to hand over al-Qaeda’s
leader, Osama bin Laden, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan
 This action led to the overthrow of the Taliban, and to the destruction of terrorist
bases there
“If we learn
nothing else
from this
tragedy, we
learn that
life is short
and there is
no time for
hate.”
~ Sandy
Dahl
Iraq War:
 Iraq War, also called Second Persian Gulf War, (2003–11), was a conflict
in Iraq that consisted of two phases
 The first of these was a brief, conventionally fought war in March–April 2003, in
which a combined force of troops from the United States and Great Britain (with
smaller contingents from several other countries) invaded Iraq and rapidly defeated
Iraqi military and paramilitary forces
 It was followed by a longer second phase in which a U.S.-led occupation of Iraq was
opposed by an insurgency
 After violence began to decline in 2007, the United States gradually reduced its
military presence in Iraq, formally completing its withdrawal in December 2011

Bush and other world leaders had insisted that Saddam Hussein of Iraq had not
proved that he had no biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons of mass destruction
(WMD) that he might supply to terrorists
- Iraq repeatedly denied it had any such weapons
- France, Germany, and Russia recommended that U.N. inspectors be given more
time to search for such weapons
- In March 2003, President Bush issued an ultimatum, giving Hussein 48 hours to
resign and leave Iraq
- When Hussein refused, the U.S., Great Britain, and their allies attacked
- Air strikes quickly destroyed Iraq’s ability to wage war
- U.S. forces entered Baghdad in early April, and Hussein’s regime collapsed
- Hussein was captured in December 2003, brought to trial, and eventually
executed
- Despite these successes, Iraq’s occupation proved difficult, with repeated
terrorist attacks on coalition forces
- Meanwhile, religious and ethnic rivalries continue to divide the Iraqi people
“Give me the money
that has been spent in
war and I will clothe
every man, woman, and
child in an attire of
which kings and queens
will be proud. I will
build a schoolhouse in
every valley over the
whole earth.”
~ Charles Sumner
War on Terror:
 A term used to describe the American-led global counterterrorism campaign
launched in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001
 In its scope, expenditure, and impact on international relations,
the war on terrorism is comparable to the Cold War
Department of Homeland Security:
 A division of the U.S. federal government responsible for safeguarding the country
against terrorist attacks and ensuring preparedness for natural disasters and other
emergencies
 In the wake of the September 11 attacks in 2001, President George W. Bush created
the Office of Homeland Security, to coordinate counterterrorism efforts by federal,
state, and local agencies; and the Homeland Security Council, to advise the
president on homeland security matters

Both offices were superseded in January 2003 with the creation of the Department
of Homeland Security, which assumed control of several agencies responsible for
domestic security and emergency preparedness, including the Customs Service and
Border Patrol (now U.S. Customs and Border Protection), the Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA), the Transportation Security Administration (TSA),
the Secret Service, and the Coast Guard
Patriot Act:
 U.S. legislation passed by Congress in response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks and signed into law by President George W. Bush in October 2001 that
significantly expanded the search and surveillance powers of federal lawenforcement and intelligence agencies
 The USA PATRIOT Act, as amended and reauthorized from 2003, made numerous
changes to existing statutes relating to the privacy of telephone and electronic
communications, the operation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court,
money laundering, immigration, and other areas
 It also defined a host of new crimes and increased penalties for existing ones
Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of
religion, or prohibiting the free
exercise thereof; or abridging
the freedom of speech, or of the
press; or the right of the people
peaceably to assemble, and to
petition the Government for a
redress of grievances.
~ First Amendment
Presidency of Barack Obama:
 The inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States was of
great significance in American history – President Obama was the first AfricanAmerican president in the nation’s history
 President Obama has had to address economic and domestic concerns
 He has also reformed health care
 In 2009, President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for his
extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation
between peoples.”
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act:
 Also called Obamacare, U.S. health care reform legislation, signed into law by
President Barack Obama in March 2010, which included provisions that required
most individuals to secure health insurance or pay fines, made coverage easier and
less costly to obtain, cracked down on abusive insurance practices, and attempted to
rein in rising costs of health care

Was widely considered the most far-reaching health care reform act since the
passage of Medicare, the U.S. government program guaranteeing health insurance
for the elderly, in 1965.
Changing Demographics and the Impact on Social Security:
 Americans face new challenges from a changing population
 The south and west are attracting increasing numbers of people, straining existing
water and power supplies
 America is becoming more diverse, especially with the growth of the Hispanic
population and rising levels of immigration
 Americans are also living longer
 Medical advances have increased the number of people who live into their 70s and
80s
 As the “baby boomers” (those born between 1945 and 1965) begin to retire, there is
concern that the Social Security system will not have enough money to fund their
retirements
“We can never insure one
hundred percent of the
population against one
hundred percent of the
hazards and vicissitudes of
life, but we have tried to
frame a law which will give
some measure of protection to
the average citizen and to his
family against the loss of a job
and against poverty-ridden
old age.”
~ President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt
The Post-Industrial Society:
 The United States began as an agricultural nation and then evolved to an industrial
power
 In the last fifty years, however, the nation has been shifting from an industrial
economy to a “post-industrial” or service economy
 Americans are now more likely to work as salespeople, computer programmers,
bank tellers or teachers than as factory workers
 Much of the increased productivity of the economy in the 1990s was due to
computers
 The Internet, a worldwide linking of computers, makes it easier to communicate and
find information
The Impact of Television:
 The most significant developments in American culture in the immediate postwar
years resulted from the growth of the television industry
 The changes were as significant and complex as were those stemming from the
introduction of the automobile in the first half of the 20th century and of the
computer in the last quarter of the century
 Everyone has heard statistics of how many hours of television high school graduates
have seen or children have viewed before entering kindergarten
 Specific numbers vary, but they are always staggering and in the thousands of hours
 Yet in 1945 there were only 7,000 TV sets in the nation, illustrating how different
were the experiences of childhood and adolescence of those born before World War
II and those born after
 By 1960 there were 50 million television sets in the country
 Television provided shared experiences for Americans but it also can reinforce
conformity
“I can think of nothing
more boring for the
American people than to
have to sit in their living
rooms for a whole half
hour looking at my face on
their television screens.”
~ President Dwight D.
Eisenhower
The Environmental Movement:
 The United States, like all nations, has faced environmental problems
 Some of these problems include:
- global warming: some pollutants in the atmosphere prevent heat from escaping
into space and this greenhouse effect may permanently raise temperatures
enough to cause farmland to become desert, or polar ices to melt, raising ocean
levels
- acid rain: when coal and oil are burned, they emit pollutants into the
atmosphere and many pollutants released by industry and automobile exhaust
turn into acids, which get washed out of the air when it rains only to return to
the ground in a highly toxic form killing fish and destroying forests
- thinning of the ozone layer: the ozone layer absorbs dangerous ultraviolent
radiation from the sun, which would otherwise cause skin cancer and other
diseases and the ozone layer had been rapidly eroded by widespread
fluorocarbon use


water pollution: as cities become more crowded their ability to handle increased
sewage and water is strained thus leading to the dumping of raw sewage into
nearby lakes and rivers, contaminating drinking water
Americans became more aware of environmental problems when Rachel Carson
wrote Silent Spring in 1962
- Ms. Carson’s book called attention to the use of pesticides in agriculture and the
damage they had done
- Her book was a stimulus to the growth of environmental awareness.
The Environmental Movement in the United States has had a long history
- It began as a conservation movement at the start of the 20th century and was led
by people like John Muir who founded the Sierra Club as an environmental
group in 1897 and President Theodore Roosevelt who established the first
national parks
- Over the years it has included diverse groups who have focused on issues from
saving the rain forests to the clean-up of toxic waste dumps
- After World War II, the primary focus was on restoring and maintaining a clean
environment
- Groups as diverse as the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace were formed to
call attention to various aspects of environmental concerns
- Rachel Carson in Silent Spring (1962) called attention to the use of pesticides in
agriculture and the damage they had done
- It was a stimulus to the growth of environmental awareness
- In 1970 the first Earth Day was organized to draw attention to the environment
“What is the use of a
house if you don’t have a
decent planet to put it
on?”
~ Henry David Thoreau
My goodness, this Ms. Napp has not given me a quick list or a shortcut rather I
have missed my entire Intergalactic soap opera in mining her consciousness
and its random thoughts from this and that assortment of sources. And still,
she is thinking about the topics that she has missed: the Transcendentalists,
this “19th century movement of writers and philosophers in New England who
were loosely bound together by adherence to an idealistic system of thought
based on a belief in the essential unity of all creation, the innate goodness of
man, and the supremacy of insight over logic and experience for the revelation
of the deepest truths” as well as the Eaton Affair or Petticoat Affair whereby
gossip impacted Jackson’s cabinet and oh, how grateful Ms. Napp is to a
brilliant colleague who reminded her of it.
My goodness, there is nothing quick about a Ms. Napp quick list. Oh well, I
have learned a lot and there is so much more I do want to learn. Perhaps as
Ms. Napp’s favorite hiking poster says, “There are no shortcuts to success.”
And perhaps I have learned that it is interesting to learn.
So, before I restore her to full waking consciousness, I will disguise myself as a
bird on the windowsill. I will give her the gift of nature for what greater gift is
there for a species that so desperately depends on nature.
As I was restored to full waking consciousness, I realized that my lemon-ginger tea had
grown cold and that there was a beautiful bird on my windowsill. I kept thinking “Frodo
Lives” and how Tolkien had valued nature so much more after seeing the ravages of World
War I and the impact of industrialization on his beloved countryside. And while I am
certainly no Luddite, I looked at the bird and I thought, “Yes, life, liberty, and the
preservation of the earth.” To this day, I do not know why and every time I see the color
green, I have this vague realization that I was once visited by a perfectly green alien and
that I shared with the perfectly green alien what I had learned about American history.
Oh, I have always admired Voltaire and I have always been grateful to the framers of the
Constitution who built a nation upon the ideas of individual freedoms and the values of the
Enlightenment. But in looking at that bird, I realized how important it is to preserve the
record of the past and to work for the preservation of the earth to ensure that future
generations can know, can grow, can improve, and can make an even better world. Frodo
lives!
“Act as if what
you do makes a
difference. It
does.”
~ William James