RECONSTRUCTION

American History + Culture (19th /20th century)RECONSTRUCTION

The victory of the North in the Civil War affirmed the U.S. as an indivisible nation

The defeat of the Confederacy/ South = destruction, devastation of most fertile agricultural area

July 1866: the Congress passes the Civil Rights Bill (to prevent racial discrimination by Southern legislatures) + the 14th Amendment to the Constitution

All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the States in which they reside ratified in 1868

1870: the 15th Amendment: The rights of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude

president Andrew Johnson opposed the solutions of the Radical Republicans attempt to remove him from office (dangerous precedent) = failure by a narrow margin, preservation of the separation and balance of powers

The Congress: developed the Program of Reconstruction/Reform of the Southern states

June 1868: The Military Reconstruction Act readmission to the Union of Arkansas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, Florida. + (1870): Mississippi, Texas, Virginia

By 1870, the Southern states were governed by groups of blacks, cooperative whites and transplanted Northerners ( = carpetbaggers, who had gone south after the war to make political fortunes + formed alliances with the newly freed African-Americans) improvement of education, development of social services, protection of civil rightsattempts to restrict the freedom of former slaves and block blacks from votingillegal ways of preventing them from gaining equality; resentment form the Southern whites

Ku Klux Klan (violent secret society to protect white interests and advantages, terrorize blacks, prevent their social advances)suppressed by the federal government by 1872 BUT white Democrats continued to use violence + fear to regain control of their state governments

The Compromise of 1877

disputed Election of 1876: the Electoral Commission awarded the election to Republican Rutherford B. Hayesthe Southern Democrats planned to blockthe Compromise: the Southern Democrats would accept Hayes as president if the Republicans granted them the demands such asremoval of federal troops from former Confederate statesappointment of at least one southern democrat to Hayes cabinetconstruction of the transcontinental railroad in the Southadoption of proper legislation to help industrialize the South

The end of ReconstructionThe autonomy of the Democratic Party in the SouthThe ascent of Redeemer governments (replace the Carpetbaggers)+ Democratic vote in the South until mid-20th century

despite constitutional guarantees, Southern blacks were still regarded as second-class citizens

new + humiliating kinds of discrimination: the Jim Crow laws = segregation in public schools, hospitalsforbade/limited access to many public facilities (parks, restaurants, hotels)+ denied the right to vote by imposing poll taxes and literacy tests

more rigid oppression towards the end of the century: the laws in Southern States enforced strict segregation in public transportation, theaters, sports, even elevators or cemeteries.

ERA OF GROWTH AND TRANSFORMATION

GO WEST!after the end of the Civil War (1865) Americans settled the western half of the U.S.miners (search for gold and silver) Rocky Mountainsfarmers (German, Scandinavian immigrants) Minnesota, Dakotashuge herds of cattle grazed in Texas + other western states: hired horsemen

the cowboy: most celebrated and romanticized figure in American culture (American hero)

frequent battles with the Indians + continual disappearance of Native Americans due to diseaseswhites forced them out of their lands + nearly destroyed the buffalo

INDUSTRIAL GROWTH

the U.S. becomes the worlds leading industrial power; great fortunes to shrewd businessmen1869: first transcontinental railroad, followed by huge expansionpetroleum industry: dominated by John D. Rockefeller (Standard Oil Company)empire of steel mills + iron mines: Andrew Carnegie (poor Scottish immigrant)textile mills (South), meatpacking plants (Chicago)

electrical industry, inventions (telephone, phonograph, light bulb, motion pictures, alternating-current motor + transformer

Louis Sullivan (Chicago) the first skyscraper

Freedom to develop enterprises vitality of American economyIssues: competition, monopoly of corporations and trusts over smaller competitors (produce + sell cheaply, set prices)Belief in the limitation of such power (protect rights of the individual)

the rise of organized labor (American Federation of Labor, 1881 = coalition of trade unions)fight for better wages, shorter work-hours; strikesmany immigrants (1865 1910: 25 million people!)

1882: bar the entrance of Chinese (unwilling to accept small wages for unskilled work), 1907 large exclusion of Japanese

prejudice religious liberty, political freedom, economic opportunitiessince 1607 (Jamestown): 2/3 of worlds immigrants have been accepted by the U.S.

EXPANSION

1867 the purchase of Alaska from Russia1898 Spain declared war on the U.S. (who supported the Cuban revolt against Spanish colonialism)The U.S. acquired Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam + (unrelatedly) the Hawaiian islands

Criticized by anti-imperialists (actions went against the national, anti-colonial profile)Supported by most Americans

1903: president Theodore Roosevelt proposed to build a canal in Central America (buy a strip of land from Colombia) revolt, Panama independent

1914: The Panama Canal

1902: the Amercan troops left Cuba; 1907:the Philippines limited self-government (1946: independence)1953: Puerto Rico =self-governing commonwealth within the U.S.1959: Hawaii = becomes the 50th State of the Union

THE PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT

before 1900, strategy of economic laissez-faire (little government intervention with business)

Roosevelt Administration: The Progressive Movement economists, sociologists, technicians, civil servants (social engineers), believed that scientific, cost-efficient solutions could be found to all political problemsMore radical ideologies: Socialist Party (advocated gradual transition to state-run economy)Industrial Workers of the World called for strike to overthrow the capitalist system (never had much appeal in the U.S.)

1912: Democrat president Woodrow Wilson New Freedom program (federal governments responsibility to protect smaller businesses against corporations)

THE FIRST WORLD WAR

1914: First World War erupted in Europe; Woodrow Wilson urged a foreign policy of strict neutrality (got reelected in 1916)

American sympathies + interests= with the Allies (Great Britain + France)

January 1917, Germany declares unrestricted submarine warfare against all ships bound for Allied ports, including neutral merchant vessels

April 6, 1917 the U.S. enters the war on the Allies side (not just to defeat Germany and end the submarine warfare, but to secure the rights and liberties of free people everywhere

Wilson: spoke of a crusade for world peace + national self-determination (The world must be made safe for democracy. America entered the war to end all wars)

provided significant troops and supplied for Allied victory

spring-summer 1918: the Americans play decisive part in repelling the long-awaited German offensive (the German armies were retreating by autumn)

January 1918, Woodrow Wilsons war aims = formulated as The Fourteen Points

Call for abandonment of secret international agreements (=open diplomacy)guarantee of freedom of the seasremoval of tariff barriers between nations (=free international trade)reductions in national armamentsjust settlement of colonial claimsself-rule and unhampered economic development for European nationalities+ (14th Point) formation of an association of nations to afford mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike

October: German government asked for peace armistice: November 11, 1918

1919: negotiations of the peace treaty at Versailles

despite Wilsons opposition, the Allies imposed crushing reparations on Germany + divided its colonies among themselves (the concept of self-determination= impossible to implement)

Wilson did succeed in establishing The League of Nations but his disillusionment led to national isolationism(The U.S. never ratified the Versailles Treaty or joined the League of Nations)

THE NEW ERA

1920s = the U.S. turns inward + withdraws from European affairslack of interest in international concerns domestic policies + achievementsgrowing suspicion + hostility towards foreigners1919: series of terrorist bombings (The Red Scare) series of deportations of radicals (anarchists, socialists, communists)

1921: Sacco-Vanzetti case (Nicola Sacco + Bartolomeo Vanzetti = 2 Italian anarchists, convicted of murder on the basis of dubious evidence. Intellectual protests against ideological condemnation BUT denial of trial+ execution by electrocution in 1927)

The Congress enactment of immigration limits (1921, 1924, 1929) favored the Anglo-Saxon + Nordic stock; small quotas for Eastern + Southern Europeans, NONE for AsiansIncreasingly urban country, transformation of everyday life by the consumer revolution

1920: Republicans support president Warren G. Harding (limited education; promised return to normalcy, seemed to embody old-fashioned American values)

1920s far from normalcyextraordinary, contradictory decade (bohemianism+ hedonism puritanical conservatism)

Prohibition (alcoholic beverages were outlawed in 1920 by a Constitutional Amendment)

speakeasies (illegal bars), bootleggers (supplied illegal liquor)

revival of the Ku Klux Klan (1915) terror to blacks, Catholics, Jews, immigrants (millions of followers!)

black literature: The Harlem Renaissance

JAZZ AGE (George Gershwin)

1927: Charles Lindbergh: first nonstop flight New York Paris (reaffirmation of individual heroism)

1925: The Monkey Trial (John T. Scopes was prosecuted for teaching Darwins theory of evolution in Tennessee public schools)

= embodiment of the great national cultural schism of the 1920s (modern ideas traditional values)

Hardings successor = president Calvin Coolidge = immensely popular(The chief business of the American people is business)the government should not interfere with private enterprise

1920s = age of economic prosperity consumer society (radios, home appliances, synthetic textiles, plastics)businessman = popular hero (creation of wealth = noble calling)Henry Ford = one of the most admired men of the decade (assembly line introduced into automobile production)

Flaws of the age-overproduction of crops depress food prices farmers suffer-lots of money available for investment, much into reckless speculation-stock market, frantic bidding (over-rating the value of stocks)-fortunes were made overnight BUT possibility of sudden loss

1929: worldwide depressionOctober 1929, rapid drop of the American stock market (thousands of investors lost large sums of money, if not everything)

The (Wall Street) Crash longest period of high unemployment + low business activitybanks, stores, factories closed millions of Americans homeless, joblessdecrease of world tradeby 1932: Americas worst economic crisis of modern times

most profound revolution in the history of American social thought and economic policy