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UNIT I
Chapter 1
Columbus comes upon a new world
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Portuguese set the standard with long distance sailing
Columbus found the new world on accident
When Worlds Collide
New world  old world
Gold, silver, new food goods, tobacco, and syphilis {luxury nonessentials for $}
Old world  new world
Wheat, sugar, rice, coffee + horses, cows, pigs + SMALLPOX, measles, bubonic plague
and other diseases {essentials for survival to bring products back to old world}
Africa  new world
Slaves, and a lot of them
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Cultivating sugar mostly happened in the Caribbean, leading to need for slaves
Smallpox had no immunity: wiped out 90% of native population
Along with smallpox, enslavement and massacres dwindled down Native population
Taino natives  1,000,000 to 200 in 50 years
The Spanish Conquistadores
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Treaty of Tordesillas: Spanish + Portuguese decided amongst themselves who gets what
o Ignored other nations, and therefore nothing really came of this treaty except for
lessened aggression between the Portuguese and Spanish in particular
Magellan (Spanish) was the first to circumvent the globe in 1519-1522
Spanish Conquistadores started spreading out across the Caribbean and parts of the
mainland
o While many explorers went to NA, they didn’t find much
 Grand canyon was found I guess- Thanks PSAT
 Florida was explored: eventually became Spanish colony
o In South America, Pizzarro killed a bunch of Peruvian Incans in 1532
o By the 1600s, the Spanish were loaded with Silver, mostly from Bolivian mines
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For AP world folks: this is where the encomienda system stuff comes in,
but it’s not that important here.
Ballooning money supply + tons of trading planted early seeds of
Capitalism
The Conquest of Mexico + The Spread of Spanish America
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Hernan Cortes met the Aztecs with his men
o On the way he picked up Malinche
 She could translate
 Also known as Dona Marina, and as a traitor by the Aztecs
 They sold her into Slavery. Does she really owe here loyalty to
them?
o They made landfall in Tenochtitlan (Aztec Capital)
 Also they though the Spanish were gods because of some old prophecy
 The Aztecs showered them in gold, because the Spanish wanted it
 The Aztecs let them come in unopposed
 City was HUGE
 Spanish did not expect to see such a huge, sprawling city from the
“primitive” natives
o Spanish greed began to irritate the Aztecs
 On Noche Triste (sad night) [June 1520] the Aztecs attacked the Spanish,
forcing them out
 Cortes got help from the neighboring tribes (who hated the Aztecs for
forcing them to give supplies to them in exchange for peace) to take over
Tenochtitlan a year later [1521]
 That whole Small Pox epidemic didn’t exactly help the Aztecs
either
o Eventually ended up integrating into the land
 Brought crops and livestock to form
 Intermarried with the natives (mestizos)
Almost the entire Indian population was enslaved
Spanish were very successful, and it got some other Europeans to encroach on their
land
o In response to the other Europeans and to spread Christianity, the Spanish
continued to settle Northward
Chapter 2
England on the Eve of an Empire
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Increased population
Since only the eldest sons inherited land, the younger ones went to the new world in
search of fortune
Joint stock companies (more on them later) helped investors pool their capital
Unemployment, religious freedom, and a thirst for adventures fueled the poor
England in Jamestown
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The Virginia Company received a charter from King James I
o They looked to strike gold (literally and figuratively) and become rich
o This never actually happened
o The Charter given to them guaranteed the settlers the same rights as Englishmen
o Jamestown was founded in 1609
 Many died on the way or due to disease or malnutrition
 There was a lot of food to hunt, but the rich settlers couldn’t be arsed to
hunt themselves
 John Smith was a good leader and was the saving grace of the trip
 Along with him, the natives saved the colonists during the winter with
food
o Eventually, the settlers took to raiding the local natives for food/supplies
 This lead to the first and Second Anglo-Powhatan war (1614/1644)
 In both instances, they were defeated due to disease and weaponry
Natives were heavily affected by the English
o Disease killed 90% of the population
o Trading with the Europeans was sometimes beneficial, but:
 Europeans stole from them often anyway
 Firearms trades led to some tribes being MUCH stronger than their rivals,
which led to a lot of death
 Fur trading led to endangered animal populations and competition for
hunting land
Virginia: Child of Tobacco
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After John Rolfe perfected the farming method by 1612, Tobacco was in high demand
o Tobacco was being planted EVERYWHERE
o HUGE cash crop; took priority over food cultivation
o Need for land increased
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o Need for labor increased (important later)
First Africans came into the colonies in 1619
o Could have been slaves, but also could have been indentured servants
o Slave population went on to increase dramatically through the century
House of Burgesses
o One of the first forms of representative self-government
o Met in 1619
Maryland
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Maryland was the second plantation colony, formed by Lord Baltimore
o Rather than given to a company, the charter was given to Baltimore and
Baltimore alone
o He disliked democracy and wanted to create a monarchy where his family led
 Didn’t end well; most people coming to the new world wanted
opportunity and not to be enslaved by the rich
 Protestant planters came and ended up surrounding the rich catholic
ones
 War broke out, and Baltimore eventually lost property rights
o Was a catholic, so he made his colony a catholic one
 The large number of emigrating protestants didn’t like the Catholics all
that much
 Led to the act of toleration (1649) which preached toleration for all
CHRISTIANS (death to anyone else, but no one really cared about that)
Maryland still prospered however, and farmed tons of tobacco
o Relied mostly on indentured servants for labor
o Slaves became more popular after indentured servants became more and more
butthurt about not having any land (Bacon’s rebellion and stuff is later, but this is
just a hint)
The West Indies
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The west Indies were the home of sugar cultivation
o Tobacco was easy to farm in small quantities, sugar was not
 Required high yield for profit
 Also needed a sugar mill
o Because of this, only the rich farmers planted sugar
o Sugar was popular in the Caribbean, but spread to the West Indies
Since a lot of labor was needed, Slaves were in high demand here (even as early as the
1600s, where slaves weren’t popular in NA)
o Barbados Slave Code
 To control the high population of Africans, the Barbados slave code was
passed
 Denied fundamental rights to slaves
 Slave owners could get away with any and all punishment
 Eventually, smaller farmers that couldn’t make it in the Caribbean moved
to the states and preached the Barbados slave code there
 Similar policies gained adoption in the 1690s in South Carolina
The Carolinas + Georgia
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Named after Charles II, Carolina was formed in 1670
o Prospered by developing close ties with the Caribbean
 Slave system was used (one of the reasons why southern society
eventually became dependent on slaves)
 Indian slaves were sometimes traded as well
o Rice became a popular crop to grow
 Africans grew rice, and the slaves the Carolinians had were already
experienced in rice cultivation
o Though they had initial conflicts with the natives, the Carolinians just massacred
them early to not have to deal with them (even though they were moving north
to get away from them anyway)
o Since they were on the border of Spanish Florida, there were a few fights in
between them, but Carolina survived
North Carolina was formed in 1712
o Outcasts from Virginia came and squatted on northern land
o They eventually formed their own state
o They and Rhode Island were some of the most independent and democratic
societies of the time
Georgia was formed in 1733
o Was meant to be a buffer between the Carolinas and the Spanish
o Received funding from the British (unheard of at the time) to make sure they
were doing well
o Unhealthy climate made it hard to farm, as well as the Spanish attacks and the
early restrictions on (black) slaver there
TLDR chapter 2: England was primed to expand into the new world and settled in Jamestown.
The Virginia company (which was eventually found to be wildly unsuccessful) was granted a
charter and placed themselves down on Jamestown, Virginia. They thought they would find a
bunch of gold, and since many of the settlers weren’t used to farming, they all starved. The
natives helped them though, but the colonists took too much advantage of that and there were
wars afterward. Disease still wrecked the Indians and they barely had a leg to stand on.
In Virginia, Tobacco was huge. Once Rolfe figured out how to grow it, land and labor
grew in demand. Though Africans came in in 1619, the easy majority of work was done by
Indentured servants. The House of Burgesses also was the first example of self-representative
government, also in 1619. In Maryland, Lord Baltimore tried to make a catholic kingdom where
his family ruled, but that fizzled out due to the high number of protestants and the yearning for
colonists to be free and not treated as serfs (go figure). Anyway, they still passed an act of
religious toleration in 1649, where all Christians (and no one else) were cool. The West Indies
grew sugar, and it was grown by the rich because it could only make profit off high yields. They
also needed a bunch of slaves, and published the Barbados slave code to make sure the slaves
had NO rights. This slave philosophy was moved north to the North American south, where in
South + north Carolina slaves were used to cultivate rice. North Carolina was more of a poor
man’s offshoot, but it was very democratic. Georgia was used as a buffer state and it worked.
They also were against slaves.
The plantation colonies (Maryland, Virginia, N+S Carolina, and Georgia) were all focused
on exporting agricultural products (Georgia not so much).There was also some religious
toleration in all these colonies, and were all expansionary because Tobacco destroyed the
landscape and they needed more land.
Chapter 3
Protestant Reformation Produces Puritanism
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Calvinism preached that god was all powerful/good
o Humans were all sinners and wicked
o Some, the elect, were already going to Heaven (god knows) while others were
already going to hell
o This was called predestination
o Calvinists seeked to see signs of conversion, or god telling the elect that they are
good
o They must then live good lives as “visible saints”.
Puritans wanted to purify the church of England
o They were generally poor
o They wanted to see progress in the protestant reformation, but didn’t
o Were actually called Puritans insultingly, they call themselves Congregationalists
because they want congregations to make decisions and not Bishops
o There were also Separatists (extremist Puritans) that wanted to leave the Church
of England.
Pilgrims and Their Pilgrimage
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Pilgrims (mostly separatists) went on the mayflower to Plymouth
Signed the Mayflower compact
o First step towards genuine self-government
After landing in the winter with very little food, many died (1620-1621)
1621 did end up giving them a good harvest in the later part of the year however, reaffirming that “god made his children prosperous”.
They had a string of strong leaders, like William Bradford
They eventually merged with the Massachusetts Bay Colony
Massachusetts Bay Colony
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Formed by Puritans in 1630
o They were more prepared than previous colonies, bringing many people and a
lot of supplies
o Many came from the Great Migration, where thousands left England to escape
religious persecution
o Winthrop appointed governor; delivered famous “city on a hill” sermon
Only Puritan adult male church members could vote
o About 2/5 of adult male population
o While it doesn’t sound great, it was much better than England
o Though this was the case, “non-believers” and believers were both ruled by the
government and both paid taxes
Preachers did not have absolute power
o No clergymen could hold public office
o A congregation could hire/fire ministers
o Though the government and religion went almost hand in hand, the Puritans
knew better than to create a bond between church and state
There were instances where dissension appeared
o Quakers criticized the Puritan clergy, and were beaten and flogged for doing so.
o Anne Hutchinson claimed that a holy life doesn’t guarantee salvation, and that if
the holy were truly saved, they would not have to bother to obey the law,
because they’d get into heaven anyway.
 She was banished to New York, where she was killed by Indians
o Roger Williams was a separatist who urged the clergy to break away from the
Church of England and challenged the legality of the Bay Colony’s charter. He
also denied the right of the government to police religious behavior
 He was banished in 1635
 He formed Rhode island in 1636
 He created one of the first Baptist churches
 Gave complete religious toleration, even for Jews/Catholics
 Made no mandates on Religion (taxes, church membership, etc.)
 Clergymen considered Rhode Island a “sewer”
 It received a charter in 1644
Connecticut colony
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Hartford was founded in 1635
In 1639, the colonists drafted “the fundamental orders”
o Basically a modern constitution
o Championed democracy
New haven was formed in 1638
o Founded by Puritans
Massachusetts Bay Colony was becoming larger
o Already swallowed Plymouth
o Was going to swallow New Hampshire, but the king prevented it and turned NH
into a royal colony
Puritans V. Indians
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Squanto and the Wampanoag befriended the settlers from Plymouth, but eventually
after Squanto died they went into conflict
o King Phillip’s war (or Metacom’s war) slowed westward English settlement for
decades
 Was a joint effort of many tribes against the settlers
 Tried to stop them encroaching on their land, and succeeded for the time
being
Pequot war
o In 1637, Hostilities exploded between the settlers and the Pequot, but the tribe
was slaughtered
o This started a 4 decade “iffy” peace between the natives and the settlers
Seeds of Colonial Unity and Independence
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The New England Confederation was formed between 4 colonies
o First grouping of colonies into 1 conglomerate
o English were took distracted with the civil war to take notice
o Meant to be a collective effort against the Indians, French, and Dutch
o Entirely Puritan states
Charles II was angered that the colonies (especially Mass.) were not following orders
o Gave Connecticut and Rhode Island (the sewer) charters
o Eventually revoked the Bay Colony’s charter in 1684
o Created the Dominion of New England
 An administrative union for use in governance
 Colonists obviously disliked it
 Aimed to bolster colonial defense
 Headed by Edmund Andros
o Navigation laws were passed
 Sought to throttle American trade with non-English countries
 Americans hated it
 Started smuggling
o The Dominion of New England fell to pieces after the Glorious Revolution (16881689)
 First real colonial revolt
 Led to Salutary neglect, where the new monarchs only loosely followed
the navigation laws
Quakers
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Were known as dissenters and arose in England during the 1600s
o Refused to pay Church taxes
o Abhorred fighting and refused military service
William Penn became attracted to the Quaker faith in 1660
o Got some land to start a Quaker colony
 Only got it because the crown was indebted to his family
 Called the land Pennsylvania
o Advertised the colony around Europe
o Started the colony in 1681
 Bought land from the Indians to avoid conflict
 Treated the natives very fairly
 Eventually non-Quakers ruined what they had going
 Very Liberal
 Had a legislative assembly
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No tax funded church
Religious freedom (Penn was still forced to deny Catholics/Jews
the vote though)
 Blue laws, however, still existed
 Colony prospered due to sound business decisions and trades
o Pennsylvania was eventually plagued by bad governors after Penn was no longer
there
Quaker colonies soon sprouted up in NJ and Delaware
TLDR chapter 3: After the protestant reformation, Puritans (called Congregationalists because
they wanted to reform the Church of England and give congregations the power) and Pilgrims
(separatists who were extreme puritans and wanted to leave the Church) went to England. The
Pilgrims founded Plymouth, and followed the Mayflower compact, which was the first ever selfgoverning document and established the “social contract” for years to come. Though many of
them died in the first winter they got there in 1620-1621, they eventually had a good harvest
the following year and eventually joined the Bay colony. The Bay Colony was a huge colony
developed for the Puritans. The Puritans escaped religious prosecution in the great migration of
the 1630s, but were a bit hypocritical. They only allowed church members to vote, and
banished any dissenters (Anne Hutchinson, Roger Williams, etc.). Speaking of Roger Williams,
he went on to found Rhode Island, a religiously tolerant and very liberal state that was
considered to be a “sewer” by the Bay colonialists. Connecticut also had their own Puritan
colony, and was famous for publishing the fundamental orders, yet another governing
document. Puritans and Indians didn’t have a fantastic relationship, but at first they worked
together. Encroaching on the Indians land, the Puritans had to end up slaughtering the Natives
(the disease helped) in the following wars. Metacom’s war, however, was one of the Native’s
successful wars, and stagnated colonial expansion for a bit.
Meanwhile, the New England Confederation (basically a puritan conglomerate) was
formed. England was pre-occupied with the civil war to pay attention to this, but after that was
over, Charles II passed the Dominion of New England and navigation laws, both which the
colonists saw as controlling (hint: more of this to come). After some revolution in Europe
however, the colonists revolted (hint: more to come) and got the laws to be either removed or
largely ignored. The Quakers were formed as a peaceful and liberal colony by William Penn, and
was one of the first colonies to try hard to stop conflict between them and the natives by
buying their land. Never the less, it all went downhill after Penn died and some bad governors
took over. However, Pennsylvania was economically solvent and grew to be one of the
strongest colonies.
In the middle colonies (NY, NJ, Delaware, PA), there was a lot of focus towards
infrastructure, and industry. Rivers helped with being a good source of water wheel power and
fur trade in general. They were ethnically mixed, and some were pretty religiously tolerant.
Chapter 4
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Chesapeake
o Disease ravaged the Chesapeake colony and many died
o Most immigrants were single men in their 20s looking to work
 Very few women
 Most were taken quick
 Growth rates were still high
o Tobacco was making it big
 SUPER high demand
 Running out of labor force
 Indentured servants were used for the most part, with little
slavery
 Head-right system
 Whoever paid for the Indentured Servant’s passage gets 50 acres
of land
 Incentivized planters to get more workers
 Increased immigration dramatically
 Gave Planters MUCH more power than the servants and increased
wealth gap
o Servants looked to a better life, but it rarely ever
happened
o Many would go back to working (for pay though) after
their time was up just to make a living
o Bacon’s rebellion
 Servants/lower class were being more and more ill-treated by the ruling
class
 Nathaniel Bacon lead a rebellion
 He would target anyone and everyone to go attack and raise hell
 Lead to planters looking for better alternatives for workers (slaves)
Slavery
o Slavery up, Indentured Servants down
 Less poor people want to come to America due to the horror stories and
better wages in England
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Planters wanted to get more reliable servants that won’t rebel as much
and that have less rights
o The Slave trade
 As Slaves increased in demand, more and more were transported to the
Americas
 Many came through the Royal African Company
 Middle passage was a brutal ship ride to the Americas: many died along
the voyage
o Slave Codes
 Made black people and their children be classified as property 
inherited servitude
 Made it illegal for slaves to learn to read or write
 Solidified Slavery as a long and everlasting system
o Slave life
 culture
 Gullah, Angola, and other languages sprouted up as a combination
of western speaking and the African’s native language.
 Some developed unique forms of music
 Revolts
 The NY slave revolt in 1712
 SC slave revolt along the Stono river in 1739 lead slaves to walking
down to Spanish Florida, but they were stopped by the local
militia
Social Structure
o The slave structure increased gaps in the social ladder
 Most upper class families have been upper class for a while
 Not very much social mobility (especially for those at the bottom)
 Big farmers  small farmers  Landless whites  Blacks/slaves
New England
o New England was doing better than the South during this period
o New Englanders were INCREASING their life span by 10 years (as opposed to
southern decrease by 10 years)
o Booming birthrate
 Most settlers came with families
 More even women/men ratio than in the south
o Less Women’s rights
 South had less women and more widows, so they made laws regarding
women more lenient than New England
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Puritan lawmakers in New England had no such demand, and therefore
stripped women of most of their rights when they get a husband
o Churches and schools
 Larger towns were mandated to have schools
 Puritans had an official “congregational” church
 They tried to not get it linked with the government too much
 Town meeting were held between white males to do government stuff
Half way covenant and the Salem Witch Trials
o Half Way covenant (1662) made it easier to join the church
o Elites (The elect) didn’t like it, since it let more of the “others” join
 Led to a lot of scapegoating for misfortunes on more non-elect joining
 Salem Witch Trials
TLDR chapter 4: After the head right system made planters rich, Indentured servants were
unhappy with not getting much land. This lead to Bacon’s rebellion. After this, planters
switched to slaves to avoid the collateral damage people with rights cause. Though initially very
expensive, Slaves were eventually brought to the colonies in mass quantities in slave ships,
making them cheap enough for the average planter. Before the late 1600s, there was barely a
difference between slaves and servants. However, by the late 1600s, Slaves were given no
chance of freedom, discriminated based on race, and were forced to inherit servitude,
solidifying slavery in society. There were slave revolts (NY/South Carolina slave revolt in
1712/1739) but they all failed. In the south especially, a hierarchical structure set in. Big
planters (really rich, lots of slaves) -> low level planters (much poorer than big planters, still had
a bit of land/slaves) -> landless whites -> slaves. In New England life expectancy went up and
families generally came, unlike the Chesapeake. Society in New England also moved towards
the future. Husbands were penalized for abusing their wives, and an education system was
created. There was also that whole Salem Witch trials thing in Massachusetts.
Chapter 5
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The people
o Population GREATLY increased
 Ratio of British Colonists to American Colonists went down over time
 Baby boom; average age by 1775 was 16
 Still lacked many cities, 90% of the population lived in rural areas
o Races mixed, sort of
 Scottish, Irish, and Germans were pouring into the new world
 Most went to the North, while some went to the south
 Mostly slaves went south
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North was slowly becoming more industrial than the south
A lot of the immigrants didn’t like the Indians too much
 The “Paxton boys” in Pennsylvania were a group of Scots-Irish
people who led a rebellion against the Quakers and Indians for
the formers lenient policies towards the latter.
 There was much interracial marriage to be had
 “melting pot” comes to fruition really for the first time
o Wealth Gap
 America was hailed as a place free of nobility
 Regardless there was still a political and economic elite
 Wealth was concentrated in the hands of the big planters in the south
and the rich merchants in the north
 Servants and Slaves were still on the bottom rung
 Slavery was starting to become a contentious issue
 Due to the economic benefits of slavery, the British refused to
outlaw it
 Slaves were brought in high quantities to the west indies to make
sugar
 Many colonists hated this policy
o Academic jobs
 Clergymen
 Respected members of society
 Didn’t wield much influence, but had a respectable profession
 Physician
 In 1765 a medical school was established
 Though many wanted to learn, scientific progress was at time
limited by religious zeal
o “can’t stop god’s wish”
 Jurist
 At first lawyers were not looked at favorably in society
 Many felt lawyers were unnecessary
 Still many decided to take it up (John Adams for example)
Rebellions
o Paxton Boys
o Regulator Movement
 In NC, protestors fought against harsh and controlling British policies
 Many of the protestors would later join the revolutionaries
Trade
o Triangular Trade was still growing strong
 Tobacco was still growing very fast and was high in demand
 Lumber became an increasingly prevalent industry
 Much of the trade was going to Britain
 Britain tried their best to keep it this way
o Manufactories were coming along in the North
o Molasses Act
 Tried to stop NA trade with the West Indies
 In the interest of the British
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Religion
o Anglican (Catholic) and Congregational (Protestant) churches had a clear
majority
 Only tax subsidized churches
 Taxation was sometimes forced on people not part of the state’s official
denomination
 Separation of Church and State?
 Still a great amount of religious toleration in comparison to other nations
in the era
o The Great Awakening
 Earlier prevailing beliefs were Calvinistic
 Believed that there were an “elect” who were destined to go to
heaven, and everyone else was already damned to hell
 Conflicting viewpoints like Arminianism (individual free will >
divine decree, and all humans can be saved)
 Preachers like Edwards and Whitfield argued for praising god’s grace
 They claimed that everyone can get into heaven as long as they
accept god
 Sinners were doomed to go to hell unless they repent
 Gave huge sweeping and energetic sermons
 “Old Lights” (Orthodox Clergymen) were skeptical of the emotional “New
Lights” (great awakening preachers)
 Encouraged Missionary work to spread the word of god
The Printing Press
o In 1744, a printing press helped a South Carolina marketer sell his books for
cheap
o Printing presses revolutionized the industry
 Quick printing = more copies
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 More copies = more readers
 Helped with spreading the news/religion
o Led to the first free press court decision
 Zenger trial
 Peter Zenger had a claim against a corrupt governor, and he was tried
 The Jurors found him not guilty
 Newspapers can now print what they wanted, which was a huge step
from the previous system of watching what you publish
Individual colonies had respective state governments
o Two house legislature
 One house was appointed by the crown in royal colonies and the
proprietor (a company of some sort) in a proprietary colony
 Other was appointed by (eligible) voters (not many)
o Balance of power
 Governor sometimes had too much power, so the legislature would
withhold salary until he got his stuff together
o Local county/town governments played a part
o Some of the middle colonies adopted a form of direct democracy
o While not FULLY democratic, the US was well ahead of other nations
TLDR Chapter 5: Huge population increase (and bigger than huge slave population increase) in
the 1700s. New races of people (German, Scots-Irish) all went to Pennsylvania. Some Scots
went to Charleston. The Scots-Irish in particular started an armed march of the Paxton boys in
Philadelphia to protest Quaker-Indian leniency. Overall, society became very diverse, and there
was intermarrying between the races, creating more diversity. Social mobility became more
common in the colonies, and there was equal opportunity for all, except for slaves of course.
Slaves became a contentious issue, with the West Indies and British authority vetoing any move
to criminalize the slave trade.
By the 18th century, different regions created different products. NE generally had grain,
cattle, timber and fish, while the Chesapeake relied on tobacco and the south relied on indigo
and rice. Parliament tried passing the Molasses act to cut trade between the colonies and west
Indies, but all it did was make people smuggle goods.
Meanwhile, 2 religions came up ahead in America: Anglicans and Congregationalists.
Congregationalists (puritans) were in Mass., CT,NH and NY, while Anglicans were spread out
across the rest of the colonies. NJ, NY, Delaware, and Rhode Island didn’t have an official
religion. However, the traditional Calvinism was under threat by Armenianism, which said that
not all humans are damned. This cleared the road for the great awakening (1730s-40s), a
religious revival. The Zenger trial was a hallmark trail that was a banner achievement of
freedom of the press. Governments at the time already had a bicameral legislature, and they
already figured out how to pressure the governor (lowering his salary until he does something,
etc.)
JUST READ TLDR FOR CHAPTER 6
TLDR Chapter 6: just look at the maps. The 7 years’ war (Britain v. France) was one of the first
global conflicts. Britain won most of the battles and drastically increased their land holdings
from 1700-1763. Britain was becoming the dominant power in NA. The Proclamation of 1763
ended the 7 years’ war.
Chapter 7
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New Political Ideas
o Republicanism
 A society in which all citizens subordinate part of their lives for the public
good
 Disliked Hierarchical and Authoritarian institutions
o Whigs
 Whigs felt that liberty was threatened by the arbitrary power of the
monarch
 Warned citizens to be wary of corruption in government
o Many felt that the British rule was distant
 “taxation without representation”
 The British government is taxing the colonies to finance a war they didn’t
benefit from
The economy
o Mercantilism
 Economic theory that believed that a country’s economic wealth and
solvency can be determined by the amount of reserves (gold, silver, etc.)
they had
 Similar to Chinese system where they ended up hording half the world’s
silver
 In relation to the colonies, British wanted to force a trade relationship
with the colonies to bolster its economy and to get resources that aren’t
in abundance in the mainland
 Mercantilism, thought designed to benefit the British, didn’t really HURT
the colonies much in its earlier stages, but did stifle economic initiative
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o Navigation law of 1650
 One of the first British economic laws that hindered the colonies and
benefitted them.
 Represented mercantilist ideology
 Tried to stop Dutch merchants from trading with the colonies
 Wanted British middleman
 More economic regulations eventually leads to more smuggling (common
theme)
 Due to Salutary Neglect, it was loosely enforced
 George Grenville (British PM) decided to change that in 1763
o Currency
 Due to economic constraints there was a money shortage
 For a time the colonies reverted in part back to a barter system
Increase in British power/lawmaking
o British could nullify any legislation
 Defeats purpose of bicameral legislature and of actual representation
o George Grenville’s reforms
 Started to enforce Navigation Acts
 Sugar Act was passed to raise revenue for the crown
 Passed the Quartering Act to force colonists to allow soldiers food and
quarters whenever needed
 Passed the Stamp Tax, which raised revenues from stamp taxes to
support the military
o Americans were angry at Grenville’s laws
 Though Britain had the same types of laws, they didn’t feel that they
were getting their money’s worth
 The believed this much military presence was unnecessary since the
French and Pontiac were vanquished
o Admiralty courts
 Special courts with no juries
 Colonists HATED these as they stripped from them their basic rights
o The Stamp Act
 The stamp act in particular rustled some jimmies
 Stamp Act Congress was made in 1765
 Made up of representatives from 9 colonies
 Told the king to repeal the legislation
 Passed nonimportation agreements, stating that they wouldn’t
import from Britain or buy British goods
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Repealed in 1766
 In 1765 it didn’t take off the ground and parliament begrudgingly
vetoed it
 Right after repealing the Stamp Act, the passed the Declaratory
Act, which allows parliament to “bind” the colonies
 Colonists hated this act as they wanted just a bit of sovereignty.
o Sons/Daughters of liberty were formed to protest against British taxes
Things get violent
o Townshend acts were passed in 1767
 Not too harsh taxes, but colonists were angered at the lessening amount
of representation
 Nonimportation acts were re-enacted with the passage of this bill
 Money was going to royal governors salary
o Boston Massacre
 On March 5th, 1770, colonists started harassing red coats
 The red coats, nervous and provoked fired into the crowd
 Though there wasn’t an actual initiation (or commanding officer at his
post) the troops acted brashly
 Paintings and pamphlets painted this differently depending on the bias
(mostly pro-US)
Committees of correspondence
o Set up originally by Samuel Adams (John Adams’ relative) in 1772
o Made to spread the spirit of resistance
o Many more were made
o Eventually every colony had one
Tea?
o British East India Company was falling on hard times
 Had a lot of unsold tea
 British government gave them a monopoly on tea and added their own
tax
 Tea was now cheaper, but colonists weren’t having it
o Boston Tea Party
 A hundred Bostonians raided a tea ship dressed as Indians
 They poured a lot of tea into the harbor
 Conservatives called it destruction or property, though most considered a
symbolic “badge of slavery”
Intolerable acts
o British officials who commit crimes would be tried in Britain
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 He can easily get off scot free there
 Colonists knew it
 They HATED this act
o First Continental Congress formed as a response in 1774
 All met in Philadelphia to redress grievances.
 Many future founding fathers attended
 Signed the declaration of rights
 Passed “The association”
 Boycott on ALL British goods
 Nonimportation, nonexportation, nonconsumption
Lexington and Concord
o British troops went to seize gunpowder and arrest the rebel, but minutemen
came and FIGHTING BEGAN.
o Lexington and Concord
o Britain was the clear favorite
 Population advantage
 BIG Naval advantage
 Troops advantage
o But had some disadvantages
 Ireland was a smoking volcano at this point
 They had bad generals and ill-treated soldiers.
TLDR Chapter 7: After the 7 years’ war, Britain started trying to tax the colonists to make up the
money they lost. These laws pissed them off and catalyzed the revolution. A lot of these laws
also stemmed from British Mercantilist ideals, saying that they should control all exports and
imports of the colonies, and have complete economic control over them. It started with PM
Grenville re-enforcing the navigation laws in 1763 and passing the sugar act in 1764, which
increased duties on sugar from the West Indies. This was soon followed by the 1765 quartering
act (think 3rd amendment) and the worst of all: the stamp tax. Stamps were required on many
commercial goods, and the colonists hated it. Though Britain had a similar system, the colonists
felt that they weren’t being represented (taxation without representation). Admiralty courts
were made that had no jury and Grenville dismissed all protests. The stamp act congress met in
1765 to discuss repealing the act. These and the non-importation agreements (first boycotts)
were some of the first organized efforts against the British. In 1766, the parliament repealed
the stamp act, but replaced it with the declaratory act and the Townshend act, both of which
were underhanded replacements that put the British in control. This irritated the colonists
more. A few, on March 5th 1770, taunted some British Soldiers, and it led to the Boston
Massacre. Sam Adams soon after founded the Committees of Correspondence to spread the
spirit of resistance. Intercolonial groups soon formed, showing yet again the gradual grouping
together and organization of revolutionary efforts. Eventually, After the British tried to tax
monopolized tea, the colonists struck again with the Boston Tea Party. The Parliament in 1774
passed the intolerable acts, in which town meetings were restricted; Officials who kill a colonist
are allowed to go back to Britain for trial. The result was the first continental congress, where
members from nearly all the colonies deliberated on what to do. They created the association,
which was a complete boycott of British goods. The British in 1775 fought the first battle at
Lexington and Concord. Though they seem strong, the British were actually pretty weak. Not all
of them wanted to fight the Americans, and those that did just got done with the millionth
French war. They also were operating thousands of miles from home. The Americans on the
other hand, had excellent generals and could fight defensively in their home court. That being
said, they were a rag-tag group of fighters with no supplies.
Chapter 8
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George Washington the charismatic general
o Elected by the Second Continental Congress in 1775 to lead the siege on Boston
o Known for his strength of character
o Everyone loved him
The battles begin?
o While many supported the British, many others fought against them in battle
o Colonists seized Bunker Hill
 Clearly outnumbered, American troops decimated the red coats
 Would shoot officers so 2 troops had to bring them back, killing 3 birds
with 1 stone
o Olive Branch petition
 Last reach to make the King recognize that the colonies were loyal
 King George III refused after Bunker Hill
o King George hired outside mercenaries to fight for him
 Hessians
 Colonists hated this and felt that the battle was “inside the family”
o Colonists tried to take over Canada
 Wanted more firepower and more colonies
 Failed
o British were losing a few battles; lost Boston
Common Sense
o Published by Thomas Paine January 1776
 Stated that independence from the British was “common sense”
 Colonists do no benefit from the relationship
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 Why should a tiny island like Britain control all the colonies?
o Wildly acclaimed and pushed many loyalists to the other side
o Pushed for a Republic
 Wanted greater representation and less rule by political elite
 Wanted everyone to be represented
Jefferson and his explanation of Independence
o In June 1776, Henry Lee said that the colonies “ought to be free”
o Less than a month later, the motion was adopted
o Thomas Jefferson helped publish the Declaration of Independence
 Invoked the “natural rights” of Human kind
 John Locke inspired this
 He made compromises to benefit the people and make the document the
best it could be
 Inspired the “French Declaration of Man” 13 years later
Red vs. Blue
o Loyalists
 Tories
 Loyal to Britain
 ~16% of the population
 Mostly wealthy who benefited from British involvement, but also some
poor who didn’t like the idea of independence
 Many were forced by Patriots to flee
o Patriots
 Whigs
 Loyal to the Colonies
 Though many colonists were originally loyalists, propaganda and minute
men throughout the colonies spread the revolutionary word and many
once loyalists joined the cause
 Regarded the loyalists, ironically, as traitors
More battles
o Washington Loses battle of long Island
o Also had wins in Trenton when he captures a thousand hessians
 Did really good in NJ as a whole
o Colonies retired attack on Canada
o US won the battle of Saratoga in 1777
 Revived the faltering colonial cause
 Showed France that the US still got it: gave them aid
 REALLY helped them reach success
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Diplomacy?
o Americans wanted change
 Americans hated colonialism and Mercantilism
 Supported free trade
o Continental Congress of 1776 drafted the “model treaty” to give to France
 Wanted their to be only a commercial connection and that alone
 Included recognition of America as a nation
 Meeting went well, many liked it when Ben Franklin presented it
o British Parliament gives last ditch effort
 Humiliated after Saratoga
 Gave colonies complete home rule as a final shot
 Not taken because there as not an independence clause
 Colonists weren’t falling for that one again
o Colonial war become a world war
 England and France came to blows in 1778
 Rest of Europe (lead by Catherine II of Russia) pushed for Armed
Neutrality
 Catherine called it Armed Nullity
 Pushed for passive hostility to Britain and France
 France supported the Americans
 England had a whole new war on their hands
 French had naval power while Americans didn’t
 British started to recruit Native American tribes
 Treaty of Fort Stanwix
o Made between an Indian tribe and the US
o First of its kind
 American navy became better with French Involvement
 Privateers were essentially legal pirates
 Private ships were used to defend against the British navy
 Cost a lot
It all ends in Yorktown
o General Cornwall (British) was surprised when , in 1781, Americans/French
teamed up their navies to beat the British
 British was considered naval superpower and didn’t expect it
 Forced to surrender their arms in Yorktown
o King George III stubbornly tried to continue for a bit but it was for the most part
over
Peace at Paris
o Treaty of Paris was passed in 1783
 Britain recognized the US
 Borders from Mississippi river to the great lakes, to the Atlantic
ocean and up to the Spanish floor in the south
 Could share the bounties from fisheries in Newfoundland
 The US had to give a bit of leeway
 Loyalists cannot be persecuted
 Congress had to “recommend that Loyalist properties be given
back
UNIT II
Chapter 9
The Pursuit of Equality
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The Declaration of Independence made equality much more of a thing than before, and
society was becoming a bit more progressive
o Reduced property holding requirements for voting
o Names/titles changed, master  boss, (…)  Mr./Ms. (…)
o Anglican Church became disestablished
o Virginian Statute for Religious Freedom showed separation of church and state in
VA
Africans still didn’t have equality
o Though some states criminalized slavery in the north, laws still discriminated
harshly against freed and enslaved Africans
o While the founding fathers could have fought against slavery, arguing it would
fragment the union that they worked hard to get
Women did not get many rights either
o Women had to care for their young and cultivate good habits in them (civic
virtue)
o Civic virtue tied will into Republican motherhood, enabling women to get some
opportunities and education
Constitution making the states
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The Continental Congress of 1776 asked states to draft constitutions
o Basically a bunch of state specific laws
o Massachusetts sent the final draft of theirs to the people directly. A similar
approach was taken with the federal constitution
o State constitutions were very similar; this made it easier to draft the federal
constitution
Economic Crosscurrents
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Many large loyalist/crown estates were split up and distributed as small farms
All trade with Britain was off the table
o For a while the Americans could only trade with the British
o Previously imported goods now have to be made locally
o New demand for commercial outlets
 China, for example
A Shaky Start toward Union
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War was barely organized, but there was basically chaos for the first few years of
independence
British had cut-rate goods they had to sell, and that disrupted domestic sellers
Articles of Confederation
o “Plan A” for a codified set of laws
o Passed in 1777, ratified in 1781 unanimously
 To sweeten the pill, Congress pledged itself to dispose of these vast areas
to carve out new “republican states”.
 In part made to show the French that we were the real deal
o The Articles of confederation had some issues
 Articles of confederation only gave states 2 representatives no matter the
population
 Bi-cameral legislature solved this in the constitution
 Amendments required unanimous agreement
 Very hard to get
 Some states didn’t want to give up their new found power
 Congress had no power to regulate commerce
 Tariffs from different states conflicted each other
 Congress can’t enforce its own tax collection program
o Many still liked it though, and it was a step in the right direction
Landmarks and Land Laws
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Land Ordinance of 1785
o The Old northwest would be sold off and the money would pay off the national
debt
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o Was different than the land south of the Ohio River, which was basically in chaos
in terms of uncertainty of ownership
Northwest Ordinance of 1787
o At first, the area would be subordinate to the federal government
o When the territory has 60k+ inhabitants, it can apply to be a state
o Criminalized slavery in the old northwest
The World’s ugly duckling
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Britain refused to trade with the US
o Prohibited trading with the west Indies, but no one followed their rules
o They still had trading posts in NA to trade with Indians
Americans were mad at the government for not reacting, but the government doesn’t
control commerce
o Some states took advantage of this and adopted a lower tariff policy to attract
trade (unequal)
Even France (our friends during the war) wanted their money back and restricted trade
Anarchy
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Very few states wanted to follow the rules (who knew?)
o Minor battles were fought over state boundaries
Shay’s rebellion
o Back country farmers were losing their farms through mortgage foreclosures and
taxes
 Captain Daniel Shays led the rebellion
 Though it was crushed, debtor release laws were soon passed
 Jefferson considered this “Democratic despotism”
A convention of demi-gods
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In 1786, Virginia called for a convention to revise the Articles of Confederation
o Washington elected chairman
o Hamilton was there to argue for a super powerful central government, but no
one bought it
o All spokespeople were pretty rich
 Many were conservative, young, nationalists
 All were content on holding the union together
Chapter 10
Growing Pains
 By 1789 population skyrocketed
 Cities doubled in population ever 25 years
 4M total population in 1790 census
 most of the population was still rural
 Washington elected in 1789
 Known for charisma and strength of character
 Known to draft cabinet
 Not mentioned in constitution
 At first three members
 Jefferson for Secretary of State
 Hamilton for Secretary of Treasury
 Henry Knox for Secretary of War
 Many more came later
 Many didn’t like constitution and wanted bill of rights to be added in on passage
 Outlined rights of a citizen
 Freedom of Religion
 Right to arms
 Fair trial
 Etc.
 Articulated in series of amendments
 Last couple amendments specified state rights
 Anything not mentioned to be nationally allowed can be regulated by
states
 Judiciary act of 1789 established supreme court
 Alexander Hamilton “fixes” the public debt
 Alexander Hamilton believed in a strong federal government
 Allowed the federal government to absolve all public debt from the war
 Called “assumption”
 Relatively debt free states like Virginia didn’t like it, but they helped pass
it for the chance to have the Capital very close to their state
 Put the power in the federal government: made states look weak and
really showed who was in charge
 Had to pay it through taxes
 The federal government can now collect taxed under constitution
 Tariffs (import taxes) and Excise (basically sales tax) helped pay the debt
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Led to the Whiskey Rebellion
 Many didn’t like paying the Whiskey Excise tax
 It was almost used as currency in some places due to its
abundance and the continental dollar’s lack of value
 Washington sent Militias to quickly end the threat
 Showed the government had strength
 He wanted to make a national bank
 Would store money
 Also allowed to print money
 Jefferson didn’t like the government having that much power
 Eventually created in 1791
 Political Parties were formed
 Contentious issues caused two groups to form
 Though groups existed before, most weren’t organized parties and were just
factions
 Whigs, Federalists, anti-Federalists, etc.
 In 1792, two major political parties were formed
 Hamiltonians who favored big government were Federalists
 Jeffersonians who favored small government were Democratic
Republicans.
Washington’s Neutrality Proclamation
 The Alliance between France and America bounded them to help them out during the
French Revolution
 Washington didn’t want to enter another war
 Washington passed Neutrality Proclamation in 1793
 Swore neutrality in the entire quarrel
 Was first sign of American Isolationism
 Was actually slightly beneficial to France, since Britain wouldn’t blockade the
Americans if they were neutral.
 French still didn’t like it
Embroilments with Britain
 Britain kept bases in the north
 Violated Paris Treaty of 1783
 They felt they were too lucrative to abandon
 British paid Natives with guns and weapons, who in turn harassed Americans
 During a battle, British refused to shelter their “friends”
 Angered, Natives struck a deal with the Americans for some land in exchange for
some money and hunting rights
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Jay’s treaty
 John Jay was sent by Washington to stop the British
 Many of the meetings were sabotaged by Hamilton
 Though he got the British to leave the posts and to pay for attacked ships,
they didn’t promise to stop attacking
 Americans also had to pay pre-war debt back to British
 Treaty was very unpopular
 Strengthened Jeffersonian Democratic Republican party, who disliked it
from the start
 Unknowingly led to Pickney’s treaty, where the Spanish gave Americans rights to
the Mississippi, deposit rights in New Orleans, and land western Florida
 Motivated by Spanish Fearing Anglo-American treaty
 France was VERY angry
 Britain was their perpetual foe
 After a bunch of hassle, an American convoy was sent
 Instead of speaking to Talleyrand (French Foreign Minister) they
had to speak to 3 surrogates who demanded a huge loan and a ¼
million dollar bribe to allow them to speak to him
 Became known as the XYZ affair
 Americans were outraged, preparation for war began
 Though no official fighting, Americans pushed French off the coast with
their new navy
 Fearing another foe, Talleyrand accepted an audience
 Rather than go to war and follow popular opinion, Adams tried to
diplomatically resolve the situation
 Convention of 1800 peacefully resolved conflicts
 Allowed for the Louisiana purchase 3 years later
John Adams Becomes President
 George Washington issued Farewell Address in 1796
 Hamilton wasn’t very liked, so he wasn’t going to run
 Federalists rallied behind John Adams
 Democratic Republicans pushed for Thomas Jefferson
 Created huge partisan divide
 Though closely, Adams won, and since Jefferson was runner up, he became VP
 Adam’s term was filled with Federalist censorship
 They passed the Sedition Act
 Prohibited talking negatively about elected officials
 Targeted Jeffersonians
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Conflicted with 1st amendment, but pro-Federalist supreme court
passed it
 Expired right before elections so Federalists can’t be hurt by it
Some still liked this laws after the anti-French hysteria
Jefferson considered this a step toward dictatorship
 Fearing for his party, he and James Madison passed the Kentucky
and Virginia resolutions respectively
 Both said that States have the final say in jurisdiction and
in whether a law was within constitutional powers
 Obviously Sedition Act wasn’t according to them
 Kentucky/Virginia refused to follow the act under this
resolution
 Many other states refused to follow it, especially federalist
ones
 Used by Southerners in the 1860s for justification for succession
Chapter 11
Partisan Bickering
 After the Sedition Acts and Alien Acts, Federalists were not in good standing
 After never going to war with France, the hype trail derailed and no one cared
much anymore and the party couldn’t justify war
 Preparation Required iffy taxes (there was actually a stamp tax again)
 Federalist Party was splintering
 Hamilton started to fight with John Adams
 Hamilton secretly published a pamphlet criticizing Adams, and the
Jeffersonian found it and published it
 Federalists were throwing negative campaign ads towards Jefferson
 Jefferson was elected in 1800, kind of
 He and his vice president Burr received the same number of votes in the
electoral college
 House of Representatives broke the tie
 Were full of Federalists who hated Jefferson
 They delayed it as long as possible
 Jefferson finally won
 Mark the end of the Federalists (“Revolution of 1800”)
 Jefferson called it a revolution and “a return of the original spirit of the
revolution
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Transfer of power was VERY peaceful; no all-out war like the last few
times this happened
 Showed nation advancing and democracy working
 Democratic Republicans were dying
 Opposition to federalists held them together
 No federalists = splintering party
 Tried undoing Federalist policies
 Pardoned anyone imprisoned by the Sedition Act
 Made citizenship easier and reduced requirement of residence from 14 to
5 years (originally the case)
 Removed the Excise tax
 Greatly decreased revenue
 New secretary of the treasury still did balance the budget well and
do his best to get rid of debt
 Didn’t completely undo all policies, many Hamiltonian policies were still
in place
 Didn’t want to destroy the framework; doing so could have led to
the next president (who could have been a federalist) doing the
same, leading eventually drastically changing policies with each
president
Federalists passed the Judiciary Act of 1801
 Made seats in the supreme court lifetime
 John Adams appointed a good amount of the judges on his last day in office
 Called the “midnight judges”
 One of them, Marbury, came back to sue over losing his commission
 Marbury v. Madison (the guy who took his pay)
 Chief justice Marshall ruled in favor of Marbury over Madison
 Slap in the face to Jeffersonians
 After some Partisian bickering and Jefferson’s attempt to remove some
other justices from office (which failed), out came proof that the
branches were separated sufficiently
 Many thought it was a last ditch effort to have federalists still in charge
 Nevertheless, Republicans repealed it when they took power
 Chief Justice Marshall, a Federalist, stayed on, and for the next 34 years
Foreign Affairs
 Jefferson reduced the Military size drastically
 He wanted his policies to be in line with republican ideals
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Soon went down the toilet as Pirates from Tripoli wanted more tribute money
 People hated paying tribute, but it was still done to avoid conflict
 Eventually they thought the tribute wasn’t enough and declared war
 Tripolitan War
 Jefferson had to build a bunch of extra boats to win
Napoleon signed a pact with Spain, giving him land in the Louisiana/New Orleans area
 America didn’t like this; Jefferson was anti-war and anti-alliance
 They knew that they couldn’t handle the French Army (and maybe the
Spanish too) on their own
 Jefferson went to buy the land from Napoleon
 If it failed, they would have to ally with the British
 It worked (Napoleon was busy with other things at the time to care for
world domination) and they got the land for $15M
 Came with a bunch of land west of it (wilderness)
 Effectively doubled the size of the US
 Was technically unconstitutional (Jefferson knew this) but to his
protest and eventual unhappy agreement, it happened.
 Ended well; no wars or alliances
 After the Louisiana purchase, America sought to expand
 People already living in Louisiana were allowed to be incorporated into
the Union, and was allowed to keep most of their legal code
 Lewis and Clark expedition
 They went to survey the region
 With the help of Sacajawea and other natives, they came back 2.5
years later with some promising findings
The Hated Embargo
 Jefferson wanted other world powers to stop pestering America
 Congress passed Embargo Act in 1807
 Prevented all exports
 Was meant to show countries dependent on the US who has the power
 Inadvertently hurt the US economy (I wonder why?)
 Many people didn’t like the trade
 By 1808 illegal trade started to become more popular
 North East had talks about succession
 After terrible reception, Jefferson passed the Non-Intercourse Act
 Reopened trade with everyone but Britain and France
 Leaky embargo still continued, which diminished the intended effect
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After Madison was elected in 1808, Macon’s bill No.2 was put into effect (to his
own dismay)
 With the Non-Intercourse Act now expired, the Macon’s Bill stated that
(between Britain and France) if one power removed their commercial
restrictions the other would be embargoed.
 Madison gambled on going with the French
 Madison’s Gamble
 Lost; British knew that they had the most power and could stop
trade if they wanted
 Madison was forced to embargo Britain, ending their “neutrality”
Tecumseh and the prophet
 Older “submission men” were leaving office; replaced with young hotheads AKA
“War hawks”
 Wanted to deal with the British
 Wanted to wipe out the Indian threat
 Tecumseh and the prophet, two Shawnee brothers, tried to stage
a fight against the Americans
 One of the first Native American alliances in a while
 Tried to attack William Henry Harrison (governor of Indiana) and
his family: failed hard.
Mr. Madison’s War
 Madison eventually believed war was inevitable
 Wanted to restore confidence in the Republicans
 If America can’t fight to defend itself, democracy would be
counted out as a failure
 War fever + Democratic Idealism = WAR
 Asked Congress to declare war in 1812
 Supported: came from South, West, and large republican states
like Virginia
 Federalists didn’t like it
 Tried to loan money to the British to make it stop quick
 SOON, WAR BEGAN.
Chapter 12
Hartford Convention
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NE was booming during the war
o Illicit trades and no British blockade
o Some extremists wanted to have a separate peace between them and Britain
o Blue light federalists were rumored to signal British Ships if American ships
attempted to leave
 Hartford convention was held to hear federalist Grievances in 1815
o Held by Massachusetts
o Ideas were proposed
 End of 3/5th compromise
 2/3rd vote in congress before embargos can be passed
o When the grievances reached Washington, war already ended
 Mid wartime proposals looked petty and almost treasonous
 Final blow to federalist party
 No federalists were ever elected again
Nationalism and post-war actions





After war ended, heroes emerged
o Andrew Jackson and William Henry Harrison were both accomplished war
generals
o Both became president (eventually)
o Federalists were essentially dead
Indians ceded more land
o Due to treaty of Ghent
 Treaty to end the war mitigated by the Russians who did not want to see
the British wasting their time
 Was eventually signed with reluctance from many parties
o Mostly land north of the Ohio River
Rush-Bagot agreement
o Canadians still hated the “Yankees”, and now hate them more because there is
no Indian buffer between them
o Rush-Bigot agreement significantly decreased naval presence in the great lakes
Americans were doing things as a nation
o American writers published textbooks and newspapers in America
o Bank was revived in 1816
American system
o British were undercutting American merchants
 Tariff of 1816 was passed, which increased tariffs on imported goods
 Tariff was passed for protection, not revenue
o Policies were eventually expanded to include three parts





Era of Good feelings
Strong banking system
 For easy and abundant credit
Protective tariffs
 Benefitting eastern manufacturing
Network of roads and canals
 Funded by revenue from Tariffs
 Makes trading south  north and north  south easier
 Originally unconstitutional to give money to states for this
 States did this on their own
o Erie canal completed in 1825
 NE opposed these policies because they would lose their
superiority in population and there would be more states in
competition
Pushed by Henry Clay
Called American system

James Monroe (part of the Virginia dynasty) swept the federalist candidate in the 1816
election
 While there was no party competition (reason for the name) for next few years, Monroe
had a lot of conflicts on his plate
o Conflicts on how to run all the things put in place in the American system
o Slavery starts to be contentious
o N vs. S problems start to form
Growing Pains


Panic of 1819
o First financial depression since George Washington took office
o Bankruptcy, bank failures, unemployment, etc.
o Bank foreclosed a lot of western property
 Westerners hate the bank
 Legal, though politically unwise
Westward expansion
o Many wanted cheap land
o William Harrison killed more Indians
o Land Act of 1820 authorized a buyer to buy 80 acres of land at a minimum of
$1.25/acre
o Many wanted cheap money, issued by their own “wildcat” banks
 Some fighting with the federal bank over it
 Slavery and sectional balance
o “Peculiar Institution” = slavery
o Tallmadge amendment
 No more slaves to Missouri
 Gradual emancipation
 Southerners hated it because they want slaves, pioneers hate it because
they wanted easy western expansion, and some Northerners hated it
because they wanted to see the end of the “Virginia dynasty”
 Was defeated in the senate
o There was an equality between the North and South
 11 to 11 slave to free
 Bicameral legislature evened out the large population of the north with
the large land of the south
 Soon balance started to splinter
o Missouri compromise
 Maine was entered as a free state, and Missouri was entered in as a slave
state
 Maintained balance
 Any new state north of 36/30 (Missouri compromise line) had to be free
 Other than Missouri of course
 While the south would be unhappy with this, they were fine for
many reasons
o Missouri was unconditionally a slave state
o That land was unfarmable and therefore slaves won’t be
necessary (eventually was found to by not completely
true)
o They control the area with a greater pop
 Eventually led to expansion westward into Spanish/Mexican
territory
 Arkansas territory and Louisiana are slave states
Judicial Nationalism

McCulloch vs. Maryland
o Maryland wanted to destroy the Bank of the US by imposing taxes on notes
o Bank was declared constitutional by Marshall, citing Hamiltonian doctrine of
implied powers
o McCULLOCH WINS

Cohens vs. Virginia
o Cohen brothers were illegally selling lottery tickets
o Cohens were kept imprisoned, VIRGINIA WON
 Gibbons vs. Ogden
o The state of New York wanted to grant a private concern a monopoly
o While congress doesn’t technically have the power to regulate interstate
commerce, Marshall still ruled in favor of NJ
o NEW JERSEY WON
 Many of John Marshall’s decisions took a blow at states’ rights and employed loose
constructionism
 Fletcher v. Peck
o Georgia legislature, swayed by bribery, granted 35M acres of Yazoo river county
to spectators
o New legislature sought to get rid of it
o Supreme court ruled in favor of latter, citing that a contract, though ill in
creation, must be enforced
o Property rights > public pressures
o LATTER LEGISLATURE WON
 Dartmouth college vs. Woodward
o Dartmouth was granted a charter from King George III in 1769 and the NH
legislature wanted to challenge it
o Dartmouth employed Daniel Webster, an alumni
o Marshall ruled that charter should stand
o DARTMOUTH WON
International relations


Anglo-American convention
o One of the only diplomatic hearings between Britain
o In 1818, it was decided that both America and Canada would share
Newfoundland fisheries
o Fixed the vague land borders of Louisiana purchase
o US gained Oregon territory
Southern revolutions
o Americans had already claimed western Florida
o Chile, Venezuela, and Argentina had their own revolutions
 Americans championed them, and say a good opportunity
o Americans wanted to enter Florida under the guise of stopping slaves and
Indians

Spanish were OK with it and agreed, as long as they stayed clear of
Spanish bases
 US not only took care of Indians/slaves, but also took over the Spanish
bases and ousted the Spanish governor
 Jackson, the head of the expedition, exceeded orders from Washington
o Florida Purchase Treaty (Adams-Onis treaty) was codified
 Spanish officially ceded Florida
 Not really a “purchase”
o US now laid their eyes on Texas (then part of newly independent Mexico)
 Menace of Monarchy
o Post French revolution, monarchies were re-forming all across Europe
o Americans unhappy; they cheered on the revolutions
o Americans did not want the Europeans to interfere in western lands
 Monroe Doctrine
o British suggested that they and the US become part of an alliance to prevent
foreign powers from interacting with the western hemisphere
 Secretary Adams disliked this proposition
 Why would Britain, the foremost military power in the world, need
America as an ally?
o Monroe Doctrine was passed 1823
 Very similar to British proposal
 Stated that western colonization was over
 Old world governments can keep what they have, but could take no more
 Warning against foreign intervention
o Monarchs disliked the Monroe doctrine
 British navy backed the policy anyway
 Removed some fear of people attacking America
o Russo-American Treaty of 1824
 Russia backed away from the western hemisphere
 Kept Alaska
Chapter 13
John Quincy Adams and his election

In 1824, 4 people were running for office
o John Quincy Adams
o Henry Clay
o William H. Crawford
o Andrew Jackson


Era of good feelings; no real parties
Jackson had the clear majority popular vote, but not the majority electoral vote
o The 12th amendment states that congress would decide between the top three
 Henry Clay was eliminated
 He now has a pivotal role of choosing the president
 Crawford just had a stroke  out
o Jackson vs. Adams
 Clay chooses Adams
 Adams makes Clay the secretary of state
o Many screamed in uproar
 Corruption, bribery, etc.
 Jackson had the highest popular and electoral vote and still lost
o Called the “corrupt bargain”
 Adams came into office not on his popularity, but by commanding respect
o His allies wanted positions too, but Adams refused to fire good people to hire
them
o His federal-nationalist views clashed with the population’s state oriented
nationalism (expansion and such)
1828 election

Parties began to form
o National republicans, headed by Adams
o Democratic Republicans, headed by Jackson
 Many liked Jackson and he was the clear favorite, but there were still very dirty
campaigns on both sides
 Jackson won by a landslide
Tariff of Abominations


Jackson passed a hefty tariff, known to the south as the black tariff or the tariff of
abominations
o South felt like it disproportionately targeted them
o Really was a scapegoat for the harsh times they faced
“Nullies” in South Carolina
o After Congress passed a new tariff in 1832, South Carolina was still not satisfied
and refused to pay it
o They wanted to “nullify” it
o Lead to the nullification crisis
o Jackson, normally a state’s rights guy, took action
 Wanted the government to look strong
 Gave them an alternative
o Compromise tariff of 1833
 Lowered taxed to near previous amounts
 Passed in tandem with the force bill (SC calls it the bloody bill) which lets
the federal government use force to collect taxes
Trail of Tears

Indians were pseudo assimilating into white culture
o The Society for Propagating the Gospel among Indians was formed in 1787 to
Christianize Indians
o While many tribes resisted, tribes like the Cherokee were assimilating into white
culture very well
 Lived with whites
 Had slaves
 Turned Christian
o Many Americans respected and admired the Indians
 In 1828 Georgia legislature called the Indian tribal alliance illegal and forced them to
vacate
o Indians went to supreme court
o WON 3 times
o Jackson refused to follow Marshall’s ruling and taunted him to “enforce it”,
which Marshall didn’t have the power to do
 Jackson passed the Indian Removal Act through congress in 1830
o VERY close vote (101-97)
o Led Cherokee, who thought they can be safe from removal, down the trail of
tears to a “permanent” location
 Some land west of the Mississippi
 It “permanently” lasted for 15 years
Bank War


Bank had a lot of power
o Federal currency was issued in silver/gold, paper currency was issued by private
banks
o Gave banks (and the head Nicholas Biddle) a LOT of power
o Jackson HATED the bank
Bank war erupted in 1832 after Daniel Webster and Henry Clay pushed the congress to
renew the bank
o Henry Clay proposed it 4 years earlier than necessary to make it a presidential
campaign issue
o Designed to alienate Jackson’s supporters (whatever Jackson decided, it would
piss off SOMEONE)
o Jackson decided to call bank unconstitutional
 McCulloch vs. Maryland declared in constitutional
 Jackson still vetoed it
 Henry Clay’s plan kind of failed at the end; the issue was only white noise
during the 1832 election
Election of 1840





Martin Van Buren for democrats
o Almost reluctantly ran for office
o Wasn’t really “into” it
Whigs ran William Henry Harrison
o Not their best statesmen, but the best at getting votes
o Ran on his war hero past
Hard cider incident
o A democratic journalist called Harrison an impoverished old farmer that should
be content with a pension, a log cabin, and a barrel of hard cider (HUGE insult to
the west)
o Whigs turned this around and used “honest cider” and the sturdy log cabin as
campaign symbols
 Harrison was actually a rich Virginian, but the west ate all the propaganda
that followed the article up
 Harrison still won by a close number of votes
 Voters still realistically had to decide who could deal with the economic
depression
Election showed how people wanted a more down to earth guy instead of a rich fat cat
o Rich people (who won anyway) needed to act normal
Two party system fully re-immerged
o Democrats (used to be democratic republicans) and whigs
o Geographical and socioeconomic diversity in both parties retarded the
emergence of purely sectional/regional political parties
Chapter 14
United States grows
-
Pioneers faced many challenges moving west
States were doubling in population every 25 years; cities were rapidly urbanizing
-
o New York was the metropolis of the east, New Orleans was the huge southern
city, and Chicago was the huge Midwest city
o Overpopulation led to degrading living conditions
 Bad water, sewage
 Animals (even pigs and such) roamed around
o In part due to rapid immigration
 60k per year originally; 3x in 1840 and 4x in 1850
 Steam boats sped up travel to the US
o Irish, recovering from the 1840 potato famine, flocked to the US
 Many went to Boston/NY, traditionally very Irish cities
 Most went to live in slums
 They formed their own societies, like the Ancient order of Hibernians and
the Molly Maguires (miner’s union in PA)
 Irish began to have an interest in Politics, and in Irish centers like
Boston/NY they flourished (Tammany Hall)
Anti-foreignism
o Catholic Churches
 Many Foreigners were Catholic and ironically faced persecution from the
Protestants
 They tried to make their own schools
 Very expensive
 Huge increase in Irish+german immigration helped them become a
powerful religious group
o Nativist start to spring up in reaction to new religion/immigrants
 Believed that protestants will get pushed out; they didn’t want “popish
idols”
 Known also as the American Party (or more commonly the “knownothing party”)
 Riots (violent and non-violent, though mostly violent) seldom happened
o Immigrants/general increase in population did eventually lead to an industrial
revolution
Mechanization
-
Factory system started in Britain (they had a lot of coal) and started to move to the US
o Accompanied with better methods of transport and communication and in
agricultural production
o Though the US was industrializing, they didn’t have the capital or materials to
truly industrialize like GB, and this imported from them often
-
-
-
-
-
Cotton Gin
o Eli Whitney created it in 1793
o Though slave labor went down, the cotton gin revitalized the need for slaves,
due to more being needed to cultivate more crops for the relatively easy to use
cotton gin to harvest
New England began to industrialize
o Farming was hard, so industry sprung up
o Dense population, accessible markets, easy importing/exporting, and rapid rivers
were all causes for New England to lead the way for the American Industrial
Revolution
After Treaty of Ghent, British trading in America went downhill fast
Interchangeable parts
o Eli Whitney, unhappy that musket parts can’t be swapped out if one broke,
realized making exact copies of each part for each musket would make things
easier
o Catalyzed the use of the factory system and mass production
Limited liability
o Corporations did not want to go bankrupt, so investors divided ownership
o Similar to how stocks work now
Morse code
o First form of instant communication
o Made inventor, Samuel Morse, very famous
Wage slavery
-
Workers barely earned enough in factories to live
o Children also worked in horrible conditions
o Working men, who gained the right to vote over the early/middle 1800s, pushed
for reform and stood behind the democratic party
 10 hour work week
 Higher wages
 Tolerable working conditions
o Employers hated all of these things
 Workers went on strike
 Many across 1830s-1840s
o Unions began to form
 Originally had challenged legality, but after Commonwealth v. Hunt in
1842, which said labor unions were not illegal conspiracies as long as
their methods were honest and peaceful, things were OK

-
Striking was still not instantly legalized, but it was a landmark decision.
Women
o Since machines were used, hard labor can be done by women now too
o Women earned less than men, making them more desirable
o While they got greater independence, they still worked under equally harsh
decisions (yay equality)
o Women could generally not be economically self-sufficient, but could teach or
get other domestic jobs.
 Cult of domesticity
 Women should marry and become homemakers, not work in
factories
 Women still gained a bit of an assertive role in the household,
which some now call “domestic feminism”
 While some may say this is inequality, many women at the time
were glad to leave the fields
Transportation innovation
-
-
-
-
Large highways and road systems helped trade and eased transport
Steamboats helped bind the west and south (along with increasing immigration)
Erie Canal was built in 1825 and connected the Hudson with the great lakes
o Built under Governor DeWitt Clinton
o Dramatically decreased cost of transit and time to transport
o Food was cheaper; lessened hunger
The Iron Horse
o Many investors disliked the railroad because it was a better alternative to the
canal
 Quicker, faster, cheaper
o Still very unsafe
o Eventually became more safe, and eventually more feasible
Moving west to install transportation equipment, and the use of that equipment all
helped expansion to the west
o Catalyzed by additional need to move west
Different regions now had distinct specialties
o South raised cotton
o Midwest grew grain and livestock
o NE made manufactured goods/textiles
o Products were sent through the railroad: Railroad linked America
Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge
-
Marshall, the federalist judge, is now gone
Replaced by Roger B. Taney, a more democratic chief justice who valued good of the
people and public interest more than strict contractual obligations
When Charles River Bridge’s contract was being “violated” by the Warren Bridge Co,
Taney sided with Warren for the sole purpose of bettering the public
Chapter 15
Reviving Religion and the second great awakening
-
-
New religious teachings sprung up
o Deism came along with the enlightenment in Britain
 Claimed that Churches only exist for profit, and believed that god exists in
a realm incapable of human understanding
 Idea was published in “The age of Reason” by Thomas Paine
o Unitarians thought God came in a single form, not in the father, the son, and the
holy spirit form
Second Great Awakening
o Spread through the masses by huge camp meetings
 Meant for sinners to repent
 Camp meetings were huge and filled with people
 Charles Grandison Finney and Peter Cartwright were known preachers
o Feminization of religion
 Women were accepted into churches
 Were generally the most fervorous followers
 Men liked it because more converts = good
 Women, moved by the gospel, later turned to running charitable
organizations
o “burned over district”
 New Englanders (near where Puritans settled ironically) were so blistered
by sermons preaching hellfire and repentance that the area was given the
name
o Religious diversity
 Second Great Awakening widened divide between classes
 Prosperous and richer denominations grew in the rich east, while Baptists
and Methodists grew more in the south
 The issue of Slavery also split many churches
Reform movements
-
-
-
Cruelty, war, intoxication/drinking, discrimination, AND SLAVERY
Many were run by middle class women
o Surprisingly, many were ignorant towards the plight of factory workers
Factory workers and the poor had it rough; many didn’t have a dollar to their name
Insane people has it bad as well; asylums at the time treated them like beasts who
needed to be cleansed
o Dorothea Dix marched miles to get information on these asylums
o Her 1843 report made waves in the Massachusetts government
Alcohol
o American temperance society formed in 1826
o Pushed for an end to drinking
o Motivated by men coming home drunk and beating their wives
o While some advocated for prohibition (tee-totaling at the time) moderates
advocated for temperance
o Neal S. Dow of Maine passed the Maine law of 1851, legislating prohibition for
the first time  led to more bills passed in same vain, though many were
repealed soon after for constitutionality concerns
Women in revolt
o Women still had much fewer rights than men, but society started to liberalize
 Many more women were not getting married
 Cult of Domesticity- same points as before
o Many women argued for temperance and slavery
 Lucretia Mott was a Quaker who did not stand for women not being
recognized at the anti-slavery convention in 1840
 Elizabeth Stanton suggested Women’s suffrage years before it was a
movement
 Held women’s rights convention at Seneca Falls in 1840
 Any man (smart or not) over 21 could vote while women cannot
 Susan B Anthony became an advocate for the everyday progressive
woman
 Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman to graduate medical school
 The Grimke sisters fought slavery
National Literature and transcendentalism
-
Many Americans lived off of British art and literature
-
-
-
-
o Most American writings were in the form of political pamphlets and were meant
to serve a purpose
o Gradually more creative literature became popular
o Rode the wave of nationalism
o Washington Irving, James Cooper, and William Bryant were all famous writers in
the early 1800s and were the some of the first to write stories and novels
Transcendentalism
o Resulted from liberalizing puritan ideology in the 1830s
o Derived from John Locke
o Truth is not given; it transcends the senses and cannot be found by observation
alone
o Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were best known
o Margaret Fuller and Walt Whitman were also famous transcendentalists
Other famous writers
o Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was a popular poet and Harvard professor
o John Greenleaf Whittier was a Quaker poet who wrote against slavery
o James Russell Lowell was also a port and diplomat
o Louisa May Alcott was a neighbor of Emerson and wrote books to support her
family
o Emily Dickinson was more of a recluse who seldom published any of her
thousands of poems
Literary dissenters
o Writers who, unlike others who believed in the kindness of human nature and
human progress, focused on sin and regret
o Edgar Allen Poe
 Pessimistic tone
o Nathaniel Hawthorne
 Focus on sin
o Herman Melville
 Moby Dick
American Historians also started to emerge
The Boston Area had many well stocked Libraries, allowing NE to be the hub of
literature for years to come
o Many books were against Slavery
o “History has been written by Boston” said one pro-southern historian, “and
largely written wrong”
NOTE: I changed the formatting a bit here. It irks me too but I’m too lazy to change the last 47 pages of notes. The next 100 are using the
same formatting though, so you’ve got that to look forward to.
UNIT III
Chapter 16
-
-
Cotton is king
o Eli Whitney’s cotton gin (1793) lead to the South becoming the global leader in
cotton production
 The North benefitted through trade with the outside world
 The British were weary that the South held a good amount of power
 The South knew it too
 They recognized that if war ever broke out the north would be
economically dysfunctional
o The Planter Aristocracy
 A few rich planters controlled the Southern economy
 Strengthened rich/poor gap
 Women gained a bit more power as they controlled the household
(complete with many maids and servants)
o Slaves of the slave system
 Cotton destroys the land, and southerners were weary of that
 Southerners hated making only one product and being dependent on the
north for nearly everything else (textiles, manufactured goods, etc.)
Social Hierarchy
o Really rich whites
 A lot of slaves, large plantations, controlling minority, King Cotton’s
greatest beneficiaries
o Rich Whites
 A few slaves, small plantations
o Poor whites
 Whites in the mainland
 No slaves, small properties
 Defended the slave system because they felt that they would one
day own some
 Mountain whites
 Poor white farmers who lived far from slave/cotton territory
 Believed that the slavery war was a rich man’s battle and a poor
man’s fight
 Looked at the issue as a third party
-
-
o Blacks
 Free blacks
 South had a few, but most were mulattos who were emancipated
or part of the handful that brought their freedom
 Southerners hated them and viewed them as an example of what
slave free society might bring
 Southern free blacks also risk being captured and sent back into
slavery
 North had a bit more than the south, but progressive movements
there were stifled
 Blacks could live there but were stripped of many basic rights
 Slaves, distant last
Where international slave trade left off, national slave trade took over
o Importing slaves was banned in 1808
 Ships still have to patrol to stop illegal trading
o Internal trading is growing greater than ever
 Slave owners view their slaves as property
 They don’t care if families are separated at auctions
 If they have a slave and a paid worker they make the paid worker
do dangerous work because if he dies the slave owner doesn’t
lose his investment
 While the South romanticized slaves and the slave trade, the reality was
much more harsh
 “breakers” were used to whip the slaves into submission
 “The Black Belt” was the home to most slaves
 While Marriage was looked down upon, slaves still held a bit
family life in plantations
 Relationships between slaves were tentative, they had time with
each other and it could be ended at any minute
Slaves rebelling against the system
o Slaves would mostly take part in nonviolent protests
 Civil disobedience
 Doing work as slow as possible, breaking machines, etc.
 Stole from the master’s house
o There were violent rebellions
 Nat Turner’s rebellion
 Slaughtered 60 Virginians
 Didn’t really accomplish much

-
Amistad
 Slaves on a Spanish slave ship rebelled, took over the ship, and
began to sail back to Africa
 They ended up in long island
 John Quincy Adams argued for their freedom
o Rebellions only made the whites want to suppress the blacks more so they don’t
rebel
 Punishments were becoming more harsh
 More and more liberties were stripped away
Abolitionism
o American Colonization Society
 Founded 1817
 Wanted to send Black people back to Africa
 Not exactly progressive, but a better alternative to Slavery
 Was a perfect of example of earlier abolition movements (pre-1830)
 Blacks didn’t necessarily want that after they’ve been “Americanized”
o Second Great Awakening led to many considering slavery a “sin that must be
abolished”
 Pamphlets and literature were made by anti-slavery preachers/writers
 Weld’s “American Slavery as it is” (1839)
 Harriet Beacher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” (1852)
o Radical Abolitionism
 Radical Abolitionism spread by the 1830s and advocated for a complete
end to slavery, or total abolition
 William Lloyd Garrison’s “the Liberator”
 William Lloyd Garrison as influenced by the Great Awakening
 Published his anti-slavery newspaper “The Liberator”
 Garrison was very self-righteous
o Wanted the North to secede from the South, which didn’t
technically “end” Slavery
o Many preferred reformers like Douglass
 American Anti-Slavery Society
 Wendell Phillips was one of the founders
 Many founders rallied behind Garrison’s word
 Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the world
 Advocated a violent end to White supremacy
 Fredrick Douglass
 Escaped slavery in 1838
-
-
 Published his narrative in 1845
Southern response to Abolitionism
o They were angered by many things
 Numerous Anti-slavery movements in general
 Nat Turner’s rebellion in 1831
 Nullification Crisis of 1832
o Apologist whites looked for justification
 Argued that slavery was justified by Christian values and by the teachings
of Aristotle
 Whites were bringing slaves from the barbaric jungle to good
Christian homes
 They said Christianity was emphasized by planters and helped
better the life of the Slave
 Also Argued that slaves were in a better position than the “wage slaves”
of the north
o “Gag Resolution”
 Passed in 1836, the Gag resolution forced all anti-slavery appeals to be
tabled and ignored
 John Quincy Adams fought vigorously to have it repealed 8 years later
o Anti-Abolitionism
 Southerners attacked post offices to burn abolitionist propaganda
 In response, the government of Washington, in 1835, ordered that
postmasters do it themselves
Anti-Abolitionism in the North
o While there was fervorous support for abolitionism in the north (especially
leading into the 1830s and 1840s), there were many who were also against it
o The textile producers would lose money if slavery was abolished, since that’s
there the cotton comes from
o Some acted violently to stop the Abolitionists from spreading their agenda
o In 1835, Garrison was held by the rope and dragged through the streets by an
angry mob
o Eventually, by 1850, the North went whole hog for abolitionism and viewed the
south as an unfree and hateful institution
Chapter 17
Note: I blatantly *borrowed* these notes from Mr. Bartlett. You should thank him.
Territorial expansion dominated American diplomacy and politics in the 1840s.

Three major “hot spots” of US expansionist desires: Oregon country [jointly controlled by
GB & US but filling up fast w/ US settlers, Texas [rebellious northern province of Mexico]
and California [controlled by Mexico]

Democrats promote territorial expansion more aggressively than Whigs, but almost all
Americans are “thinking big” about their country & its growth potential

Newspaper columnist John L. O’Sullivan coins the term “Manifest Destiny” in the 1840s; it
means the sense among most US citizens that the country is divinely blessed and divinely
commanded to spread out further and further across North America (& perhaps Central &
South America, too), bringing democracy, freedom, free market prosperity, etc. Other
peoples (Mexicans, Native Americans) should embrace this divine plan or get out of the way
(or be pushed out of the way).

Slave owning US citizens who had been settling in Texas (northern Mexico) since the 1820s
rebelled in 1836, declaring themselves the Lone Star Republic; they quickly asked to be
admitted to the Union as the state of Texas, but Northerners fearful of more slave states
blocked admission for several years. [Mexico said its northern province was in rebellion but
was never an independent nation.]

Presidential election of 1844 (Democrat James Polk v. Whig Henry Clay) results in Polk’s
victory, campaigning on a platform of acquiring TX, CA, and OR. The winners see this
election result as a mandate for Manifest Destiny.

Even before Polk is inaugurated, the outgoing president manipulates Congress into
admitting Texas to the Union in 1845. Northerners & free soilers in the new Liberty Party
are suspicious of the Slave Power Conspiracy pushing for Texas’ admission. Mexico is
outraged.

Eventually war breaks out b/w US & Mexico in 1846, mostly over the disputed status of
Texas, and the US wins a quick & decisive military victory—final treaty ending the war is
signed in 1848.

US public opinion is generally pro-war to start (except in New England), but the Wilmot
Proviso turns it into a sectional controversy (w/ the South more pro-war and the North
more anti-war)

Coupled with the 1846 Oregon Treaty w/ GB (splitting the Oregon Territory in half, w/ GB
taking the northern part and the US taking the southern part), some Northerners see the
Slave Power at work again, asking this question: “Why did the US settle for half of Oregon
[most likely free soil] without a fight, but went to war w/ Mexico over Texas, CA, &
everything in between [slave territory & potential slave territory]?”
-
-
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
o After much trouble, the treaty was finally signed in 1848
o America gains Texas and the Oregon territory, which included Oregon,
Washington, and California
o Treaty passed through Congress
The results of gaining the Mexican territory
o The US was MUCH larger
o Their military was seen as much more advanced, complete with advanced
technologies and intelligent generals
o Countries South of the US looked at them with a watchful eye, even though the
Mexicans didn’t lose ALL their land and they were paid 18.25M$ for it
o Land was originally fought after because the South wanted to expand Slavery,
and this notion, after coming to fruition, caused some heated arguments
 The Wilmot Proviso was entertained in Congress, which proposed that
Slavery be illegal in all lands gained in the Mexican session
 Many feel that the Mexican War and the new land gained by its victory is
one of the principle causes of the civil war
Chapter 18
-
Popular Sovereignty
o 1848 democratic nominee General Lewis Cass stood in favor
o Stated that people in their respective states should vote on slavery separately
o Many people liked it
 Self determination
 Politicians didn’t have to make controversial motions
o Most proponents of PS were pro-slavery, since PS tended to expand it
-
-
The Election of 1848
o Taylor (whig) vs. Cass (Democrat)
o Whigs tended to just go with the flow and not stand strongly on issues
o Both Candidates had ties to slavery
 Led to the creation of the free soil party
 Party was completely against slavery
 Attracted members on both a political and moral basis
 Appealed to the American worker, since slaves put him out of a
job
 Foreshadowed the creation of the republicans 6 years later
o Taylor won through his wartime popularity and rhetoric
Sectional Balance, Slavery, and all that mess
o The South had equality in the senate and controlled the supreme court and
executive branch, but was on edge about slavery
 The balance of slavery was about to be destroyed with new free states
coming in
 Anti-slavery measures are starting to become more prevalent
o Texans were butthurt over losing some of their land, were about to violently
take it back
 Foreshadows eventual violence
o Underground railroad
 Way to free the slaves and take them from North to South
 Harriet Tubman freed many slaves
 “Stationmasters” gave safehouses
o Compromise of 1850
 Fugitive Slave act
 Southerners were furious that the North was a safe haven
 Passed the fugitive slave act of 1850, stating that all slaves that
have escaped to the north must be returned to their masters
 Slaves also cannot testify in court
 The federal commissioner who handled fugitive slave cases would
be paid double if the slave was found guilty
 “slave power conspiracy”
 Passed as a compromise to avoid southern states seceding
 John C. Calhoun, basically on his deathbed, fought for the south
entirely while Henry Clay pushed for this bill as a compromise

-
-
-
Henry Seward was a northern abolitionist who pushed against
concessions on godly principle against slavery, championing a
higher cause
 Other things for the north:
 California is admitted as a free state
 Territory dispute between TX and NM goes to NM
 Abolition of slave TRADE
 Other things for the south:
 Texas received $10M in compensation
 NM and Utah decide on slavery by popular sovereignty
 Many southerners didn’t like the compromises, but in the end both sides
tried to hide their hatred for one another
 2nd era of good feelings from 1850-1860ish
 Like the first one it wasn’t that good of a feeling
 North generally won out at the end of the compromise
 California being a free state gave free states more representation
 The money to Texas was very little
 The “bloodhound bill” (fugitive slave act) was a sore thumb to
northerners
o Advanced abolitionist effort
o Furthered hostility
Fall of the Whigs
o After Taylor died and Fillmore replaced him, Franklin Peirce won the 1852
election
o The Whigs ran Winfield Scott, who while qualified, had an irritating personality
 The Whigs were very split over slavery
 Southern Whigs didn’t support Scott
 Free soilers stole some votes from him
 He ultimately lost
o Signaled death of the Whig party
o Were taken over by the Grand Old Party (GOP, Republicans)
Gadsden Purchase
o $10M of land south of NM territory to help run a railroad through the area
 Was easier than going through the Rockies on already bought land
 No problems with Indians
Kansas Nebraska Act
o Stephen Douglass pushed in 1856
o Split Nebraska territory into two parts, Kansas and Nebraska





Both would decide slavery vs. non-slavery through popular sovereignty
Technically Missouri Compromise said that they can’t do that, but
Douglass shoehorned it in
South really liked it
Northerners called him a traitor
Fueled Slave Power conspiracy
Chapter 19
-
-
Books turn the tide
o Uncle Tom’s Cabin
 Harriet Beecher Stowe
 Told the story of a slave, Uncle Tom
 Used powerful imagery to make a point
 Convinced many to not follow the fugitive slave act or enforce it
 Southerners despised it and anyone who stood by it
 One of the causes of the civil war
o The Impending Crisis of the South
 Hinton R. Helper
 Argued that poor whites are the ones worst affected by Slavery
 Southerners banned and burned the book
 Republicans used it as a political pamphlet
Kansas
o HORRIBLE implantation of popular sovereignty
o People were killing each other left and right
 “mini” civil war started in 1856
 It continued into the national civil war 5 years later
o Lecompton Constitution was passed
 People would vote on whether the constitution said “with slavery” or
“without slavery”.
 Even going against slavery allowed residents who currently had slaves to
keep them
 Free soilers hated it; boycotted polls
 Got passed
o Brooks and his cane
 Charles Sumner of MA took a steaming shit on Kansas in his speech
 He said the pro-slavery people there are savages
 Preston Brooks didn’t like that, so he hit him repeatedly with his cane
 Southern sympathizers sent him more canes
-
-
-
-
 Only went to show how embroiled the north v. south conflicts are
Election of 1856
o Buchanan (democrat) won against Fillmore (American) and Fremont (republican)
o The 1860 election was going to be much more interesting
Dred Scott Decision
o Dred Scott lived for a long time a free man, and sued because he shouldn’t be a
slave
o The Supreme Court decided that he was a slave, and therefore couldn’t sue
o Chief Justice Robert B. Taney wanted to go farther
 He stated that a man has rights to his property (slaves) no matter where
he went
 Cited 5th amendment, saying that the government cannot take a man’s
property without due process of law.
o Republicans did their best to defy the ruling; Southerners were ANGRY
Panic of 1857
o The Gold bubble from the 1849 California gold rush popped, and the Crimean
war (53-56) was expensive. The war artificially increased the demand for
products, and when the artificial demand ceased to exist businesses crashed.
o The North (grain growers) suffered more than the south (cotton)
 Emphasized “cotton is king”
 Drove Southerners into a deeper war frenzy
o The Homestead act was going to make western land really cheap to fix the
economy
 Vetoed by Buchanan
 Southerners hated it because it encouraged “gang labor slavery”, and
northern businessmen hated it because their workers would have a
better solution.
o Tariff of 1857
 Duties were reduced to 20%
 Republicans used Tariff as scapegoat
 Made it a hot topic in the election of 1860
Lincoln vs. Steven Douglass
o The Lincoln-Douglass debates (for the senate seat)
 Freeport Illinois was a famous one, led to Douglass’s Freeport doctrine
 Lincoln asked, “If a state votes slavery down, according to the
Dred Scott decision, would they be allowed to?”
 Douglass stated that no matter what the court said the states
have the final say
-
-
-
o Lincoln LOST to Douglass for the senate seat
John Brown
o Ran a riotous revolution for freeing the slaves
o It failed miserably, though he went down as a martyr
o “This is a beautiful country” were his last words
o Southerners were furious at him, northerners were furious that he was executed
o While he failed at much in life, he was successful at being a martyr
Democrats not doing well
o Douglass was the forerunner for the democratic party
 Southerners were split over him because of his Freemont doctrine and
his move on the Lecompton resolution
 His platform stood for popular sovereignty
o Some members pushed for John Breckinridge
 Pushed for expansion of slavery and annexing Cuba
o Constitutional Union Party formed
 Middle of the road group
 Full of old Know-nothings and Whigs
 Nominated John Bell
o Republicans want to take advantage of party splintering
 Many liked their policies
 Southerners felt that picking Lincoln the “rail splitter” would split the
union
Election of 1860 leads to succession
o Lincoln sweeps fragmented democrats
o South Carolina stated that it would leave the union if Lincoln is elected
 They actually did
 Other southern states soon followed
o The Confederate States of America is formed
 Jefferson Davis elected president
 Buchanan (Lincoln wasn’t president yet) didn’t do much to stop them
o Crittenden Amendments were meant to issue compromise
 Prohibits slavery north of the old Missouri Compromise
 Any territories, new or old, south of the line can have slavery
 Northern territories can enter the Union with slaves or without; states
cannot have slaves
 Lincoln rejected it on a matter of principle
Chapter 20
-
-
Lincoln, in his inaugural address, claimed that no conflict can arise unless the south
provokes it
o Secession had its challenges
 Organizing who gets what (debt, land, treasury, military, etc.)
 The west?
 Fugitive slaves
War begins
o Fort Sumter
 South Carolina, the first state to secede, held on to Fort Sumter
 Lincoln, who wanted to give them food supplies, sent a garrison that was
taken as a threat by the South Carolinians
 Battle soon erupted, with the Southerners winning
 Pissed off the North, who wanted the Union to be strong and started to
hate the south even more
o Lincoln’s call to arms
 Calls for 75k minute men
 He said he only needed them for a few months
 Gross miscalculation
 War is officially declared on the confederacy
o The win at Fort Sumter and Lincoln’s call to arms lead to some more southern
states breaking off
 TN, VA, and AK
 They almost reluctantly joined; they just didn’t want to fight their
southern brothers
o What to do with Border States?
 Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware, and West Virginia (later)
 Lincoln did anything he can to make sure these states stay part of the
Union
 They provide buffer for the main North States
 Some control important channels for the confederacy (like
Kentucky)
 Lincoln could not publically say that he was fighting to free the
blacks, since some border states owned slaves, so he argued for
keeping the union whole
o The Native Americans

-
Most large tribes sided with the confederacy, since many of them had
slaves
 The confederacy promised them benefits upon winning the war
 One rebel Cherokee branch sided with the Union, but were not paid back
after the war and were actually forced to make concessions
o Southern advantages and disadvantages in the early stages of the war
 They didn’t have to “win” to win
 They were defending their lands, so all they had to do was keep
the Union out; they win in a stalemate
 Union soldiers had to penetrate enemy lines and drag them out
into surrender
 Southerners had to fight for their way of life
 High morale coming into the war
 Though they didn’t have factories to make mechanized goods, they stole
from the Union’s supplies
 Eventually, though, this didn’t work very well and the Southern
troops lacked many basic supplies
 North had control of the sea with their superior navy
 Due to their focus on trading, they have a lot of boats
 North had more people and weapons
 They could manufacture large quantities of weapons that the
south could not
 They also had more manpower, outnumbered the seceding states
in population 22M:9M
 Northerners weren’t very prepared for war
 Many were shopkeepers or factory workers thrown into the
battlefield
 The Northerners lacked as many great generals as the south did
King Cotton’s downfall
o Foreign intervention was a key asset to both parties
 British people did not want the government to intervene on behalf of the
south
 Many read Uncle Tom’s Cabin and hated fighting for slavery
 Many also were OK with dealing with the inevitable cotton famine
 Many Americans sent over food to the British when it hit
 Union soldiers captured cotton supplies from the south and sent
them to Britain
o King Wheat and King Corn proved to be more important


-
-
-
The north produced these very efficiently with huge reavers and plows
Food > textiles come wartime
Diplomacy
o The Trent Affair
 Union ships stopped a British mail streamer and removed two
confederate diplomats bound to Europe
 British were outraged and prepped for war, unless return of the prisoners
and an apology was given
 Slow communication gave both parties some time to cool down
 Lincoln still reluctantly released them
o The Alabama
 Used a loophole to traffic British arms and was led by confederate armies
 British tried their best to stop this type of thing from happening but
Northerners still disliked Britain for it
o Dominion of Canada
 Canada (a British territory) was targeted by Northerners
 Many Northerners were in a mood for war
 They were enraged after the Alabama scandal
 The Canadians didn’t like the north either
 The British Parliament established “the dominion of Canada” in 1867 to
bolster Canadian morale politically and spiritually
o The French
 The French took the New Mexico territory in the heat of war
 They believed that the union would lose and the US would be too weak
to enforce the Monroe doctrine
 They were wrong; post war Secretary of State Seward stormed to get the
land back
 The French just ceded it
Davis Vs. Lincoln
o Confederacy had a weak constitution
 It was centered on giving states a lot of power, but then the confederacy
itself had no power
o Lincoln was generally liked as president, while Davis, in typical pro state fashion,
was hated by congress
Lincoln limits wartime liberties
o Lincoln believed that small infractions to the constitution (which he swore to
protect) or OK if it means saving the Union
 Included supervised voting, which is essentially intimidating voters
-
 Suspends Habeas Corpus
 Suspends free speech/free press
o Davis couldn’t get away with such measures
o Draft
 Many hated the draft
 You were forced to fight
 You could get out of it for $300 (a good amount of money that
only the rich could afford to spend)
 Similar feelings in the South
o Many felt that they were fighting for the rich slaveholders
while they didn’t fight themselves (if you own 20+ slaves
you were exempt)
 New York Draft riots
 1863
 Some lives were lost, but the riot was meant to send a message
 “Down with Lincoln!” “Down with the draft!”
Economic stresses of war
o North
 Taxes were raised
 Income tax was enacted
 Money was printed without backing (greenbacks)
 Increased inflation but gave the government some much needed
capital
 Led to creation of banking system
o Banks that join the system can use paper money
o Some banks didn’t and issued “rag money” which quickly
depreciated
o Similar to the banking system killed by Andrew Jackson in
1831
o Replaced by Federal reserve in 1913
 Sold bonds to make $2.61B
 The economy did very well, factories sprouted up to help with wartime
demand
 Gave them an edge over the south
 Many shopkeepers sold shoddy products to make more money
 “profits over Patriotism”
 Homestead act of 1862 helped push pioneers out west
 Women took many jobs in the factories (Recurring war theme)

U.S. Sanitary commission
 Assisted Union Armies
 Elizabeth Blackwell
o South
 Morrill Tariff Act suspended the low tariffs passed in 1857
 Only sold enough bonds to make $400M
 They started to print money, but it wasn’t back and it went overboard
 Over 9000% inflation
 Not a DBZ reference, this actually happened
Chapter 21
-
-
-
Emancipation Proclamation (?)
o 1863
o All slaves in the confederacy were now emancipated
 In 1863 the war was still going on; he couldn’t actually do this
o DID NOT APPLY TO BORDER STATES
 He had the power to remove slavery from here, but he promised them
that he won’t
o The intended effect of the Emancipation Proclamation only came to fruition after
the 13th amendment was passed in 1865
o Mixed feelings
 Many Abolitionists agreed with it, but some felt it didn’t go far enough
since it actually did nothing
 Many others claimed that the war wasn’t about slavery and the
proclamation is turning the war into a slavery vs. non slavery issue when
it should just be N v. S
The battles rage on
o Lincoln wanted to enlist blacks in the army
 Gives blacks a job post-slavery
 Black people have a passion to win, so that slavery could be abolished
 Lincoln could use all the help he can get
 The Confederacy relied on slave labor, but only enlisted blacks when it
was far too late
Bad Union Generals
o Lincoln replaces GOA McCellan with A.E. Burnside
 Burnside was clearly unfit for the task
 He lead an attack on Lee’s strong point at Fredericksburg and got
decimated
o
o
o
o
-
 “Burnside’s slaughter pen”
 Over 10,000 Union soldiers died
Command was given to Joseph Hooker
 Lee pulled some Military genius and flanked Hooker’s troops
 It worked very well but one of Lee’s top generals died (Stonewall Jackson)
Command was given to George G. Meade
 Battle of Gettysburg
 Union won!
 Lincoln came back months later to deliver the Gettysburg Address
Command eventually given to Ulysses S. Grant
 “victor at Vicksburg”
 Won many more battles throughout 1863
 Lead the way to let William Sherman capture Georgia
 Lead the Wilderness Campaign, where many soldiers were lead to their
deaths for victory
 Lowered public opinion of grant
 Cold Harbor
William Sherman
 A very brutal general who stormed the Georgian countryside
 Burned Atlanta to the Ground
 His tactics were some of the first to be described as “total war” (no holds
barred)
 His Army steamrolled through Georgia, SC, and even went deep into NC
Politics
o Many felt that Lincolns power in war was going unchecked
 Many felt that his commitment to abolition was too strong/not strong
enough
 Congressional committee on the conduct of war
 Radical Republican committee
 Disliked expansion of presidential power
o Democratic party
 Lingering connection to secessionists
 After the death of Stephen Douglass, the party started to split
 War Democrats
 Patriotically supported Lincoln
 For war
 Against slavery
 Peaceful Democrats



-
-
-
Against war
Pro-slavery
Extremist faction called “copperheads”
o William L. Vallandigham was an example
o Lincoln considered him a confederate sympathizer and
banished him to the confederacy
o Election of 1864
 Lincoln needed to retain Republican support
 The Republicans joined the War Democrats to form the Union
party
 Lincoln was nominated by the Union Party, and Andrew Johnson,
a war democrat was nominated as the VP to show that the parties
were bridging the gap
 Lincoln won by using influence from both parties
Appomattox Courthouse
o Robert E. Lee was forced to Surrender in April 1865
o Attitude towards the south didn’t change much; Northerners still disliked them
o Lincoln walked through the streets and slaves came rushing to him to thank
“father Abraham”
Lincoln Assassination
o In Ford’s theater, days after Lee’s surrender, Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes
Booth
o His death greater bolstered his public opinion
 People forgot his shortcomings and only cared about his huge
accomplishments
 People in the South and Northern Copperheads cheered, but eventually
some southerners realized what good Lincoln has done
After effects
o Many contentious issues were laid to rest
 Secession
 Nullification
o There was still a bitter relationship between N and S
o Reform Bill of 1867 was passed in Britain to make it a true democracy
o While Slavery was over, segregation was just beginning
Chapter 22
-
What to do after peace?
o War leaders?
-
 In chains mostly
 Some eventually pardoned
o Economic life
 Southern economy was in shambles
 No transportation system
 Cotton system collapsed
 War
 No more workforce (slaves)
 Rich cotton plantation owners were reduced to a modest living
o Slaves
 While Slaves were emancipated, Slave owners wouldn’t go down without
a fight
 Threatened slaves
 Recaptured them
 Tried to battle it off legally
 Slaves eventually were emancipated and given freedom
 Slaves began to learn how to read and write
 Some facilities were provided to them
 Freedman’s Bureau
o Tasked with helping blacks and poor whites
o Taught 200k blacks how to read
o Blacks were thrilled to learn so they can be on the same
playing field as white and to learn the writings of god
o Whites thought it destroyed white supremacy
o It was killed in 1872
 Many Slaves went north or went out west to escape the cotton belt
 Slaves started to join churches
o Johnson’s presidency
 Democrat, forced into office by Lincoln’s assassination
 Came from humble beginnings
Politics surrounding reconstruction
o Lincoln’s 10% reconstruction plan
 States would be re-integrated into the union if 10% pledged to stay with
the Union and pledged to respect emancipation
 They would then have a reconstructed state government and slowly but
surely admitted back in to the union
o Wade-Davis Bill
 Required 50%, not 10%
 Stronger safeguards
 Congress shoehorned it but Lincoln vetoed it
o After Lincoln’s assassination, Johnson slightly changed Lincoln’s proposal
 Disenfranchised some stronger confederates
 Said that if confederate states ratify the 13th amendment, revoke
secession formally and repudiate debts they would be back in the Union
 Kept much of Lincoln’s 10% plan
o Black codes
 Many Southern states passed laws to keep blacks down and “rise king
cotton from the dead”
 Passed laws that essentially kept black people back in chains
 Systems of indentured servitude
 In Massachusetts a government can fine a black man and put him
back to work
 Black people were given rights, but many were still taken away
 Can’t serve on juries
 Can’t vote
 In some places, they couldn’t rent/lease land
 Northerners hated them because they felt that the war was for naught
o Congress had rebels and Yankees
 Northern congressman were infuriated that confederate war
generals/politicians had power in the United States
 When they were to themselves they passed very North Biased
regulations
o Homestead act
o Pacific Railroad act
o Morrill Tariff
 They locked the Southern representatives out the first day
 Southerners suddenly had more representation
 Slaves count as a full person now
 Increased representation in Congress and Electoral college
 Civil Rights Bill
 Republicans passed legislation to give blacks American citizenship
and to make cuts at the black codes
 Passed through Johnson veto
 Fourteenth Amendment
 Sweeping reforms
o Gave civil rights to freedmen
-
o Reduced proportionality representation in electoral
college and congress
o Disqualified confederates from holding public office
o Guaranteed federal debt while repudiating confederate
debt
 States can only enter the union if they ratify this one too
o Johnson suggested no one did
o Every southern state but Tennessee rejected it
o Congressional vote of 1866
 Johnson was not liked
 Known for being lenient towards south
 Also known for being loud-mouthed and was accused of being
drunk during a speech
 Republicans dominated with 2/3rd majority in both houses
 Republican control was assumed
 Radicals began to take power
o Charles Sumner
o Thaddeus Stevens
 Some moderate republicans took the time to focus on states’
rights
 All republicans wanted to enfranchise black voters
o Reconstruction act of 1867
 Split the south into 5 military district
 Each district was controlled by a union general
 Policed by blue clad soldiers
 Temporarily disenfranchised thousands of confederates
 Made all states gives blacks the vote
 Still no education
 Still not land stipends
 By 1877 federal muskets were removed from the southern states
 White “redeemers” took back their home representation
 Mostly democrats
o Corruption in government
 “Carpetbaggers” swindled a lot of money through the government for
personal greed
 Similar to political machines, like Boss Tweed in New York
The vote
o 15th amendment


-
Guaranteed black’s right to vote
No women yet though
 Women’s rights advocates temporarily suspended their cause to
work for black suffrage
 Woman’s loyal league raised 400k signatures to push for
prohibition of slavery
 Stanton and Anthony fought to get sex-discrimination removed
from the 14th/15th amendment, but to no avail
 50+ more years until women can vote
o Union League
 With the right to vote bestowed upon them, blacks moved into politics
 Union League was formed as a pro-union organization based in the north
 Educated blacks and were pro-republican
o Blacks in politics
 Black men started to participate in political conventions
 Even Black women had minor participation
 Between 1868 and 1876 two black senators served in DC
 White senators, some of whom owned slaves, called any white allies of
the freedmen in congress “scalawags” and “carpetbaggers”
o KKK
 Southern Whites were deeply embittered by new changes
 Formed the “invisible empire of the south” or the Ku Klux Klan
 Mainly terrorized blacks moving up in life and intimidated them from
voting
 Force Acts were pushed through congress in 1870, but KKK did their work
already
 White resistance on the whole undermined black political empowerment
Johnson and his (not) impeachment
o Tenure of Office act
 Johnson had to get consent of the senate to remove his cabinet members
if they were already approved by the senate
 Passed through Johnson’s veto
 Edwin Stanton served Johnson begrudgingly as secretary of war, but was
secretly informing and helping the radicals
 Johnson fired him
 Tenure of Office act was set to prevent that
o Congress cited high crimes (most of which didn’t really happen) to start the
impeachment process
-
 Congress handily passed impeachment
o Benjamin Wade would take over, but he (while republican) wasn’t very liked
 Johnson hinted that he would pass all republican legislation were he to
stay in office
o Johnson just managed to stay in office and avoid impeachment
Alaska purchase
o Russians were selling Alaska
o In 1867 Secretary of State William Seward bought the land for $7.2M
 He wanted to expand
 Many thought it wasn’t worth that
 “Seward’s folly”, or “Seward’s Icebox”
o Why did the government sanction this?
 Russians were friendly to the north during the civil war
 Area was rumored to be teeming with resources (in the later years it was
discovered that Alaska is FILLED with oil)
UNIT IV
Chapter 23
Note: I blatantly *borrowed* these notes from Mr. Bartlett too. Further thanking is in order.
After the soaring ideals and tremendous sacrifices of the Civil War, the post–Civil War
era was generally one of disillusionment. Politicians from the White House to the courthouse
were often surrounded by corruption and scandal, while the actual problems afflicting
industrializing America festered beneath the surface. The popular war hero Grant was a poor
politician and his administration was rife with corruption. Despite occasional futile reform
efforts, politics in the Gilded Age was monopolized by the two patronage-fattened parties,
which competed vigorously for spoils while essentially agreeing on most national policies.
Cultural differences, different constituencies, and deeply felt local issues fueled intense party
competition and unprecedented voter participation.
Periodic complaints by “Mugwump” reformers and “soft-money” advocates failed to
make much of a dent on politics. The deadlocked contested 1876 election led to the sectional
Compromise of 1877, which put an end to Reconstruction. An oppressive system of tenant
farming and racial supremacy and segregation was thereafter fastened on the South, enforced
by sometimes lethal violence. Racial prejudice against Chinese immigrants was also linked with
labor unrest in the 1870s and 1880s.
Garfield’s assassination by a disappointed office seeker spurred the beginnings of civilservice reform, which made politics more dependent on big business. Cleveland, the first
Democratic president since the Civil War, made a lower tariff the first real issue in national
politics for some time. But his mild reform efforts were eclipsed by a major economic
depression that began in 1893, a crisis that deepened the growing outcry from suffering
farmers and workers against a government and economic system that seemed biased toward
big business and the wealthy.
Chapter 24
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Railroads come to exist
o Railroads began to take shape in the late 19th century
o Railroad companies were given large amounts of western land to expand onto by
the government
 Cleveland really stepped up the land giving
 Some didn’t like it because rich companies got stuff for free
 Acted as a subsidy to spur growth in the transportation industry
 Railroads increased value of land
o In 1862 Congress began to fund the first transcontinental railroad
 During the civil war
 “union” pacific railroad
 Omaha Nebraska  west
 Money was mostly given in the form of very generous loans
o The building began
 Mostly Irish “paddles” working on the railroad
 Indian attacks were pretty common and many died
 Most lived in tent homes that moved along the railroad as it was
completed
o Different companies took control
 Rail laying from California was run by the Central Pacific Railroad
 Union Pacific Railroad started in Nebraska
 The two companies met and the trains “kissed” near Utah in 1869
 Over time some companies fluctuated in terms of economic
status/sustainability
o Prevailing attitudes?
 Some expected too much and were angered when it wouldn’t meet their
expectations
 Safety
 Many felt that railroad cars were extremely unsafe



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They were pretty right
Kerosene lamps in wooden chambers, bad engines, and so on
New technology (Westinghouse air brake, safer cabins, etc.)
helped alleviate the concern
o Effects
 Great economic boom
 Cities grew
 Greater immigration
 More settlers out west
 A lot of land was destroyed by the railroad barging its way through
 Many made millions off of the new industry
Corruption and money
o Investors would make millions essentially overnight off railroads
o Corruption became rampant
 Investors became greedy and wanted as much money as possible
 Watered down stocks by grossly overestimating values and profiting on
the dividend
o Rich didn’t care about the public and only wanted more money
o Monopolization
 Few controlled the entire industry
 Disliked competition and realized that working together yields more
profit
o Stocks
 Stocks were made to split up the company between many
 Lessens risk
o Americans were slow in demanding change
 Many liked free enterprise
 1870s had a depression
 Government was forced to step in
 Wabash St. Louis and Pacific Railroad Company v. Illinois
o 1886
o Individual states cannot regulate interstate commerce
o Increase in federal power
 Interstate Commerce Act
o 1887
o Busted “pools” and monopolies (sort of)
o Required railroads to openly publish rates
o Setup Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC)
o First of many government institutions that regulate
business
o Allowed for conflicts between businesses to be resolved
peacefully
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Mechanization
o There came to be a growing elite
 Greater wealth
 Greater wealth gap
o Steel manufacturing
 Iron alloy with greater strength/rigidity
 Helped manufacture tools/machinery
 The Bessemer process was a new way of making steel that made it
extremely cheap and cost effective to produce
 Carnegie was the largest steel manufacturer
 Made millions (a lot in his time)
o Investors came from all around the world
 Europeans mostly
 Foreign capitalists wanted a piece of American markets
o Patents
 A great number of patents were issued for new inventions
 Showed emergence of IP
 Inventions like telephones and the lightbulb drastically changed the life of
many
 Thomas Edison was a notable inventor with hundreds of patents
(lightbulb guy)
 Lightbulbs made working hours longer as factories can be safely lit
Controlling the market
o Vertical Integration
 Carnegie
 Having a foot in all industries related to the principle industry
 Company owns the mine, the refinery, and the distribution
 Centralized profit and cut needless losses/middlemen
o Horizontal Integration
 Rockefeller
 Creating trusts between competitors
 Rather than work against each other, they work with each other to make
more money

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Rockefeller’s “Standard Oil Company” had a foothold in every other oil
company
 Weaker competitors who weren’t part of the trust were outsold
o Interlocking directorates
 J.P. Morgan
 Took advantage of the depression in the 1890s
 Put his own people in the board of directors in every competing bank
 Gave him some control over their operations
The big guys
o Carnegie
 Controlled the steel industry
 Produced 1/4th of the nation’s steel
 Used the Bessemer process
 Made over $40M with $25M of which turning into salary
 Spent the later years of his life giving his wealth back to society
 Helped found the Carnegie institute
 Donated over $350M
o JP Morgan
 His bank still exists
 Symbol of capitalism
 Colluded with Carnegie for mutual benefit
o Rockefeller
 Oil
 Capitalized on a new industry
 Kerosene lamps were booming
 When Edison invented the lightbulb, Rockefeller was losing
demand
 Rockefeller improvised: he used the highly explosive residue of
kerosene production to make gasoline and powered cars with it
 By 1877, he controlled 95% of all the oil refineries in the US
 Played dirty
 Getting spies
 Forcing special rebates from the railroads
Social Darwinism
o Social Darwinists believed in “survival of the fittest”
 Rich are “more fit” than the poor and therefore have withstood the test
of time
 Self-justification for greed by the rich
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o Prevailing attitude of the rich/middle class
o Served as a roadblock to social reform
 Many felt like the poor could not be helped
 They would always be poor because they can’t not be weak
Sherman Anti-trust act
o Meant to regulate trusts and to prevent them from exploiting the people
o Only served to do nothing (had no real enforceable power)
o Ended up curbing labor unions (pseudo counterproductive)
o Law remained ineffective until 1914 when new provisions were passed
South
o Reconstruction era is slowly ending
o Poor whites and blacks tended to be the labor force
 Tobacco was pushed into machines to make cigarettes, increasing need
for raw product
 James Buchanan Duke made cigarettes and a lot of money off of them
o Southern industrialization
 Standard industrialization (factories, etc.) did not fare well in the south
 Railroad system stagnated the south and kept them as a resource hub
 South had a push to centralize cotton manufacturing in solely the south
 South still detested the north
 Northern capitalists made cotton mills in the south due to quicker
exchange of materials and lower taxes
 Rural southerners (poor ones) were considered hillbillies
 Worked on the rich man’s land
 Were paid in “store credits”, not cash
 Forced them to stay on the land
Impact of the Industrial era
o Many had MORE money
 Poor had slightly better living conditions
 Middle class formed/grew significantly
 Rich became richer
o Most worked on a clock
 Instead of dawn  dusk, factories worked by the hour
 Changed social dynamic
o Women
 Women gained some independence
 Went to work (less manual labor was necessary)
 Greater social opportunities
 Careers led to delayed marriages and smaller families
o Workers’ rights
 Workers worked very hard in factories for measly pay
 Employers and businesses had judges in their pockets
 Led to inequality
 Labor unions/revolts were stifled by government
 Had a serf like system with company towns
 Company owned everything in the town the workers lived in
 Monopolized EVERYTHING
 Companies “black-listed” troublemakers to prevent them getting hired
 Labor Unions
 National Labor Union
o 1866
o 600k members
o Designed to unite workers across the nation
o Disregarded Chinese and tolerated women and blacks, but
blacks had the colored national labor union
o Effected greatly by the 1870s depression
 Knights of labor
o Rose from the ashes of the NLU
o Began in 1869 as a secret society but outed itself by 1881
o Campaigned for economic and social reform
o Terence V. Powderly led strike against Jay Gould’s Wabash
Railroad in 1885
o 3M workers part of it at height
 Downfall
o Knights of labor failed half of the “may day” strikes of 1886
o Haymarket square
 Protest against Chicago police
 Suddenly dynamite was thrown and a dozen
people were injured
 8 anarchists were caught
 KoL were for some reason linked to them
 Destroyed their reputation
 American Federation of Labor
o 1886
o Brainchild of Samuel Gompers


o Controlled multiple self-governing unions under one roof
(federation meaning)
o Disliked socialism AND capitalism’s current
implementation
o Gompers wanted more to go to the workers
o Organized a “closed shop policy”
 Walkouts
 Boycotts
o Weathered financial panics well: 500K membership by
1900
Over 23k strikes between 1881-1900
Labor unions helped create labor day
o Act of congress in 1894
o Celebrated the working man
Chapter 25
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Urban Life
o Larger cities
 Sky scrapers
 Modern means of transportation
 Railroads
 Helped with people in larger cities getting where they needed to
go
 Subway was built
 Still relegated by race and social class
 Poor sanitation
 Filth and animals crowded the street
 Plumbing was a joke
o Large department stores formed that gave a shopping space for the upper
middle class and employment for the poor
o Large apartment houses came about
 Fit many people
 VERY unsanitary
 Showed firsthand how bad over population was
 Slums and “Dumbbell tenement”
 Lung block in NY and Flophouses
Immigration
o Most immigrants USED to come from Germany and Ireland
o 800k Chinese immigrants came along but were faced with hate
 Took jobs at lower pay
 Whites felt under cut
 Nativist movements
o “New immigrants” came in the 1880s
 Jews
 Italians, Croats, Greeks, Slovaks, and Poles
 Came fleeing despotic rulers and never lived in a democratic system
 Many were illiterate and impoverished
 Old immigrants (1840s-50s) disliked new ones
 Melting pot or dumping ground
o Why did they come?
 Europe was overpopulated too
 United States was painted as a land of opportunity where the poor can
make it big (mostly rumors/hogwash)
 Running away from oppressive religious persecution (where did we see
that before?) and mandatory military involvement
 Many wanted to stay here for a bit, make their fortune then head back
home to their family
o Persecution of minorities
 Russians targeted Jews
 Government did virtually nothing to help immigrants
 Local governments, run by rural representatives were worse
 Proved unable to deal with such rapid growth
 Governments were run by corrupt “bosses” who promised favors
to those who voted for them
o Abused immigrant vote this way, though it did help them
get public facilities in their neighborhoods
 Nativism
 Against foreigners
o High birthrate and low standard of living made the new
immigrants loathed by others
o Old-immigrants/natives felt that they were a burden on
society
o Blamed immigrants on corrupted local government
o Hated them for their willingness to work on “starving
wages”
 Anti-foreign organizations came about
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o Like the “know nothings” of the past
o American Protective Association
 1887
 1M+ members
 Urged voting against Roman Catholic
representatives
o Unions
 Language barrier made it hard to work with them
 The unions disliked them because their strikes did
nothing; the boss can fire everyone and hire a
bunch of dirt cheap immigrants
 Restrictive laws
o Past from 1882 onward
o Made it harder to enter the country
o 1882- Chinese exclusion act
 First ever act of its kind
o 1885- prevented the importation of foreign workers
o 1886- Statue of Liberty from France
 Ironic
Protestant ministers apply church doctrine to everyday life
o Social Gospel
 Church deals with social issues
o Settlement houses
 Jane Addams was a rich white woman who did a lot of charitable
volunteer work and established the hull house, the most prominent
American settlement house
 Other woman followed in her steps to make more settlement houses
 Protected woman/child rights and were centers of activism
 Pushed against child labor and protected women workers
o Women
 Women got more opportunities to work
 Usually only single women worked
 Laws were put in place to regulate women working
o Churches confront the urban challenge
 Gospel of Wealth
 Churches tried to tackle wealth inequality head on
 Liberal protestants
 1875-1925
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 Pushed against taking bible literally
 Revived social gospel movement
 Helped reconcile Religion and modern thinking
o Church of Christ, Scientist
 Christian Science
 Founded by Mary Baker Eddy in 1879 after she claimed that god helped
heal her
 The start of every snake oil remedy ever
 Church had several hundred thousand members but her death in 1910
o YMCA/YWCA formed to educate young men and women
o Darwin
 Pushed evolution
 Many held creationist point of view, but by 1875 most scientists were on
board
 Religious folks were split
 Conservatives claimed evolution was hogwash
 Others said bible shouldn’t be taken literally (liberal Protestantism
anyone?)
 As science became more explanatory, faith in religion dropped
The Lust for Learning
o Towards the end of the Civil War, a greater emphasis was placed on providing an
education to the nation’s youth. Before the Civil War, there were private
academies, but the concept of a high school, as well as a grade school, education
being a birthright to every American citizen really began to manifest in the postCivil War era. The number of public high schools increased from only a few
hundred to over six thousand. Taxes were being used to pay for free textbooks
for students in these school systems, and many schools were created to train
teachers (these were known as “normal schools”). Kindergartens, a type of
schooling designed for young children that was originally adopted from
Germany, gained strong support.
o The surge of immigration in the 1880s and 1890s further fueled the interest in
public schools, especially in private Catholic parochial schools. These schools,
designed to educate future priests, became a major pillar of the nation’s
educational structure.
o Public Schools did have their faults. For example, they usually excluded adults
who lacked an education. However, the Chautauqua movement, a movement
designed to increase the literacy and the education of adults, partially remedied
this failure in the education system. The organizers held lectures nationwide to
help educate the adult populace, and partially due to their efforts, the illiteracy
rate was nearly cut in half (20 percent to 10.7 percent) from 1870 to 1900. This
drastic drop in literacy rate was also caused by the success of the public school
system in large cities. Though normally known for their overpopulation and lack
of sanitation, large cities in the industrial era had surprisingly effective school
districts.
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Booker T. Washington and Education for Black People
o Though there was a push for public education, the South lagged far behind.
Negatively affected by the war and stuck in a seemingly endless state of poverty,
the south lacked an education system that was as effective as the North’s, and
its citizens, especially non-whites, paid the price. The non-white illiteracy rate
was 44% in 1900, 4 times that of the national average. Some help came from the
North, but Booker T. Washington, an ex-slave, was the foremost champion of
black education. In his autobiography which he published in 1900, “Up from
Slavery”, he retells his struggle to obtain an education, and spent his entire life
making education more accessible to African Americans. While not pushing for
social reforms to truly end inequality (a trait which labeled him as
accomodationist by many) he still pushed to give black people a better chance in
life.
o Washington’s commitment to teaching the young black community guided the
curriculum of the Tuskegee institute. The institution taught young black people
some of the essential skills needed in life, and hired black professors to teach
them. One notable professor was George Washington Carver, an agricultural
chemist who devised new ways to harness the power of the peanut, sweet
potato, and the soybean.
o Other black leaders such as W.E.B. Du Bois took a more radical approach to
achieving equality, demanding complete social and economic freedom for blacks.
He was one of the few who marked Booker T. Washington as an
accomodationist, citing him as an “uncle Tom” who was condemning their race
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to manual labor and perpetual inferiority. Du Bois helped form the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909, and it
remains as one of the most active organizations dedicated to achieving racial
equality even today. A scholar, graduating with a Ph.D from Harvard (the first of
his race to do so), Du Bois was also an accomplished historian, sociologist, and
poet. He died at the age of 95 during his self-exile to Africa in 1963, leaving
behind a historical legacy.
The Hallowed Halls of Ivy
o University education was becoming more open to all
 Co-ed schools and schools for African Americans came about
 Morill Act of 1862 gave federal land grants to aid with building
educational institutions
 “land grant colleges”
 Hatch Act of 1887 extended funds
o Rich donated to educational institutions
 Carnegie and Rockefeller dumped their millions into the education
system
 Many other money barons gave $150M+
 Multiple private schools were founded from this money
 Cornell
 Stanford
 UChicago
 Johns Hopkins
Mind and scholarly reform
o Colleges shifted from general studies to specialization
 Students began to select courses best suited to their needs
 Colleges either distanced themselves from religious connections or
embraced them fully
o Snake oil remedies began to hold less weight as people became more educated
o Pragmatism, or recognizing that an idea must be tested and tried and true to be
correct, was the prevailing attitude in this era
o Books and the press
 Public libraries became better
 Carnegie donated $60M+ to funding libraries
 “poor man’s university”
 Media sensationalism became a thing
 Propaganda type art and what we would call “clickbait” in our
time became more prevalent
-
 “yellow journalism”
 Reformers in journalism
 Edwin L. Godkin pushed for civil service reform and honesty in
government
 Henry George was an idealist who pushed for a 100% tax on profit
to end poverty (very few actually liked it)
 Edward Bellamy published “looking backward”, where a man falls
asleep and wakes up in the year 2000, looking back on the effects
of the world from 1878 onwards
Morality, sexuality, and marriage
o Victoria Woodhull pushed for “free love” and a more open discourse about
sexuality in 1871
o Anthony Comstock was the exact opposite
 Believed this was all obscene
 Confiscated pictures and abortion pills
 One of his biggest accomplishments is driving 15 people to suicide (ew)
o Urban centers cause divorce
 Long working hours and bad lifestyles strained families
 Wives no longer dependent on husbands; can work themselves
 Divorce rate was way up
o Charlotte Perkins Gilman
 Feminist visionary
 Published “women in economics” in 1898
 Argues for centralized efforts to give women jobs (huge
kitchens/nurseries for women to work together)
o National American Women Suffrage Association and other pro-suffrage
movements
 NAWSA
 Elizabeth Caty Stanton head the association
 By 1900 Carrie Chapman Catt helped the suffrage cause
 Wyoming was the first to allow women to vote in 1869, but it wasn’t until
1920 that an amendment was passed
 Black women felt that their issues were often left out of these
organizations and founded their own
o Alcohol
 Women didn’t like husbands coming home drunk
 National Prohibition party was organized in 1869 to pressure politicians
 Women’s Christian temperance Union (WCTU) formed in 1874
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 Championed purity
 Anti-Saloon league formed in 1893
 Prohibition Amendment passed in 1919
o Other social reforms
 American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) (1866)
 Red Cross (1881)
o Art movements
 City Beautiful movement
 Wanted to clean up the city and make it look beautiful,
emphasizing order and monumentality.
 Daniel Burnham
o World’s Columbian exposition 1893
 Amusement ventures
 While many spent their many hours working, the entertainment
industry hit its stride
 Wild West shows, baseball, eventually football, and croquet
gained popularity by the turn of the century
Realism, Naturalism, and Regionalism in literature
o Realism sought to depict life like it truly was, void of embellishments
o Naturalism sought to understand the background and heredity of a subject
o Regionalism sought to understand the characteristics of a specific region
Chapter 26
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Native Americans
o As Americans pushed west, Native Americans were becoming increasingly
subjugated
 Buffalo were hunted  caused shortage
 Slain for hides and for tongues/meat
 Lead to endangerment of the buffalo
 Native American’s chief resource
 Native Americans were being pushed out of their land by
settlers/railroads
o Reservation system
 Giving the Indians specific portions of land to call their own
 Essentially colonies
 Indians were separated from their ancestral lands
 Indians became corrupt to get more government resources
o US v. NA



-
Aggressive whites would anger peaceful Indians
Indians were outraged by treatment by the whites
Many battles had no mercy (mutilated corpses, innocent women/children
killed)
 General Chivington’s massacre (US  NA) (1864)
 Fetterman massacre (NA  US) (1866)
 Battle of Little Bighorn
 Indian Triumph in the plains war
 One of the few
 The US won out in the end, their goal was to pacify the Indians and keep
them from fighting
 Fed wanted to back up their land claims with force
 Wanted to have a safe and stable path for locomotives
 “taming” the Indians was a good way of insuring that
o The End of the Trail
 Debate over what to do with the Native Americans
 Humanitarians called for kindness and peaceful integration
 Hard liners called for forced containment and brutal punishment
 Christian reformers forced Indians to follow their ideologies
 The military outlawed the “sun dance”
 The ghost dance took over, but it was stamped out in 1890 at the
battle of wounded knee
o Over 200 hundred Indians were slain by American forces
 Dawes Severalty Act
 Tribes no longer “own” land
 They are placed on 160 acre reservations (each going to a family
head)
 If they behaved like “good white settlers” they would gain title to
their holdings + citizenship in 25 years
 “education”
 The Government would educate Indians in the American lifestyle
o Carlisle Indian School in PA taught Native Americans
English and taught them the white way of life
o “kill the Indian save the man”
Homestead Act and the west
o Specifics
 Passed in 1862
 A settler, for a small fee can claim 160 acres to farm
-
 After 5 years, they can claim it to own
o Meant to stimulate growth
 Benefits the family farm (“the backbone of democracy”)
o Often failed
 Land given was struck by drought
 Led to farmers becoming extremely poor
 Also led to “Dry farming” which used shallow cultivation to
irrigate the land
o Not good for land but the only way to farm
o Created the “dust bowl”
 Stronger strains of crops were imported from Russia
 Land barons would cheat a way to get more than the allotment allowed
 Dummy homesteaders would claim land and give it to the
corporations
o New states formed
 North + south Dakota, Montana, Washington, Idaho, and Wyoming
 Republicans wanted more electoral votes
o Oklahoma land
 Government made land in fertile Oklahoma free to settlers
 “sooners” jumped the gun and settled early, eventually getting evicted by
soldiers
 “boomers”, numbering over 50,000, settled the land in 1889 when it was
legal to do so
 Became a state by the end of that year
 1907- Oklahoma became known as the “sooner state”
Westward movement was a defining part of American History
o The official border line was no longer formerly defined
o Many of the poor city dwelling eastern folk wanted to move west
 Most didn’t know anything about farming
 Couldn’t get a ride there anyway
o Last breath of the Native Americans
o Expansion of agrarian lifestyles
 Farmers, rather than farming food crops, would farm cash crops, which
they would in turn sell in exchange for essentials
 Many had to buy expensive machinery to farm more effectively
 Would take large loans, which led to a dependency/hatred of big
banks

-
Taking loans to buy machinery would end up lowering prices,
which meant that the farmers made less money, create a bad
cycle
 “mechanization of agriculture”
 Crop dependency
 Western farmers depending on one crop proved to be too volatile
of a practice
 High debt + highly volatile market = frequent crashes and loss of
property
 Tenant farming, where the farmers did not own the land, became
a more and more prevalent option in the post-civil war era (not
only in the south but also the west)
o Unhappy farmers
 Huge droughts struck the nation throughout the 1880s
 Farmers were not able to farm effectively  no food/high debt
 Farmers paid egregious taxes on land and goods
 They had to sell their products on the cheap in a competitive
market, and were forced to buy high priced manufactured goods
 Railroads were extremely expensive
 Any complaints would be left with them “accidentally” destroying
the farmer’s crops
 Farmers took a stand
 The National Grange Patrons of Husbandry (The Grange) was
organized in 1867
 Designed to link farmers together and remove them from
isolation
 Had communal stores where members can shop
 Some went into government, and pushed to regulate shipping/RR
rates
o Many of the laws were poorly written/not implemented
properly
o The Wabash decision nullified many of the rail road laws
 As the Grangers faded out, many of its members supported the
Greenback Labor party, who wished to inflate the currency (good
for farmers) and help labor
Populism
o The Farmer’s alliance was formed in the 1870s
 Farmers worked together to break the grip of the banks and railroads

-
Was growing strong, but didn’t accept blacks, sharecroppers, or
farmworkers
o The People’s part was formed in the 1890s, later known as the populists
 Attacked wall street and the “money trust”
 Wanted to nationalize major industries (banks and railroads in
particular)
 Wanted to institute a graduated income tax
 Pushed for the coinage of silver
 Turned into a formidable 3rd party
o Coxey’s Army
 Jacob Coxey, a wealthy Ohio Quarry Owner, led an army of 50k+ people
into the nation’s capital
 Demanded that the treasury issue $500M in notes
 Coxey and his supporters were arrested for walking on grass
o Pullman strike
 Lead by Eugene V. Debs, a 150k member railroad union struck against the
Pullman railroad company
 Their wages were slashed
 The state government had no problem with this, but the federal
government violently shut down the strike
 Debs was arrested
 Workers were even more angry
 Radicals (led by Debs after he was released) formed the socialist
party
 Many saw a “collusion between the corporations and the courts”
Gold vs. Silver
o 1896 election was between McKinley and William Jennings Bryan
 McKinley, supporter of Urban businesses wanted the Gold standard
 The Gold standard was non-inflationary and gave a stable value to
the dollar
 Urban workers/businesses liked this because the dollar would be
stable
 WJB supported the Silver standard
 Was inflationary
 Benefitted farmers who constantly had to deal with deflated
values of crop and crippling debt
 Gave the “Cross of Gold” speech, which was a sensation across
the US

WJB’s plan was extremely controversial
 Made the silver in the silver dollar worth 50 cents, meaning that it
isn’t completely backed
 Designed to inflate
o WJB won in the south and the west, but McKinley dominated the population
centers of the north and the east
 McKinley, though controlling less of the map, won handily
 McKinley’s victory was the starting point of republican domination of the
executive branch
o The Gold Standard Act of 1900
 Allowed paper currency to be redeemed freely in gold
 The Silver movement was largely dead
UNIT V
Chapter 28

Progressivism booms
o The world was becoming too complicated to run itself
 Progressives pushed for government jurisdiction on public life, politically,
socially, and economically
 The Social gospel movement pushed progressive ideologies based on
Christian teachings
o Authors published works to highlight problems in society
 How the poor lived
 Henry Demarest Lloyd- Wealth against commonwealth (1894)
 Thorstein Veblen- The Theory of the leisure class (1899)
 Jacob A. Riis- How the other half lives (1900)
 Added to the progressivism movement
 “Muckrakers” were investigative journalists bent on exposing social ills
and corporate/political corruption
 Coined by president Roosevelt in 1906
 Lincoln Steffens- Shame of the cities (1902)
 Focused on social evils
o Immoral “white slave” traffic of women
o High number of industrial accidents
 Also focused on corrupt officials
o David G. Phillips, in his series in the cosmopolitan called
The Treason of The Senate, claims that 70 of the 90
senators don’t represent the people, only RRs and trusts
 Aided the progressive movement
o Political progressivism
 Transferring power back to the people
 Progressives wanted to end corruption
 “the initiative” was passed to allow citizens to propose legislation
 Referendums allowed the people to vote on legislation
 Reforming elections
 Recalls were pushed to help the public remove bad officials
 “Australian Ballot” helped make the voting process more secretive
o Saved people from the wrath of “bosses”
 Wanted to remove graft
o Capping donations to politicians
o Restricts individual donors and corporations
 Direct election of senators
 Ends corruption by allowing public to vote
 17th amendment was passed in 1913
o Spread of progressivism
 Cities started having more bureaucracy
 City planning
 Management of urban affairs
 City manager systems got rid of some corruption
 Down with the slumlords!
 Progressives cleaned up the slums
 Attacked juvenile delinquency and prostitution (red-light districts)
o Women
 Female suffrage
 Progressives felt that allowing women to vote would better the
voting process
 19th amendment passed in 1920
 Settlement houses
 Gave middle class women a chance to see firsthand the struggles
of the poor
 Exposed them to the problems facing America
 Lead to greater political activity


Rejection of “separate spheres”?
 Women were thought (in the 19th century) to only exist to provide
for the family at home
 Rather than rejecting this notion, women felt like their
involvement in settlement houses was an “extension” of their
duties.
 Muller v. Oregon
 Defended the notion that laws can be passed protecting women
(specifically women) from work place hazards
 Close many male jobs to women
 Awfully discriminatory, but in the good way
 Indirectly allowed more workplace safety regulation to be passed
 WCTU
 Against alcohol
 Pushed prohibition
 Women didn’t like when husbands came home drunk, sought
reform
 Allied with the anti-saloon league
 18th amendment passed in 1919
o Triangle shirtwaist fire
 Example of safety laws not being followed
 Factory caught ablaze in 1911, leaving 146 dead
Teddy’s square deal for labor
o Three Cs
 Control of corporations
 Consumer protection
 Conservation of natural resources
o Coal strikes
 Pennsylvanian workers went on strike
 Wanted higher wages, but the owners didn’t care
 Coal supplies began to fall
 Roosevelt took his “big stick” and forced the mines to cooperate
 Miners got a 10% pay boost and a 9 hour workday
 Union wasn’t officially recognized however
o New departments
 Teddy urged congress to make a department of commerce
 1903


Bureau of corporations probed businesses involved with interstate
commerce
o Began the process of “trust busting”
 Elkins Act of 1903
 Busted rebate system
 Railroads now have a penalty for giving rebates to shipping
companies
 Hepburn Act of 1906
 Free passes were restricted in railroads
 Fought corruption
 Roosevelt only wanted to bust greedy, bad trust, not moral good ones
 Bused Northern Securities company (JP morgan) in 1904 after an
anti-trust suit
 Took 40 more trusts to court
 “big stick policy”
 Still supported benevolent business ventures
o Never truly “busted” most trusts, just limited them
o Taft actually busted more trusts than he did
o Caring for the consumer
 After the publishing of Upton Sinclair’s “the jungle”, many wanted reform
in sanitation
 Roosevelt passed policies to “care for the consumer”
 Meat Inspection act of 1906 added federal meat inspections
 Food and Drug act of 1906 prevented mislabeling of foods
The environment
o Earlier measures
 Desert land act of 1877
 Government sold arid land extremely cheap
 Contingent on owner irrigating the soil
 Forest Reserve act of 1891
 Authorized the president to set aside land for natural parks
 Carey Act of 1894
 Gave land to the states under the condition that it be irrigated
and settled
o Land in the deserts of the west
 Newlands act of 1902



Money collected from sales of land will be used in irrigation
projects
 One of Roosevelt’s measures
 Roosevelt dam build in 1911
 Hetch Hetchy Valley controversy
 San Francisco wanted to build a dam
 Conservationists wanted to preserve the valley
 Roosevelt wanted to preserve the land, but at the same time not
let it go to waste
The end of Roosevelt
o The panic of 1907
 After Roosevelt is elected for his second (then presumed final) term, an
economic downturn hits
 Many blamed him
 Lead to fiscal reform
 Aldrich Vreeland Act authorized national banks to issue
emergency currency backed with various kinds of collateral
 Federal Reserve Act
o Taft (sponsored by Roosevelt) (Republican though slightly progressive) vs. Bryan
(democrat) in 1908 election
 Taft won
o Roosevelt was gone, but not forgotten
 Swore to not run again, could have easily won third term
 Opponents viewed him as a radical
 Sought a middle road between unbridled individualism and paternal
collectivism
 Made strides in conservation
 Increased the power of the presidential office
 Square deal “grandfathered” the new deal by FDR
Taft takes control
o Much more passive than the rough rider
o Not as politically savvy, and therefore not as well liked
o Dollar Diplomacy
 Taft used American investments to boost American political interests
abroad
 Encouraged Wall street to place surplus dollars into foreign nations
 Wanted to push into Chinese Manchuria

Secretary of State Knox proposed that the US buy Manchurian
railroads and give them back to the Chinese under a selfliquidating arrangement
 Japan and Russia rejected it
 Taft looked really bad
 Caribbean
 Money was spent (privately and publically) to effect the region
 Region proved unstable; revolutions occurred
 US government was involved in the revolution in Nicaragua,
troops stayed there for an additional 10 years
o Trustbusting
 Taft had 90 suits against trusts in his 4 years
 Pushed for the dissolution of the standard oil company (Rockefeller) in
1911
 Government claimed it violated the Sherman anti-trust act of
1890
 Court claimed that regulations that “unreasonably” restrained
trade were illegal
 Pushed for the end of US steel (Carnegie) in 1911
 Roosevelt was angered; he set up the mergers that prompted the
suit
o Taft causes contention
 Payne Aldrich Bill
 Once made to be a moderately reductive bill, senate reactionaries
stapled on numerous upward tariff revisions
 Taft signed the bill, angering his supporters
 Environmentalism gone bad
 Taft pushed for more environmental measures than Roosevelt
ever did
 Regardless, it was overshadowed by the Ballinger-Pinchot incident
o Secretary of the interior Richard Ballinger opened lands in
Wyoming, Montana, and Alaska to corporate development
o Chief of the Agriculture department’s division of forestry
Gifford Pinchot was against this
o Taft silenced Pinchot, citing insubordination, and
conservationists and Roosevelt’s friends (of which there
are many) were extremely angered
 Republican party was split



Mostly due to Taft’s lack of political ability
Weakened by internal divisions, Republicans lost badly in the
1910 midterms
Roosevelt is so angered he gets back into the running
 1912 election is going to be spicy
 Roosevelt claims that his statement only applied to three
CONSECUTIVE terms
 Taft won the republican nomination anyway, but Roosevelt left
and made his own third party
Chapter 29
-
-
Election of 1912
o Taft v. Wilson (with Teddy Roosevelt in his own third party [Bull-moose Party]
o Wilson pushed for the “New Freedom” program, which called for anti-trust
legislation, banking reform, and tariff reductions
o Taft and Roosevelt divided the republicans, leading the Wilson winning
 Only had 41% of the vote
 Still #1, but a minority president nonetheless
o New Freedom vs. New Nationalism (Teddy)
 New Nationalism pushed for women’s suffrage and a broad system of
social welfare
 Kind of like the New deal
 New Freedom pushed for Enterprise, free functioning unregulated
markets, and vigorous enforcement of anti-trust laws
o Wilson was a man known for his eloquence
 Very well educated
 Idealist
 Understood the intricacies of government
New Freedom begins
o Wilson tackles the Tariff
 Underwood Tariff passed in 1913
 Substantially reduced Tariff rates
 To make up for lost revenue, Congress passed a graduated income tax
 Technically unconstitutional, so 16th amendment (legalizing income tax)
was passed
o Reforming the banking system
 Before Wilson, banks were unreliable and could not be mobilized in times
of financial stress

-
In 1908, Congress authorized an investigation led by Republican senator
Aldrich
 Wilson restructured the banking system through the federal reserve act
 Created a Federal Reserve board
 Oversaw a nationwide system in which 12 regional banks
(technically privately owned) regulated the currency and issued
paper currency
o Taming the trusts
 Federal Trade commission act of 1914
 Regulated industries involved in interstate commerce
 Broke down unlawful competition and unfair trade practices
 Clayton Anti-trust act of 1914 expanded on the Sherman Act
 Broke down Holding companies, which were companies that
controlled >50% share in multiple smaller companies, which
essentially made it a monopoly.
 Exempted labor and agricultural organizations
 Samuel Gompers hailed it as “The Magna Carta of Labor”
o More progressive policies
 Federal farm loan act of 1916 made credit easily available to farmers
 Warehouse Act of 1916 authorized loans on the security of stable crops
 Seaman’s act of 1915 required a fair wage for seamen
 Workingmen’s compensation act of 1916 granted assistance to federal
workers in times of disability
 Gave workers a more stable life
 Cornerstone of progressive policy
 More regulation/criminalization of child labor
 Adamson act of 1916 established an 8 hour workday
Wilson’s foreign policy
o Wilson HATED imperialism
 Called for an end to dollar diplomacy
 Repealed the Panama tolls act of 1912, which exempted American ships
from tolls (this tolls act angered Britain upon passing, so they would have
been thrilled by it being repealed)
o The Jones Act
 Gave the Philippines territorial status
 Still not independence, but the Filipinos were happy regardless
o Haitian revolts lead to Wilson eating his words
 Haitians kill their dictatorial president
 Wilson reluctantly sent troops to protect American lives
 Wilson later used troops to quell revolts in the Dominican Republic
o The hints of war
 A Serbian patriot killed the heir to the throne of Austria Hungary in the
summer of 1914
 Vienna, with the backing of Germany, presented an ultimatum to
Serbia
 Russians backed Serbia, and all the nations began to mobilize
 Germans attacked French through Belgium, and because they
went through Belgium, Great Britain got involved too
 Alliances began to matter
 Central powers
o Germany
o Austria Hungary
o Turkey + Bulgaria (later)
 Allies
o France
o Britain
o Russia
o Japan + Italy (later)
 Americans were happy that the war was all the way over in Europe
o Neutrality?
 America wanted to remain neutral
 Americans were anti-German and pro-British
 Riots began in the streets; Germans weren’t looked at all too
favorably
 German immigrants were German’s only hope, but even they
were clearly outnumbered
 The war was financed by American bankers
 Mostly traded with Allies
 Central powers didn’t like this very much
 They could have traded with Americans, but the British navy was
preventing them from doing so
o The Lusitania
 German U-boats were their key piece of technology
 Advanced submarines
 Could target ships without being easily seen
 Attacked the passenger liner, called the Lusitania, in May 1915


128 Americans were killed
Germans argues that the British were transporting supplies on
that ship (true) and claimed using “human shields” (the
Americans) was a war crime, and Germany is not at fault
 Even William Jennings Bryan felt like this, and resigned from being
secretary of state
 After another such incident in August 1915, Germany relented, stating
that they would not sink passenger ships WITHOUT WARNING
 They didn’t follow this in 1916, when they sunk the French
“Sussex”
 Wilson threatened them with breaking diplomatic relations
 Germans reluctantly agreed
o Wilson won the 1916 election pretty handily
 Ran on a “no war” campaign
 That worked well
 Had most of his support come from the working class and renegade BullMoosers, who republicans failed to capture.
Chapter 30
-
War begins
o Germany commits to sinking ANY ships in the Warzone
 Includes American ones
 Germans felt that they should no longer worry about who to shoot
 “total war”
 Wilson cut all diplomatic relations with Germany, but refused to go to
war until he had to
 Still planned to arm merchant ships
 Failed in Congress, and Wilson was salty about it
o The Zimmerman Telegraph
 Intercepted March 1st, 1917
 Showed German secretary Arthur Zimmerman pressuring the Mexican
government into attacking the US
 Having joint force to talk down the US (and in their home
continent) was meant to be strategically beneficial
 Germany promised Mexico some land holdings after “they won
the war”
 Lead to Wilson asking for a declaration of war
-
 He disliked it, but claimed it was necessary
 Wanted to make the world safe for democracy
o A lot of people didn’t want to enter the war
 Wilson sought to convince them
 Committee on Public Information
 Run by George Creel
 Propaganda machine
 All forms of media were taken over
 Silencing critics
 Anything German was banned (music, kindergarten, etc.)
 Socialists were targeted (including Eugene V. Debs)
 Schenck vs. US confirmed legality of limiting free speech
 It worked, too well
 Anti-German was EXTREMELY strong
14 points
o Wilson proposed his 14 points to congress in 1918
o First 5 points were the most important
 1- abolish secret treaties
 Freedom of the seas (for Germans too)
 Removal of economic barrios
 Reduction of arms
 Adjusting colonial claims and nailing the coffin of imperialism
o The 14th point called for a league of nations to maintain global peace
o After the Germans were defeated, the 14 points were about to be put in place
 Paris Peace Conference in 1919
 All eyes looked to Wilson as he defined his plan for post-war fixes
 Part of the “big four”: Orlando (Italy) Lloyd George (Britain) and
Clemenceau (France)
 Wilson pushed hard for the League of Nations
 He managed to convince the entire conference to join it
 Congress (on the backs of republican senators known as
“Irreconcilables” wouldn’t let the US join it though, essentially
rendering it moot
o When Wilson brought the treaty back home for approval,
the treaty was meddled with by Senator Lodge
 He pinned so many additions to it that it was a
shadow of its former self

-
-
Wilson had to force the democrats to vote
AGAINST it
 It lost in congress
o Wilson tried to win through referendum in 1920
o At the same time as the presidential race
o Harding won, and therefore the League of Nations never
came to fruition
 Clemenceau pushed for claiming the German Rhineland
 Against Wilson’s idea of self-determination
 Compromise: the Saar basin will be under League of Nations
control for 15 years, then can decide their own fate
o Hint: they went back to Germany
 France was also sworn to be protected by Britain and America if
Germany invaded
o Senate didn’t approve this
o France was salty
 Japan wanted to keep their Chinese holdings
 Wilson objected, but relented when Japanese threatened to walk
out
 Japan promised to return the land at a later date
Treaty of Versailles
o Germany had to pay enormous reparations to the war
 Their economy was already weak
 Germany was left out of the talks regardless
 Very vengeful, rather than reconciling
o Germans had to limit their military to a point where it was nearly useless
o Led to an economic collapse in Germany
 Indirectly led to a German hatred of the allied powers
 Hitler came to power through the German need for revenge
 Calls into question the merits of having such a damning “treaty”
Ramping up production
o Some minor preparation measures have been in place since 1915, but the
country was in all not prepared for war
o War Industries Board was formed to ready the economy
 Ran by Bernard Baruch
 Set a precedent of a centrally planned economy during war time
 Disbanded right after the war ended
o “Labor will win the war”

-
Unemployed males were drafted
 Incentivized people to get to work
 Increased military participation at the least
 National War Labor Board was headed by Taft and designed to make sure
workers were treated well
 Industrial Workers of the World
 Radical labor organization
 Members, known as the Wobbles, disliked the war
 Many protested, and those that did were beaten, arrested, or
thrown out of town
 AF of L doubled its membership by the end of the war
 Increased prices outpaced the increase in wages
 Strikes
 Strikes were not only split by workers, but also split by race
 African American strikes were relatively common
 Violence during these strikes were emphasized by gang presence
Suffrage movement
o Women pushed for voting rights
o As women were entering the workplace they gained independence, and they
wanted to be represented
o National Women’s Suffrage Association
 Supported the war
 Because they supported it, Wilson supported it, as a necessary war
measure
th
o 19 Amendment was passed in 1920, giving women the vote
o However, the Sheppard Towner Maternity Act of 1921 provided women
assistance in maternal/infant care, solidifying traditional roles
Chapter 31

The communists
o Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, 1917
o American communist movements sprung up
 Anti- communist Strike in 1919 in Seattle
 Many disliked communism and blamed it for labor troubles
o Red scare
 Nationwide crusade against left-wingers
 1919-1920, though anti-communist sentiment lasted well through the
century




Random terror attacks occurred throughout the nation
Congress passed laws barring the advocacy of violence to secure social
change
 Some saw this as being against freedom of speech
 1920-> 5 members of the NY senate were denied seats because of
their socialist views, even though they were rightfully elected
o American plan
 Unions wanted a close “all union” shop
 Conservative businessmen, running off the red scare, proposed an open
shop, no union policy that they hailed as “The America Plan”
o Anti-redism and Antiforeignism plagued America
anti-foreign movements
o KKK
 Similar to the anti-foreign “nativist” movements of the 1850s
 Hated Catholics, Jews, pacifists, communists, internationalists,
evolution, bootleggers, gambling, adultery, birth control, as well
as blacks
 Believed that diversity was destroying American culture
 Spread in the bible belt
 Bible belt was where fundamentalism thrived
 Ran into legal troubles
 Embezzlement charges instigated a congressional investigation
 Lawmakers tried to make lynching a crime (It wasn’t before?
Murder was illegal right?)
o While the KKK symbolized the extremist side of anti-immigration sentiment,
many still believed in the root issue
 Emergency Quota Act of 1921 restricted the number of European
immigrants
 Immigration Act of 1924 replaced this, strengthening it much more
 People from other countries started to hate America more and more
o Horace Killen and Randolph Bourne championed alternative conceptions of an
immigrant’s role in society
 Kallen believed that newcomers should practice their individual
ceremonies and preserve their cultural heritage
 Leads to cultural diversity
 Bourne believed that, in a multicultural age, immigrants should interact
with other races
Prohibition (?)


o 18th Amendment
 Connected with the Volstead Act
 Legal abolition of Alcohol
o Many believed it would end crime
 In theory it would, but preventing sale of something does not get rid of it
 Many people were bribed; nearly everyone still drank, if at all more than
before
 Deadly moonshine filled the markets
o Gangsters and the start of organized crime
 Illegal alcohol profits were used to bribe police
 Trafficking required large effort; large groups began to form
 Al Capone netted millions off of the prohibition
 Skirted by the law until being convicted of tax evasion
 Racketeers (those who influenced honest merchants into paying
“protection fees”) infiltrated positions of power
Fundamentalism
o The world progressed
 Scientific breakthroughs, like the Darwinian theory of evolution, massive
health reform and teaching reform
o Fundamentalists disliked change
 Believed in sticking to traditional values
 Flourished in the bible belt
 “Scopes Trial”, where a teacher was found guilty of teaching evolution,
and fined $100
 Landmark trial in American History
 William Jennings Bryan was on the prosecution, died 5 days in
from a heart attack
 Took many of their values from the bible, and though many of them held
true in the 19th century, advancements in the 20th century disproved
many
The power of industry
o After the introduction of cars and electricity, industry boomed
 Oil had greater demand (good for Rockefeller, since kerosene lamps were
sooo last century)
 Assembly line production (pioneered by Ford) was put into use
 Fordism
 Cars were cheap enough for the masses
 Cars turned from a luxury to a necessity




The steel business boomed
New roads and highways were constructed to transport the masses
Regardless, they had their problems
 More accidents
 Gangsters rode away in cars to escape the scene quicker
 pollution
o While mastering production, businesses had to control consumption
 Advertising was revolutionized
 Sports stars gained popularity (Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey, etc.)
o Humans learn to fly
 The Wright brothers are the first to invent and fly a plane in Kitty Hawk,
NC
 December 17th, 1903
 By 1927 Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic
 By the 30s and 40s flying by plane was safer than by train or car
 Planes were flown in the great war, and though they were relatively
crude towards the beginning, eventually they became a formidable
threat
o Radio
 With the advent of radio by Gugliemo Marconi in 1890, Information could
be broadcasted much easier
 Paved the way for wireless phonographs, radiotelephones, and the TV
 More commercials!
 Revolutionized the way Americans took in media and learned about the
world around them
A changing world
o After the advent of TVs movies came along
 Created a whole new field of celebrities
 Films graduated from silent to “talkies”
o For the first time ever more people lived in urban areas than in rural
o Birth control movement existed; uncalled for at the time
o Women pushed for the right to vote
o In general, there was an erosion of traditional values
 Angered fundamentalists and the elderly (not mutually exclusive)
 Younger folk and “flappers” embraced the new culture
o Jazz, a music style created on the basis of breaking norms, was the music of the
1920s
o Racial pride in cities like Harlem grew




Had a connection with blues
Harlem Renaissance was a black artistic revivalist movement
United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) was formed to promote
the resettlement of Americans blacks in their own “African Homeland” by
Marcus Garvey
 Wanted to keep blacks in their own strong society
o Modernism
 Ideology centered around questioning social conventions
 Writers and artists of the 1920s followed it
 F. Scott Fitzgerald
 Ernest Hemmingway
 H.L. Mencken
 William Faulkner
 Gertrude Stein
 Called “The lost generation”
The market booms (or does it?)
o Stock exchange led to massive profits
 Buying stocks on margin (with small down payment) was a way for the
middle class (and sometimes the poor) to buy many stocks at a time
 Made many people extremely “rich”
 This led to everyone having money, but since the stocks were bought on
margin the money wasn’t actually there
o Government debt skyrockets
 Mellon (congressmen) set forth to lower taxes on the poor and the rich
 Shifted tax burden on to middle class
 Decreased debt by a lot, but it wasn’t near a safe number yet ($26B ->
$16B)
Chapter 32

Warren G. Harding
o Not entirely fit for the job of president
 Hated disappointing others
 Hired cronies (Fall, Dougherty)
o Made bad decisions appointing supreme court justices
 Many were reactionaries
 They killed child labor laws, and invalidated minimum wage laws for
women in Adkins v. Children’s hospital
o Anti-trust laws were mostly ignored under his administration





Mostly due to Hoover
Advocated for a laissez faire approach
Post-war
o Washington returned railroads to private management in 1920
o Labor, no longer subsidized by the government, fell
 Strikers were labelled as “reds” (red scare)
 Rebellions were often clamped by the government
 Labor union membership fell 30%
o Veterans were not getting paid their dues
 Veterans bureau was created in 1921
 American legion founded in 1919 (veteran’s group)
 Lobbied for veteran’s benefits
 Bonus bill
 Veterans were promised a “bonus” 20 years after the war (1945)
 They wanted it early during the depression
 Government wouldn’t give it to them
 Huge protest in Washington
Hoover
o Hoover v. Smith 1928
 Hoover won
 Landslide victory
 Everyone except the bible belt south + MA voted for him
 Hoover was poor but worked his way into Stanford
 American success story
o Agricultural Marketing Act
 Set up federal farm board
 Built upon allowing farmers to help themselves
 Designed to buy up surpluses
 Didn’t work out as planned
o Hawley Smoot Tariff
 Increased tariffs on non-free goods
 Foreigners hated it
 When you increase tariffs to disincentivize imports, other countries will
hate it and pass their own tariffs to disincentivize your exports.
Crash
o causes
 Speculative bubbles
 Stocks were rising, so people assumed they always were going to


People started buying on margin
Soon people were buying on margin with money they couldn’t
pay back UNTIL the stock goes up, which it totally always will
 When stocks went down, those who bought on margin were
screwed over, and the banks lost all their money.
 Overproduction
 There was a surplus production of goods
 Led to decreasing prices, and therefore lower profit
o Black Tuesday (10/29/1929) was when the market crashed
 Unemployment soared 25%+
 “Hoovervilles” formed as millions lost their homes and life savings
o Hoover’s actions
 He didn’t do much and believed the depression would resolve itself
 Felt feeding Americans would undermine them
 Gave money to Belgians, even food to pigs, but not food to
Americans
 Poor version of “trickledown economics”
 Hated “socialist” bureaus
 People hated him for this
 Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) was made to loan money to
banks
 Helped banks get back on their feet
 Norris La Guardia Anti-injunction act
 Outlawed anti-union contracts
Chapter 33

FDR beats hoover in 1932 election
o FDR’s policies were much more involved than Hoover’s
o Hundred days
 In the first 100 days of his presidency, FDR passes tons of laws
 All part of his “New Deal”
o Relief Recovery Reform
 Relief: short term goals for fixing immediate issues
 CCC gave employment to the unemployed
 Federal emergency relief act
o Gives money to corporations to fund projects that hire
workers


o Civil Works Administration was a part of this, and gave
temporary jobs during the winter
 WPA
Recovery: fixing long term problems
 NRA -> PWA
o NRA Competition cut in favor of cooperation
o Price levels were set by the government, as well as
minimum wage and maximum working hours
o Ruled unconstitutional by the Schechter decision
o After the NRA was cut, the PWA was formed to create
public works, and hired citizens to do so
 Government dictates prices
 AAA gave money to farmers to NOT FARM
o Artificial scarcity
o Increases prices
o Later followed by the soil conservation and domestic
allotment act of 1936 and the second agricultural
adjustment act of 1938
Reform: preventing something like this from ever happening again
 Social Security
o Younger people put money into a fund that older people
use, and when the younger people become old the
younger people of the future fund them
o Totally not a Ponzi scheme

FDIC


created by the Glass Steagall banking act, and
insured people’s deposits in an event of bank
foreclosure
SEC
o Designed to watch over stock markets/corporations to
prohibit unfair/unsafe trading practices
o TVA

The Tennessee valley was equipped with government run hydroelectric
power, and its cost/performance ratio was compared to private practices
 More socialist/planned economy philosophy
o Labor reform





Wagner Act
 Also known as the NLRA
 Helped unskilled workers form Unions
Committee for Industrial Organization
 Lead by John L. Lewis
 For unskilled workers, but was a wing of the knights of labor
(skilled labor organization)
 Known for sit-down strikes, where workers would refuse to leave
and do no work
o Approach did lead to the memorial day massacre, where
police fired at protesting union members, but was
otherwise effective
 Was eventually renamed to the CONGRESS of Industrial
Organizations, for a larger scope
 Had 4M+ members by 1940
Fair labor standards act
 Set standard wages and hours
 40 hour work week/40 cents an hour/no work before age 16
o Housing
 FHA was created to give small loans to house builders to get the people
off the streets
 USHA was created to lend money to the states for low cost
construction
o Roosevelt pushed to regulate the currency
 Inflation would increase purchasing power (Ok I guess)
 Wanted to accomplish this by lowering interest rates and incentivizing
loans
o Roosevelt used “fireside chats” to calm the masses
Dust bowl
o Prolonged drought struck the middle US in the great plains
o The already poor were now stuck without proper air to breathe
o Many of those who lived in the dust bowl went out west to California
 Were not very welcome
 The Grapes of Wrath anyone?
Native Americans


o Collier promoted the Indian Reorganization act of 1934
 “Indian new deal”
 Gave Indians the right to establish a local self-governing body
o Some Indians followed it, others disliked it
Post 1936 election
o FDR won again
 Was elected due to his focus on “the forgotten man”
 Landslide victory
o Court packing scandal
 Roosevelt had trouble passing new deal reforms
 Many were called unconstitutional by the supreme court
 Many were very extremist, but nevertheless had support from
congress
 Roosevelt wanted to change the supreme court
 Wanted to add new judges and incentivize retirement
 This would allow him to appoint new ones that would not vote his
laws unconstitutional
 Congress said NO, and many disliked him
 Some saw this as corruption, and some disliked it because it was
government overreach
o Embracing Keynesianism
 John Maynard Keynes’s idea
 Government would intervene in the economy to encourage
consumer spending
 More money = good
 Inflate the currency with low interest rates in a recession to
increase purchasing power, than deflate the currency with high
interest rates during a boom to stabilize currency and avoid
overambitious investing
 After the “Roosevelt Recession” of 1937, Roosevelt pushed toward more
Keynesian policies
Failures of the new deal
o Campaign donors
 New deal supporters donated A LOT to FDR
 People didn’t like this much
 1940 Hatch Act prevented excessive campaign contributions
o Lack of effectiveness
 By the late 1930s the new deal hadn’t accomplished that much
 Tons of various “alphabet soup” committees which weren’t very effective
 Farm surpluses were worse than under hoover
 Unemployment was still sky high
o Abuse of power
 Roosevelt was accused of being a socialist (pretty true) and mad with
power
 Court packing scandal didn’t help this sentiment
 After hating the dictatorships of Europe, the people became weary
o The program costs A LOT
 Debt more than doubled from $19.4B -> $40B in 7 years
 Inflation spiked tremendously
o While the new deal was ineffective, WWII was just around the corner
 WWII was credited by many to have ended the depression
 Created a demand for product
 Though it took the country out of depression, it had a cost
 Debt went from $40B -> $250B in 6 years
 Millions of lives were lost
 Inflation continued to go up
Chapter 34


Congress passes neutrality legislation
o Reasons
 Arms dealers were profiting from the war
 Selling weapons to war powers didn’t work well in World War I
o Neutrality Acts of 1935, 1936, and 1937
 No American can legally sail on a ship of a warring party
 No transporting weapons to a warring party
 No making loans to a warring party
 Very different than the neutrality measures of WWI
o The issue with Spain
 The loyalist nation of Spain had a revolution on its hands
 Rebels were supported by Germany/Italy
 Loyalists were loosely supported by USSR, but 3k volunteer American
Soldiers, named the Abraham Lincoln brigade, further assisted them
 FDR enhanced neutrality legislation to prohibit arms deals to both the
rebels and the government
Appeasement
o After the invasion of China by Imperial Japan in 1937, the world was uneasy



FDR delivered his quarantine speech in the fall of 1937
 Alarmed by Germany/Italy aggression
 Wanted to take steps to contain the enemy
 Isolationists went up in protest
o They loathed more war
o FDR ran on a campaign of peace (just like Wilson…)
 Followed soon by the Japanese sinking an American ship (the Panay) in
Chinese waters in late 1937
o Germany began to ignore the Treaty of Versailles
 Introduced draft in Germany in 1935
 Began to march his troops through the German Rhineland
 Started to persecute the Jews (now known as the holocaust)
 Began to produce weapons (and A LOT of them)
 In 1938, Hitler took over Austria, which turned some heads
o Britain and France sought to stop the German war machine
 Rather than force neutrality, they wanted to give in to some German
demands to stop their aggression
 Munich conference of 1938 was called
 Britain and France convince Hitler to not expand past the
Sudetenland
 Had to give him that land
 Hitler agreed, but later destroyed Czechoslovakia in return
The war begins
o The USSR signed a nonaggression treaty with Germany in 1939
 Meant to last 10 years
 Called “The Hitler Stalin Pact”
o Without a threat in the eastern front, Germany attacks Poland
 Britain and France were forced to declare war
 Poland gets destroyed in 3 months regardless
o America’s Neutrality act of 1939
 allowed Europeans to buy American weapons, but only if they
transported the weapons in their ships
 FDR set danger zones that American ships cannot enter
Holocaust
o Jews were targeted throughout Hitler’s regime
 They controlled businesses, so when the businesses tanked they were to
blame
 Many considered Jews to be backstabbers who lost Germany WWI


o Kristallnacht
 The night of broken glass
 30k Jews were shipped to concentration camps
o Refugees were refused
 Hundreds escaped Germany, but were denied access into Cuba AND
America
 FDR tried to get them in, but southern democrats and immigration laws
prevented it
 FDR created the War Refugee board to get Jews to safety
 150k+ Jews were saved
America’s involvement in the war shifts
o Britain wasn’t doing so well
 Americans liked the British (fought together before, similar lifestyles,
etc.)
 Many Americans pushed for involvement to help Britain
 Isolationists kept true to their doctrine
 After some contention (and Britain getting hammered by Germany) FDR
authorizes some destroyers to be sent to Britain, in exchange for a few
defensive base sites, in 1940
o Roosevelt runs on an anti-involvement campaign
 Broke the two term tradition and won
 Won nearly by a landslide
 Won mostly due to anti-involvement rhetoric
o Lend-Lease act
 “Send guns, not sons”
 Would send a limitless supply of arms to “victims of aggression”
 Tough fight in Congress, but passed
 Marked the official end of neutrality
 Lead to increased production of goods -> helped the economy
 The US is now technically aligned (though they really have been
for a while)
 Germany saw it as an unofficial declaration of war
 Started attacking American ships (didn’t do so previously)
 American ships convoyed British ones, but German U-boats still
shot at them
 Lead to the neutrality act of 1939 being largely scrapped
Germany targets Russia
o Germany was getting cocky


 They destroyed Poland, occupied France, and Britain was doing very little
 Germany could see world domination in their sights
 With no real enemies in the western front, Germany went to push east
o Attacked USSR in 1941
 Violated non-aggression pact
 Roosevelt upped aid 11x to the soviets ($1B -> $11B)
Atlantic Charter
o Britain and US go to talks
o Wrote up the Atlantic Charter
 Opposed imperialism; stated that there would be no territorial changes
 Self-determination of the inhabitants of those lands
 Pushed for disarmament for global security
 Very similar to the 14 points, since both had the goal of peace and
limiting further aggression
Pearl Harbor
o Japan was dependent on materials from the US
 No one liked this, but FDR held off the embargo to prevent Japan from
attacking other nations to get them
 Embargo was finally placed in mid-1941
o Talks between the Japanese and Americans began
 Americans wanted Japan to pull out of China in return for renewing
(limited) trade relations
 Japan refused the deal
 America couldn’t attack first so they waited
o December 7th 1941
 Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, an Hawaiian naval base
 “A date that will live in Infamy”
 The US issued a formal declaration of war on December 11 th, 1941
Chapter 35

US enters the war
o ABC-1 agreement
 Get Germany first, as they are the greatest threat, and could take over
Europe if left unchecked
 Once Germany is down all the allies can focus on Japan
o Executive order 9066
 Japanese internment
 Unnecessary, unfair, and ultimately racist



Kept loyal Japanese people in what were essentially concentration camps
Known as one of FDR’s biggest blunders (this and the court packing
scandal)
 Korematsu vs. US upheld the constitutionality of internment
o New deal was done
 Ultimately unnecessary; government created demand was no longer
needed after war created REAL, tangible demand (as opposed to “fake”
government demand)
 CCC, WPA, National Youth Administration, and others were all dissolved
Getting ready for war
o Ramping up production
 Money wasn’t an issue, but getting things produced was
 Production during WWII dramatically increased as a demand for goods
was created in a downtrodden economy
o War production board (WPB) oversaw massive military orders
 Halted manufacturing of non-essentials
 Sought to focus ALL efforts towards the war
 Even farmers were hired to feed the soldiers
o Dealing with the economic effects of increased production
 Inflation skyrocketed after a sudden influx of employment and demand
 Office of Price Administration (OPA) artificially changed prices back to
stable levels
o National War Labor Board (NWLB) imposed ceilings on wage increases
 Labor unions, with all this newfound employment, were back in full force
 Smith-Connally Anti-Strike act (1943) criminalized striking in a
government operated facility, in the name of pushing the war effort
forward.
o Men AND Women in the workforce
 As men went into the battlefield, women were (again) needed in the
factories
 Rosie the Riveter was a symbol for the working woman
 Not many women even wanted to work in factories, however
 After the war ended many were unemployed, though many by
choice
 Regardless, WWII was a defining point for women’s rights
 Many workers moved from the small towns into the big cities to work in
the factories



Women’s army corps (WACs), Women Accepted for Volunteer
Emergency Service (WAVES), and U.S. Coast Guard Women’s reserve
(SPARs) all enlisted WOMEN for non-combat duties in war
 Women tend to only get equality when they have to risk their lives for
some reason
 After men returned from the war, the new domestic lifestyle lead to the
“baby boomers” generation
o The Bracero program brought Mexicans over the border to help the US farm and
cultivate crops
o Native American “code talkers”
 Native American men were hired to speak in their native language
(undecipherable by the Japanese or the Germans) to relay confidential
messages over radio
 25k+ men hired
Many of these boom cities were located in the west and in the north east, but not the
south
o FDR worked to reform and industrialize the South
 $6B spent on creating industry
 The cotton picker revolutionized the farming industry; cotton no longer
needed a lot of manual labor to harvest
 Led to many African Americans moving north
o Fair Employment Practices commission (FEPC) prevented discrimination in hiring
(or at least was intended to)
 People rooted for the “double V”, victories against dictators abroad and
racism at home
 NAACP membership increased to the 500K mark
 Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was founded in 1942
Holding the Home Front
o Unlike in Europe, America had no defensive battles at home
o The war brought the country out of depression
 GNP increased from $100B -> $200B from 1940 to 1945
 Corporate profits rose $6B in 1940 to almost double that by 1944
 Once the price caps were removed, prices skyrocketed more than 33%
o During this era, millions were employed by the government
 Transitioning back to private control would be difficult
 Debt was skyrocketing as the government funded war and these
programs
 War had cost $10M AN HOUR at its height





Debt went from $49B -> $259B from 1941 to 1945
D-day
o Stalin was getting overworked
 He could not handle the eastern front forever without support from the
west
 He pushed to meet with Churchill/Roosevelt to incentivize involvement
o On June 6th, 1944, French Normandy was invaded
 “D-Day”
 Paris was liberated by August
Roosevelt’s 4th term
o 1944 election: Roosevelt vs. Dewey
o Roosevelt’s VP was Truman
o Roosevelt won yet again
 Partly due to his consistency and being an incumbent
 Also due to the war going well (even though he ran on a campaign of
peace last time)
Hitler’s final push
o By 1944, Hitler was getting destroyed
 Allies had clearly superior fire power
 Germany was surrounded and repeatedly bombed
o Hitler failed in attacking Antwerp
 Meant to be a surprise attack to destroy a key airbase
 Worked initially, but bombers prevented further damage
 Was eventually a German loss
o By 1945, Germany was fully surrounded
 Soviets were at the walls of Berlin by April
 So were the Americans
 FDR died this month too, but the troops pushed on
 Truman took over
 Hitler committed suicide by the end of the month
o May 7th 1945 was considered “V-E (Victory in Europe)” Day
Japan gets nuked
o Japan gets put on the defensive
 America wins naval bouts against them
 General MacArthur leads the American fleet
 America captures Manila
 America makes landfall in japan
 America takes control of Iwo Jima
 Cost many lives, but gave Americans a strategic foothold in the
region
o The atomic bombs
 Japan is known for fighting until the end
 Use Kamikaze bombers to win battles


Japan will do anything to win, and America wanted to get a clear
and concise victory
 Potsdam conference
 Allied leaders told Japan “Surrender or be destroyed”
 America bombed Japan with standard weaponry, but it seemed to
do nothing
 America started to research new technologies
 Albert Einstein, among other scientists, ran the Manhattan Project
 An atomic bomb was being developed
 As usual, they were given a blank check and all the resources they
needed
 On August 6th, 1945, An atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima
 180k people were injured/killed by a the single bomb
 60k more died eventually of radiation caused disease
 Stalin joined the effort against Japan, and that combined with the
bomb was still not enough to force a surrender
 Another bomb was dropped on Nagasaki
 Japan surrendered, with the only condition that Hirohito still be an
emperor (with no power)
 Deals were accepted
 V-J (Victory in Japan) day was September 2nd, 1945
The US had 1M casualties
o A lot, but not nearly as much as others
o Those dead from wounds was reduced due to breakthrough medications
o US mainland was also virtually unscathed
o The US also had great military leaders like Eisenhower and MacArthur
UNIT VI
Chapter 36
-
Yalta Conference
o Great Britain, the US, and USSR all met in February 1945
 Worked together to sort out war issues
 Seen as a diplomatic effort between allies
o It was decided that the USSR would attack Japan in 2-3 months after Germany
fell
 Under the condition that USSR would regain control of territory they lost
to the Japanese
 Some land used to be Chinese land, and some saw it as the US betraying
the Chinese
-
-
o They were NOT drafting a peace settlement
 More of a diplomatic understanding
 Not very concrete terms
The US and the USSR
o Capitalism vs. Communism
 Entirely different economic systems
 The US considers Communism totalitarian; hated it immensely
o The US cut lend lease funding to the USSR in a dire time of need
 Stalin was not pleased
 The US still gave money to Britain during this time
o The USSR created a defensive “sphere of influence” around them
 Against Wilsonian “14 points” ideals
 Americans considered the USSR an “empire”
o However, they were still allied
 Seemingly (only) united against a common enemy
 Many of their actions during the war foreshadow future conflict
 Soon after WWII, the Cold War began
Planning for post-war
o Bretton Woods Conference
 New Hampshire 1944
 Allies established International Monetary Fund (IMF)
 Encouraged trade by regulating exchange rates
 Founded the World Bank
 Promotes growth in poverty stricken areas of the world
 The US provided most of the funding
o War Memorial Open House meeting
 San Francisco, April 1945
 First UN meeting
 Successor to the League of Nations
 Had no veto power like the LoN
 No permanent member (US, USSR, Britain, France, China) could
have action taken against it without their consent
o Biased much????
 Designed for cooperation
 Established UN charter
 US Senate approved it
 US would host the UN in NYC
 The Atom bomb


World issue, basically designed for the UN to regulate
The UN failed miserably
o The US was greedy and didn’t want non-proliferation
o The Soviets even suggested taking the nukes apart, but
Truman didn’t like it
o The suspicious Soviets agreed, as at the time they were
most likely in the process of developing their own
o Set a dangerous precedent
o Reconstruction
 Germany
 Nuremberg War Crimes trial sentences Nazis to harsh punishment
 Germany+Austria was divided into 4 military occupation zones
o France, Britain, US, and USSR each controlled one zone
o France, Britain and US zones joined to form West
Germany, and the USSR formed east Germany
o West Germany essentially ran itself, but the east was used
as a “satellite state” by the USSR as a part of their sphere
of influence
 Actions here were indicative of future conflict
o An “iron curtain” split the two regions of Germany
o The USSR imposed a no-fly-zone over East Berlin and
prevented powers from entering, but the US did anyway
o The USSR couldn’t really enforce it, so they let it happen
and eventually lifted the blockade in 1949
 As the governments of West and East Germany were created, the
Cold War materialized
 Japan
 Japan cooperated with the US to speed up reconstruction
 It was successful, as the MacArthur constitution was signed in
1946
o Renounced militarism
o Provided gender equality
 Japan grew to be a world leader in just a few decades time
 China
 After the war, a communist regime took control of China
 US was not pleased; they supported the other side
 Seen as a cold war defeat

-
A third of the world, and almost the entirety of Asia, was
communist
o Marshall Plan
 July 1947
 US plan to aid ailing allied nations post war
 Even suggested giving aid to Soviets, provided they make very large
government reforms
 Almost designed to make them refused
 They did
 Called for spending $12.5B over 4 years to help
 Huge success
 Bolstered European economy, which in turn helped America
o Truman recognized the state of Israel on May 14th, 1948
 Holocaust survivor sympathy
 Supporting Israel complicated Arab relations
The Cold War begins
o Containment doctrine
 Theorized by George Kennan in 1947
 Called for using force to contain the spread of communism and soviet
influence
 Truman ran with this with the “Truman Doctrine”, issued a month after
Kennan
 Asked for $400M aid to help “save” Greece from communism
o America begins to re-arm
 The National Security Act Formed the National Security Council (NSC) and
the CIA
 “Voice of America” was a government run radio channel formed in 1948
that spread propaganda
 Resurrected the draft
o NATO
 North Atlantic Treaty Organization
 Formed in Washington, in April 1949
 Basically an Alliance
 VERY against typical American ideology
 Alliances historically haven’t turned out well
 Purpose was “To keep the Russians out, the Germans down, and the
Americans in”
o The Arms Race


-
The soviets detonate a nuclear bomb in September 1949
Truman responded by developing the H-bomb, which was exploded in
1952
 Strongest weapon known to man
 Thousands of times more powerful than the atom bomb
 The soviets countered by exploding their own H-bomb in 1953
o Getting out the alleged communists
 Truman embarked on a massive “loyalty” program
 People were weary of communist spies
 The Loyalty review board was created
 Companies or people considered “disloyal” to the US were either
resigned or dismissed
 Smith Act of 1940 (basically a modern sedition act) was passed
 Convicted many alleged “communists”
 Law’s constitutionality was upheld by the Dennis vs. US decision
of 1951
 House of Un-American Activities Commission (HUAC)
 Made to investigate “subversion”
 Richard Nixon (name sounds familiar) was known as “the red
hunter” who convicted Alger Hiss in 1950
 Truman realized quickly that this was turning into a witch hunt
 Vetoed the McCarran Internal Security Bill
 Authorized the president to arrest/detain “suspicious” people
during an emergency
 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of selling US nuclear secrets to
the soviets
 While they did sympathize with the USSR, selling nuclear secrets
was a debatable claim
 Sentenced to death
o Was the first time that someone had been executed for
espionage during peacetime
o This, and sympathy for the Rosenberg’s now orphaned
children, sobered up some of the red hunting Americans
1948 election
o Republicans won control of Congress in 1946; not looking good for Truman
o Dewey vs. Truman 1948
 Truman won
 Was the underdog


-
Ran on a “screw it if I win I win and if I lose I lose” mentality
Won through the farmers, the workers (he opposed the Taft-Hartley law)
and blacks
o Truman came back proposing the “Fair Deal” to congress
 Called for improved housing, full employment, a higher minimum wage,
better farm price supports, new TVAs, and an extension of social security
 Failed because many opposed raising the wage
 Housing Act of 1949 and Social Security Act of 1950 were still passed
though
Korean War
o After the fall of Japan, Korean lands were split between the US and the Soviets
 US controlled the South, USSR controlled the north
 Tension arose between the communist north and the democratic south
o On June 25th, 1950, the North attacked the South
 Truman was quick to fly to assistance
 Containment doctrine was coming into effect
o NSC-68
 Recommended that the US QUADRUPLE defense spending
 Near WWII levels
 Truman pushed for this to enforce containment doctrine, and it passed
o The US took advantage of the USSRs absence from the UN security council one
day to pass legislation that clearly defined North Korea as the aggressor
o While the US was “participating in the UN action” it became clear that they were
the ones primarily sending troops
o MacArthur is on his high horse
 Consistently makes decisions by himself during the war without
consulting the government
 Felt as if he was fighting with one hand behind his back, and that “there
was no substitute for victory”
 Truman removed him from command for insubordination on April
11th,1951
o By July 1951 peace talks began, though they did stagnate for 2 years
Chapter 37
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McCarthyism
o Joseph McCarthy was a Republican Senator who targeted “Commies”
o McCarthy claimed that the government was filled with communists
 Very similar to Salem Witch Hunt
-
 Many “traitors” were targeted and jailed
 Was a deterrent to free speech
 Many stayed clear of him to avoid imprisonment
o McCarthy went too far when he claimed the American Military was communist
 Military men fought back
 Army-McCarthy hearings showed McCarthy’s true colors
 Discredited, he died 3 years later of Alcoholism
o McCarthyism was a symbol of the anti-communist, “red hunting” mentality in
the 1950s United States
Civil Rights
o Jim Crow
 Jim Crow laws were legislated segregation measures
 “separate but equal”
 Blacks were given the short end of the stick; their “alternatives were far
inferior to those of the whites
o Only ~20% of blacks were registered to vote (less than 5% in deep south states)
o Segregation, like McCarthyism, was a black mark against the US
 Political speakers went on about how the US can’t fight tyrannical Soviet
communism while practicing such horrible acts at home
 The US put efforts into silencing these critics
o Fighting back
 Due to International and domestic pressures, light desegregation
measures were put in place, but African Americans needed more
 Montgomery Bus boycott
 Rosa Parks boarded a bus and sat in the “whites only” section and
refused to move
 She was arrested, and it sparked civil unrest
 Martin Luther King (MLK) helped organize a boycott against the
Montgomery bus system
 MLK
 Young Pastor
 Not very exposed to racism, but his oratorical skill and adherence
to biblical ideology and non-violence (the latter inspired by
Gandhi) put him at the forefront of the civil rights movement.
 formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to
mobilize black churches to fight for civil rights
 4 black students in 1960 organized a “sit in”
 They would sit at the whites only counter and refuse to move

-
The number of students who joined increased exponentially, to
upwards of 1000 in just a week
 Southern Black Students formed the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to add to these efforts
o The Federal government legislates equality
 Truman hears of black veterans being lynched and couldn’t stand it
 Ended segregation in federal civil service in 1948
 Though his successor Eisenhower didn’t focus much on race issues, the
liberal supreme court took the burden of fixing America’s race issue
 Brown v. Board of education
 1954 decision that desegregated public schools
 Claimed that they were inherently unequal
 Many were furious, and integration wasn’t going to come easy
 Central High School 1957
 Governor of Arkansas Orval Faubus, mostly to insure re-election
by his anti-integration constituents, openly defied Brown v. Board
 Sent national guard troops to prevent the “little rock 9” from
entering central high school
 Eisenhower, wanting to assert federal authority more than
anything else (He refused to comment on the supreme court
decision) sent in troops to bring back order
Eisenhower comes to power
o Eisenhower entered the white house in 1953
 Former general
 Republican
 Pushed for small government reforms
 Curbed the TVA
 Cut back on military spending, though it was still VERY high
o Operation Wetback
 1954
 Captured over 1M illegal immigrants and sent them back home
o Federal Highway Act of 1956
 Contrary to his small government ideals, Eisenhower backed a $27B (A
LOT) highway building program
 In case of war, the military can be easily mobilized
 Regardless, we still use this highway system today
 Benefitted the automobile and oil industries immensely
 Made problems of air quality and energy consumption worse
o Revamping Foreign Policy
 In 1952, Republicans called for a “new look” in foreign policy
 Rather than just containment, the state department wanted to
“liberate captive peoples” and thwart communism all together
 However, they still wanted to decrease military spending
 Policy of Boldness (1954)
 Relegates army/navy, builds upon air force
 Huge “super bombers” can rain hell on the soviets or the Chinese
if deemed necessary (known as massive retaliation)
 Eisenhower tried to scale back the cold war by talking to Soviet leaders
who took power after Stalin’s death in 1953
 Nikola Khrushchev, the new leader, denied Eisenhower’s
diplomatic efforts
 The goal was to have a mutual inspection system, but it failed to
come to fruition
 Hungarian Uprising
 Hungarians rose up against the Soviets
 Appealed to the US for help; they received none
 Even “massive retaliation” proved too costly for such a conflict
o Vietnam
 There were many nationalist uprisings in South East Asia
 Mostly in Communist nations
 The US was all too glad to aid the rebels
 The US has been aiding France in their Indochina war already
 Upwards $1B/year
 France was not accomplishing anything
 Eisenhower holds back
 After just getting out of a war in Korea, he was hesitant
 Nixon (VP at the time) as well as the joint chiefs of staff supported
intervention
 Battle of Dien Bien Phu
 Victory for the Nationalists
 Vietnam was split in two at the 17th Parallel in the Geneva
Convention
 The US never signed these Geneva records, but threw their
support to the nationalists

-
The nationalists were far outclassed by the communists; The US
was backing the losing horse
o Cuba
 Communist Castro ousted previous dictator Batista (who made huge
economic deals with the US) and denounced America
 The US responded by cutting ties with Cuba and putting economic
sanctions on them
 End of an US imperialist puppet state
Nixon v. Kennedy
o Vice President Nixon ran against JFK in 1960
o Nixon gained popularity from the “kitchen debate” with Khrushchev
 Nixon extolled American Consumerism over Soviet economic planning
o The democrats nominated JFK, a young millionaire senator
 He was a catholic, which brought up some concerns in the bible belt
 He was much more energized than Nixon on TV, which turned the tide
o Kennedy wins
Chapter 38
-
European relations
o Berlin Wall
 The Soviets were becoming increasingly threatening
 When meeting with JFK in 1961, they threatened to cut ties with
west Germany and make a treaty with the east
 Threatened to cut off western access to Berlin
 The Soviets erected the Berlin Wall in August 1961
 Blocked East -> West population shift
 Stood for nearly 3 decades
 Symbolized the bitter Cold War conflict/post-WWII division
o EEC
 Post- Marshal plan, Western Europe was prospering
 European Economic Community (EEC) was formed to create a free trade
area among participating European nations
 Later known as the European Union (EU)
 Trade Expansion Act of 1962 was passed by Kennedy to cut tariffs
to promote trade in the EEC
 From 1962-1967, there were talks that ultimately lead to
increased trade between the US and the EEC
 Process was known as globalization

-
France grew wary of American Influence in Europe
 America’s goal was to have a dominant presence in the region
economically
 France vetoed Britain’s request for common market membership
as part of the “Atlantic Community” (US formed alliance), fearing
that their relationship with the US will give the latter more
influence
 They developed their own nuclear weapons
 Didn’t like Americans meddling in Europe
Issues overseas
o Laos
 Revolution in 1954, freeing themselves from the French
 Communist sentiment was rising, America didn’t like it
 Already spent too much money in Europe, and didn’t have enough
firepower to solve the issue through the military
 Achieved a shaky peace diplomatically in the Geneva convention of 1962
o Flexible response
 JFK wanted to make sure the US could deal with threats with a
proportional amount of firepower
 Initiated by the “Brushfire Wars”, where US involvement was too little,
while at the same time avoiding the nuclear option
o Vietnam
 JFK ordered Military Advisors to South Vietnam in late 1961
 Ran a successful coup against the right wing government leader Ngo
Diem in 1963
 While JFK claimed that he wanted to avoid war, he was entangling
himself into some deep commitments
 War did not escalate much until Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ)
o Modernization Theory
 Proponents believed that Asian, African, and Latin American countries
can turn into modern industrial powers by following the west’s own path.
 Walt Whitman Rostow- The Stages of Economic Growth
o Cuba
 After Castro took over Cuba, it became communist
 The US did not like this, nor did they like Cuba’s new alliance with the
USSR
 They led an invasion, known as the Bay of Pigs, to oust Castro
 It failed miserably
-
 JFK took full responsibility
 America and the USSR were on the brink of war
 America demanded a naval quarantine of Cuba
 The US said that any attack on Cuba would be considered a
declaration of war
 After a near direct confrontation (for the first time in the entire
cold war), Khrushchev flinched and pulled the missles out of Cuba
o Known as the Cuban Missile Crisis
o Khrushchev was ultimately hounded by the Kremlin and
turned into an “unperson”
 After the Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK gave a speech in favor of lowering
tensions with the USSR
 Encouraged Americans to look at the USSR differently
 Origins of “Détente” policy
The fight for civil rights
o Kennedy was committed to ending segregation
 Freedom Riders were deployed to end segregation in facilities serving
interstate bus passengers
 Were targeted by white groups
 Lead to violence
 Federal Marshals were sent to protect the Freedom Riders in the
south
 Had a good relationship with the King family (of MLK)
 Wiretapped their phones a bit, but overall the relationship was
solid
 Voter Education Project was made to get southern blacks to register to
vote
 Integrated Blacks into universities
 James Meredith, a 29 year old air force veteran, was enrolled in
University of Mississippi
 Required 400 field marshals to escort him to his class
o In the peaceful March on Washington in 1963, MLK lead 200k demonstrators in
support of JFK’s anti-discrimination legislation
 Legislation was motivated by the hosing/mistreatment of blacks across
America
 In September 1963, 4 young black girls were killed in an explosion in
Birmingham
o Kennedy is assassinated
-
 LBJ takes over
 Continues with the policies of JFK
Lyndon B. Johnson and the Great Society
o Passed the Civil Rights act of 1964
 banned racial discrimination in private facilities
 Also passed an executive order mandating federal contractors to take
“affirmative action” against discrimination
o All part of his “Great Society”
 A new deal like program that aimed to transform the American way of
life
o LBJ easily wins the 1964 election
o Congress is extremely supportive of the Great Society (known as the Great
Society Congress)
o Embarked on a “war on poverty”
 Billion dollar program targeting the lower class
 Created a Department of Transportation and Department of housing and
urban development
o 4 main accomplishments of the Great Society
 Aid to education
 Funneled aid to students, not schools
 Was a way to fund parochial schools without hearing the
separation of church and state argument
 Medical care for the elderly and indigent
 Medicare = aid to the elderly
 Medicaid = aid to the poor
 Benefitted the people, but cost the government a lot of money
 Immigration reform
 Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 abolished the “national
origins” quote set in 1921
 Passed laws that made it easier for entire families to immigrate to
the US
 Increased population/diversity long term
 A new voting rights bill
 The Civil Rights Act, among other reforms, was already ending
segregation
 Voting was still nearly impossible for blacks in the south, as they
were targeted and unfairly victimized if they wanted to enter the
process


-
-
o In Mississippi, a massive voter registration drive was run
during the “Freedom Summer” of 1964
o Civil rights workers (black or white) were being killed
o Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was denied a seat
at the national democratic convention
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed literacy tests and sent
federal voting registrars to southern states
Greatly increased the black voting turnout
Race Retaliation
o MLKs peaceful protests were only met with violent responses
o Militant protestors, led by Malcolm X, turned to violence
 Huge riots against police brutality
 Pushed for black separatism, rather than peaceful co-existence
o Black Panther party and Black Power
 Group formed as part of the black power movement
 The movement’s goal was to speed up integration into American society,
through violent means if necessary
 Emphasized going back to African roots and shedding corrupting western
influences
o Violent rioting was counterproductive and only increased tensions
o Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965, and MLK in 1968
o After their assassinations, many of the measures put in place by LBJ became
successful
Combatting communism
o Dominican Republic
 Dominicans rose up against military government in 1965
 LBJ mobilized troops to restore order
 Wanted to prevent another communist outbreak
 LBJ was condemned for using “gunboat diplomacy”
o Six day war
 June 1967
 Israel expanded to control new territories in the Sinai Peninsula, Golan
Heights, and the Gaza strip
 Also took control of Jerusalem
 Against overwhelming odds, they beat Syria, Jordan, AND Egypt (who was
backed by the USSR)
 Tensions continued to increase
o Vietnam

-
Johnson was responsible for escalating the Vietnam war
 Operation “Rolling Thunder” (march 1965)
 LBJ slowly escalated, and by 1968 more than half a million troops
were sent to South East Asia
 The international community didn’t like US involvement in Vietnam
 Several nations expelled peace corps volunteers
 France withdrew from NATO and kicked all American troops out
of the country
o Considering that they occupied Vietnam less than a
decade ago, this is a bit hypocritical
o LBJ responded by asking if the kicked out troops included
the thousands killed in Normandy (AKA sickest presidential
burn ever recorded)
 Not too much approval on the domestic front either
 Universities across the US were rife with protests
 Many fled to Canada to avoid the draft
 With the press covering the war, Americans not only confronted
the harsh brutalities of war, but also saw just how unwinnable the
war was
o The Tet offensive, where the US was caught off guard by
North Vietnam, was a particular example of this
 LBJ didn’t deal with disapproval well
 Made the CIA spy on domestic anti-war activists
o The program, called “Cointelpro”, targeted the activists as
pro-communist sympathizers
o LBJ was labelled a tyrant because of this
 As the 1968 elections drew near, LBJ wasn’t looking great
o Formidable contenders like Robert Kennedy and Eugene
McCarthy targeted him
o Nixon won the election in 1968, even though he supported
the war
 For all of his accomplishments as part of the great society, LBJ was
forever remembered as the guy who screwed up Vietnam
Cultural upheaval of the 1960s
o Rejection of Authority
 Society wished to be free of sexism, racism, imperialism, and oppression
 More and more Americans rejected Religion
 Young Americans began to loathe the conservative elderly
o Protests against authority/censorship spread throughout the world in the
mid/late 1960s
 UC Berkeley, Columbia, and even in West Berlin/France
 University presidents, conservative politicians, and communist leaders
tried to suppress them, but the damage was done
o Sexual revolution
 Birth Control (recently invented) and Gay pride were popular causes
 Gay men were targeted by police, which lead to the Stonewall Rebellion
in 1969
 Gay rights movement was going strong, and continues to do so today
(even the whole AIDS hysteria in the 80s being a setback)
o Students for a Democratic society
 Ran anti-war and anti-poverty campaigns
 Unfortunately led to the formation of “The Weathermen”, which was an
underground terrorist group
 The group led urban riots across America
o Counterculture died down around the 1970s, but the movement as a whole
made society much more progressive and diminished conservative values
Chapter 39
-
-
The economy stagnates
o Some blamed an increase in women/teenagers in the workforce, while others
blamed the economic shift from manufacturing to service based businesses
o The Vietnam war and aftermath of the Great Society could also be to blame, as
the money necessary to fund them was taken through high taxes
o Many compared the new lackluster economy with the old booming economy,
leading to a sentiment of frustration across the nation
People hate the Vietnam war
o Nixon’s plan of Vietnamization
 Nixon was an expert on foreign affairs
 Nixon wanted to withdraw 540k troops gradually
 He would still give monetary/diplomatic assistance to the South
Vietnamese so they can eventually take over the war themselves
 Grew into “the Nixon Doctrine”
o Anti-war protesters still hated the war
 Nixon appealed to the “silent majority” who supported the war
 People still hated the war
 Now people hated Nixon too
-
o My Lai Massacre
 American soldiers slaughtered innocent women and children
 Increased hate of the Vietnam war
o Cambodia
 North Vietnamese used Cambodia as a springboard to aid them in the
war
 Nixon ordered bombings over officially neutral Cambodia
 Justified this through the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
 Kent State University held a protest in response, and the national guard
killed 4 student demonstrators
o Pentagon Papers
 In 1971, Declassified papers revealed how the Government, under JFK
and LBJ, deceived the people about the true state of the Vietnam war
 Included how the US provoked North Vietnam in the Gulf of Tonkin, not
the other way around, as was reported by the government.
o Détente
 Nixon went to visit communist countries to ease tensions
 China agreed to normalize their relationship
o America agreed to lessen commitment to the
independence of Taiwan
o Called the “One China” policy
 Because of this “alliance” with China, the Soviets were much more
open to talks
o Agreed to an Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty),
which limited both nation’s missile capacity
o Both parties still developed advanced weaponry though
(ex. MIRVs)
 Policy of Détente, meaning “reduced tensions”, was put in place
 Did end up lessening tensions
 America still did dislike communism though, routinely supporting
anti-communist rulers in other nations while discouraging leftist
politicians
Supreme court gets changed
o Chief Justice Earl Warren was known for his liberal decisions
 Brown v. Board of Education
 Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965 overturned a state law banning
contraceptives

-
Gideon v. Wainwright in 1963 gave all criminal defendants right to legal
counsel, even if they can’t afford it
 Escobedo (1964) and Miranda (1966) decisions made sure that arresting
police officers read the accused their rights
 School District of Abington Township v. Schempp (1963) and Engel v.
Vitale (1962) stated that schools cannot require prayer
 Nearly all of these decisions angered conservatives, who cried “impeach
Earl Warren”
o In 1971, Nixon replaced Warren with Warren E. Burger
 Fulfilled an election promise to make sure the court was less liberal
 Ironically, Burger was just as, if not more, liberal than Warren
 Was chief justice when Roe v. Wade was passed in 1973, legalizing
abortion
Nixon on the Home Front
o Approved of welfare legislation
 Contrary to normal party beliefs
 Nixon increased funding for Medicaid, Social Security income (SSI), and
aid to families with dependent children (AFDC)
o Philadelphia plan
 Forced thousands of employers to meet “hiring quotas” for minority
workers
 Changed the dynamic of affirmative action, giving specific privileges to
specific groups
 Many saw this as reverse discrimination
 Others saw it as a way to even out the injustices of the last 2
centuries of American history
 Griggs v. Duke Power Co. outlawed intelligence tests or other devices
that prevented minorities or women from getting jobs
 Doesn’t make too much sense that intelligence tests are
inherently biased, but hey, 70s logic
o The environment
 Nixon created the Environmental protection agency (EPA) in 1970
 The first Earth Day was celebrated on April 22nd, 1970
 Congress passed the Clean Air Act of 1970 and the Endangered species
act of 1973
o created OSHA (Occupational safety and health administration)
o Took the US off of the gold standard (a long time coming, since no one every
followed it) and set a 90 day price/wage freeze
-
-
-
 Meant to end inflation (nearing 5%)
 Invalidated the Bretton Woods Conference
Nixon abroad
o War Powers Act of 1973
 After the end of the Vietnam war in 1973, Nixon still bombed Cambodia
 People wanted reform
 The War Powers Act forced the president to report to Congress within 48
hours if they deployed any troops
 Passed through Nixon’s veto
 A part of “New Isolationism”, or a policy of restraint overseas
 Not a single president has ever followed the terms of the War Powers Act
since its passage, so take that for what it’s worth
o Energy crisis
 After Israel’s victory in the six day war (which was heavily supported by
the US), the entire region was in turmoil
 OPEC nations announced a US oil embargo
 Triggered increasing gas prices
 Caused a recession not only in the US, but also France and Britain
 In response, Congress approved an Alaskan pipeline and created lower
mandatory speed limits
 Opened Americans’ eyes to the country’s dependency and lack of selfsufficiency
 The US formed the International Energy Agency as a countermeasure to
OPEC, but the path the self-sufficiency was a long one
Watergate
o In 1972, five men were arrested in the Watergate office complex
 They were going to plant electronic bugs in the democratic headquarters
 Soon everything was linked back to Nixon
o Agnew, the vice president, was forced to resign
o Though Nixon initially denied the allegations of corruption, the “smoking gun”
tape revealed that he gave orders to the CIA to hold back the FBI from
investigating
o Nixon resigned on August 8th, 1974
Ford takes office
o First unelected president
o Gave Nixon a full pardon
 Did not go over well
 Increased American distrust in government
-
o Enhanced Détente
 Increased talks with the soviets
 There were now liberal exchanges of people between east and west
Germany, and there were organized boundaries and limits set for postWWII borders
 Many of these talks were a part of the “Helsinki Accords”
 Moscow didn’t follow through with many of their compromises, leading
to the American people losing trust in détente
o The true end of Vietnam
 After the US pulled out, South Vietnam had a tough time staying afloat
 South Vietnam fell in 1975
 In all, the United States lost a lot in this war, and while they didn’t
TECHNICALLY lose the war, their client nation did, and the US certainly
didn’t win much of anything throughout the whole ordeal
Social movements
o Feminism
 The 2nd wave of feminism pushed through the streets in the 70s
 In 1972, Congress passed Title IX
 Prohibited sex discrimination in any federally assisted educational
program or activity
 Gave women more opportunities in higher education
 The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) gained support in congress in 1972
 Due to anti-feminists, the amendment was perpetually postponed
until it died in 1982
 More Backlash
 Conservatives claimed that feminism was destroying the
American family
 Treating women as equals bars them from special privileges
 Nixon vetoed a program to setup a national public daycare
because it “eroded the American family”
o Race
 Milliken v. Bradley ruled it illegal for desegregation plans to make
students move across state lines
 Ended “white flight”
 Good, since not having this provision would defeat the purpose of
desegregation
 Affirmative Action was controversial

-
Allan Bakke was denied admission to UC Berkeley and claimed it
was because of his race (white)
 The supreme court, in the Bakke decision of 1978, ruled in favor
of Bakke and UCB was forced to admit him
o 5-4 decision
o Court declared that colleges cannot declare preference in
admissions SOLELY based on race
Election of Jimmy Carter
o Carter narrowly beat Ford for the presidency in 1976
 Fun fact: Ford beat Reagan in primaries
 Received 51% of the total vote, but 97% of the African American vote
o Carter did well initially, but his presidency slowly devolved
 The economy was failing
 Inflation rate was greater than 13%
 Oil import rates were surging
 High dependency on foreign trade (27% of GDP)
 $60B deficit in 1980
 Interest rates were extremely high
o The next energy crisis
 The oppressive shah of Iran, appointed by the CIA in 1953, was deposed
in 1979
 The new rulers HATED the US for ousting their democratically elected
ruler in favor of a tyrannical shah
 Yet another oil crisis
o The Malaise speech
 Carter, in one of the worst political decisions in history, chided Americans
for falling into a spiritual and moral crisis
 Told them they were too focused on material goods
 “suck it up, it’s not that bad”
 Carter fired four cabinet secretaries following this speech, and basically
reorganized half the white house
o SALT II agreements were made between the US and the soviets, but the treaty
was carved up by republicans in the senate, who disliked the soviets
o Iran Hostage Crisis
 Militants in Tehran stormed the US embassy and took everyone hostage
 They demanded that the US release the deposed shah, who was in
asylum on American soil


Many condemned Iran, but Carter was unable to deal with the crisis
effectively, and the US looked weak
 Tried economic sanctions  failed
 Tried to send in a commando team  failed too (by their own
aircrafts colliding with each other)
Hostages were released the DAY Reagan was inaugurated
 Carter really got the short end of the stick on that one
Chapter 40
-
Ronald Reagan
o Resurgence of conservatism
 Championed the “common man” against big government
 Condemned federal intervention in local issues
 Disliked favoritism for minorities
 Claimed that the democratic party was the party of big government, and
he was the end of big government
 “Government is not our solution to the problem, government is
the problem.”
o Ran off of Jimmy Carter’s failure
 Jimmy Carter was widely regarded as a bad president and hurt the
democratic party
 ABC = “Anything but Carter”
 The fight to get on the ticket for Carter proved difficult, but he
was eventually nominated by the democratic party
 Reagan swept Carter in the election of 1980
 On Reagans inauguration, the hostages in Iran were released
 Carter fought his entire presidency for this
 It happened on the first day of Reagan’s
o Reagan’s anti-government agenda was received well by the Americans
 Taxes and entitlement programs were huge
 Led to tax revolts, like in California in 1978, which led to the
passage of Proposition 13, which slashed property taxes
 Reagan’s budget called for $35B in cuts
 Mostly to social programs
 Got support from some southern conservative democrats (called
Boll Weevils)
 Lowered federal estate and individual tax rates
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His economic policy was named “supply side” economics
 Also known as trickle-down economics of “reaganomics”
 Lower taxes leads to greater purchasing power in the rich, which
leads to greater investments which in turn helps the economy
The economy wasn’t initially doing well
 11% unemployment in 1982
 Automobile industry was tanking
 Gap between the rich and poor was increasing dramatically
 Dubbed “The Reagan recession”
By 1983, the economy began to pick up again
 Some said it was due to military expenditures
o For all his small government talk, Reagan spent $2T on the
pentagon in the 1980s
o Created a demand for goods that factories could build
 GREATLY increased debt in the process
Issues abroad
o The Cold War continues
 Reagan wanted to take a hands on approach against the soviets
 To do so, he needed to greatly increase the US’s military strength
 Pursued a technologically advanced missile defense system called
the strategic defense initiative (SDI)
o Involved satellites raining terror and destroying missiles
o Didn’t work too well, but it was just a thought
 The USSR shot down a Korean passenger airliner that entered their
airspace
 US citizens were on that plane
 Ended talks between the USSR and the US
o The Contra Scandal
 Unlike Carter, Reagan wanted to deal with the socialist revolutionaries,
known as the Sandinistas, In Nicaragua
 They were rebelling against the longtime dictator
 Reagan supported the Contras, who were against the anti-American
revolutionaries
 They were notorious for Cocaine smuggling and death squads
 Reagan sold weapons to Iran (a nation the US described as a
“terrorist” state) and used the profits to fund them
 Began to be known as the “Contra Scandal”
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General Oliver North took the blame for essentially committing treason,
then was pardoned
 People were NOT happy about this
o Gorbachev takes power
 Recognized the USSR is ailing
 Passed policies like Glastnost (getting rid of censorship) and Perestroika
(fixing the state planned economy) to liberalize and ultimately save the
USSR
 These programs would require funding that would take away from their
military power
 Gorbachev catalyzed the end of the cold war
 Spoke with Reagan
 Originally ended badly, but they signed the Intermediate Range
Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) in 1987, banning missiles from Europe
 Reagan still funded anti-communist militants, but the tensions
between USSR and the US did decrease
Conservatives in the economy and in the household
o Reagan’s policies, designed to make government smaller, actually just put it in
debt
 The lower taxes idea could have worked if he didn’t spend egregious
amounts of money on the military
 His actions led to one of the highest deficit rates in US history
o The moral majority
 Led by Reverend Jerry Falwell, the moral majority was a conservative
movement focused on de-liberalizing America
 Against open sexuality, feminism, anything gay related, and
abortion
 Expressed their views on nearly all forms of media
 Tried to identify themselves as “Christian, pro-life voters”
 Mirrored tactics of civil disobedience (blocking entrances to abortion
centers, etc.)
o Conservatism in the courts
 Reagan named three conservative justices into the supreme court
 Led to conservative court decisions
 Ward’s Cove Packing v. Antonia and Martin v. Wilks blurred the
lines of identifying racial discrimination in the hiring process
o Whites could claim reverse discrimination due to
affirmative action policies
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o Congress passed laws in 1991 to reverse some parts of
these decisions
Webster v. Reproductive Health Services overturned some key
points of Roe v. Wade
Planned Parenthood v. Casey allowed states to restrict access to
abortion
The end of Reaganism
o Americans were unhappy about rising debt and the Iran Contra Scandal
o In 1987, Black Monday (yet another financial crash) disheartened Americans
o In 1988, George H.W. Bush was elected President
 While not Reagan levels or Reagan, he was still very conservative
 Pushed for low taxes/welfare programs while funding the military
The end of Communism
o Germans toppled the Berlin Wall in December 1989
 Marked the end of the cold war
o The USSR dissolved in December 1991
 Gorbachev resigned as soviet president
 Formed the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)
 15 states formed out of the borders/puppet states of the USSR
 Boris Yetsin took control of Russia
 Many parts of Russia (like Chechnya) tried to claim their own
independence, but Yetsin sent in troops to prevent it
o The US and the USSR greatly scaled back their military firepower
Trouble in the Persian Gulf
o Saddam Hussein, leader of Iraq, invaded Kuwait in 1990
 Iraq wanted Kuwait’s oil
 Saw them as a weak, easily beatable power
o The UN was angered by this move, and ordered Saddam to stop
 He didn’t listen
 The UN realized they were playing with fire; there was a lot of oil at stake
o The US sent in their own military force in 1991
 February 13th marked the beginning of operation Desert Storm
 Lasted 4 days
o Bush was happy that the war was over so quickly
 The public was happy that we didn’t have another long, drawn out war
 “Vietnam Syndrome” is over
Bush on the home front
o Passed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990
 Prohibited discrimination against Americans with disabilities
o Dealt with hot button issues
 The department of Education challenged the legality of racially targeted
college scholarships
 Bush threatened to make it easier to prove discrimination in hiring and
promotion practices
o Clarence Thomas
 A conservative (black) justice that was so conservative that the NAACP
didn’t want him
 Even through sexual harassment allegations and widespread dislike,
Thomas won his seat through an extremely narrow vote
o Increased taxes
 Economy wasn’t doing well
 Unemployment at 11%+
 Record high debt
 Passed a $133B tax increase
 He ran on not increasing taxes, but now viewed it as a necessity
Chapter 41
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Bill Clinton is elected
o Formed the Democratic Leadership Council
 Moved the party away from anti-business/”champion of the underdog”
orientation to a more pro-growth, strong defense ideology
 Wanted to stimulate the economy and fix the welfare system
o 1992 election
 Ran Against the Incumbent George H.W. Bush
 Took credit for winning the cold war and leading the Persian Gulf
War to a swift end
 Many still disliked him because of the recession
 Clinton had a poster saying “It’s the economy, stupid”, which
suggests that that is what the people care about most
 Ross Perot, a third party candidate, also ran and got a surprising amount
of votes
 Clinton dominated presidential debates
 Clinton won, with a pretty large margin
o Don’t Ask Don’t Tell
 In a compromise measure to allow LGBT soldiers into the military, Clinton
said that they can enter as long as their sexuality is never acknowledged
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 Repealed in 2010
o Hillary
 Hillary Clinton was tasked with redesigning the medical service industry
 Was extremely unsuccessful
 Despite this, Hillary Clinton was the only first lady to hold office
when she was elected to be a senator of New York
 She was later appointed as Obama’s secretary of state
Anti-Government
o Oklahoma City Bombing
 In 1995, an explosion destroyed a federal government building, killing
168 people
 Was in response to the government destroying the Branch Davidian Cult
o During the 90s, many term limit laws were passed as part of the growing antigovernment sentiment
o 1994 midterm elections
 Clinton’s policies were failing
 Anti-government sentiment
 Republicans attempted to seize the opportunity
 Contract with America
 Led by Newt Gingrich, the contract with America was the
campaign slogan for the 1994 republicans
 Pushed for an assault on budget deficits and cuts to welfare
programs
 Many thought the republicans were pushing the envelope
 Policies were TOO conservative
 Tensions between the parties were very high
 In 1995 the federal government shutdown because they couldn’t
agree on a budget package
o Basically a legislative temper tantrum
o Happened again only a bit more than a decade later
More Clinton
o Clinton is re-elected in 1996, running against Bob Dole and Ross Perot
 Won by a solid margin
 The economy was very healthy  It’s the economy, stupid
o Forced the pass the Welfare Reform Bill in 1996
 Made deep cuts to welfare grants
 Restricted welfare benefits to Illegal Immigrants, reflecting the growing
anti-illegal immigrant sentiment
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o Clinton used this to his political advantage
 By seeming to be more middle ground, it made the republicans look very
radical
o Affirmative Action
 “mend it, not end it”
 As states passed anti-affirmative action laws (prop. 209 for CA, Hopwood
v. Texas for TX) Clinton disliked them but didn’t want to overturn them
 Clinton was aware that affirmative action was not as popular, especially
among whites, as it was in the 70s
o The economy was still booming
 There were government surpluses throughout his term
 Genuinely unheard of for the American government
 New Internet businesses led to the “dot com boom”
o Scandals
 Allegation of corruption in a real estate debacle known as “whitewater”
plagued him, and while he was tried no indictment ever materialized
 Clinton was caught in a sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky, a young white
house intern
 Lied about it in federal court
 A damning report was presented to the Republican house of
representatives
 The Lewinsky affair almost lead to impeachment
 Proceedings were in order for the first time in 130 years
 He was not formally impeached
o Clinton’s legacy
 Marred by his various scandals, it is still generally positive
 The economy was extremely strong throughout his presidency
 Managed to maintain a surplus, which is no small feat for the American
government
Clinton abroad
o North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the World Trade
Organization (WTO)
 NAFTA was supported by Clinton in 1993
 Created a free trade zone for all the countries in North America
 Some didn’t like it because it allowed Mexican workers to “take”
low pay jobs from Americans
 The WTO furthered this sentiment
 Successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)
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Looked towards GLOBAL free trade
Many disliked this, as they didn’t want to deal with the human
and environmental costs of globalization
o Africa
 Somalian Rebels killed more than a dozen Americans
 Rwandan Massacre resulted in over 500k deaths
 Racially motivated
 Washington made quick moves in Somalia, but largely stayed out of the
African theatre
o China was developing into an international powerhouse
 Clinton withdrew some early comments on Chinese human rights issues
 Passed a controversial trade bill in 2000 that made China and the US
trading partners
o Balkans
 Large racial conflicts erupted in Bosnia and Albania
 NATO troops were sent, though they were predominantly American
 Bombing campaign in Kosovo forced Milosevic, the Serbian president, the
accept NATO forces and eventually led to him being tried for his ethnic
cleansing policies
o Middle East
 There was a meeting in the White House between Israel Premier Yitzhak
Rabin and Yasir Arafat, the leader of the Palestinian Liberation
Organization
 Agreed originally to a principal of self-rule for the Palestinians within
Israel
2000 election
o Coming off the Clinton years, many expected prosperity to continue
 George W. Bush (R) campaigned on lowering taxes and giving the surplus
back to the people
 Al Gore (D) wanted to use the surplus to pay off the debt we’ve incurred
over the years
o VERY close election
 Gore WON the popular vote, but the electoral vote was rife in scandal
 The Florida vote count was the determinant factor, and it was so close
that some democrats wanted a recount
 Supreme court said no
 Bush won by a hair
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Gore winning the popular vote while losing the electoral vote by such a
large margin casted a shadow of illegitimacy over Bush’s presidency
The (new) Bush years
o Bush 2 was known for being very conservative
 Withdrew support for international health programs that sanctioned
abortion
 Financed faith based social welfare programs
 Limited stem cell research
 Challenged findings of groundwater contamination and global warming
 Repudiated the Kyoto Treaty which limited greenhouse gas
emissions
 The treaty was negotiated in the Clinton era but never ratified by
the senate
 Pushed for oil exploration in Alaska’s wildlife refuge
 Allowed Dick Cheney to collude with oil companies while forming the US
energy policy behind closed doors
o 9/11
 On September 11th, 2001, a large terrorist plot led to an attack on the
twin towers and the pentagon
 Over 3000 confirmed dead
 Bush reacted very quickly, citing Al Qaeda (led by Bin Laden) as the
perpetrators
 Fun Fact: The US actually helped Bin Laden back in his glory days
with the Taliban in Afghanistan during the Cold War
 Bin Laden disliked the US because they supported Israel, and he
was a bit jealous of their economic, military, and cultural
dominance
o 9/11 Aftermath
 The Patriot Act
 Permitted extensive surveillance of American citizens
 Blatantly violated the 14th amendment; no warrants were
necessary to tap millions of American’s phones and emails
 Allowed the deportation of LEGAL immigrants ACCUSED of
terrorism
o Led to the creation of the Department of Homeland
security roughly a year later, designed to protect the
nation’s borders
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o Hundreds of immigrants were held while their Habeas
Corpus rights were suspended
Military tribunals and Git-mo
 Suspected terrorists were tried in military tribunals where normal
court rules don’t apply
o Rules of evidence were circumstantial
o Not a public trial
o No real juries
 Those arrested for terrorism are sent to Guantanamo Bay
o Prison located in Cuba
o Legal limbo; many were not tried or convicted, but were
rather stuck in an eternal purgatory
As expected, many of these actions sparked controversy
 As in the past, extremist policies were rationalized through the
imminent threat, which in this era is terrorism
 the people were outraged that so many civil liberties were taken
away
 The people’s outrage did not translate into much direct action on
the part of the politicians
And that’s all! Good luck to everyone who made it this far.
Author’s note: I really spent a bunch of time on this. It’s nearly 150 pages, so it’s basically a small book. I can probably sell this if I remove the
dumb jokes, and I’m really only sharing this to everyone (inside and outside school) as a token of good will. This is on the honor system here,
but reselling my stuff isn’t the greatest thing to do. If you have any questions, just ask me through whatever channel I posted this on.
Thanks, and again, good luck on APUSH.
People who wrote this: Vignesh J. (And Mr. Bartlett where credited)
Chapters are based off the 15th edition of The American Pageant (AP ed.)