Who can 5 page essay Chicago style ? The subject is American history.

RoarkJamesL._JohnsonMichaelP._FurstenbergFrancois_StageSarah_IgoSarahE.-TheAmericanPromiseVolume2-Bedford_St.Martins20191.pdf

Home >History homework help >American history homework help >Who can 5 page essay Chicago style ? The subject is American history.

Description The front cover of the book shows a photo of a man wearing gloves and helmet and working with ropes. Text above reads, Eighth Edition; The American Promise. The subtitle A History of the United States is below the title. Text below the photo reads, Volume 2: From 1865, and to the left of the portrait has the authors’ names, Roark Johnson Furstenberg Stage Igo. Text at the top of the front cover reads, Value Edition.

Description The inside front cover of the book has text that reads as follows under the heading Avoiding Plagiarism and Managing Sources.

Most students are aware that plagiarism can be committed on purpose, but unintentional or accidental plagiarism is also problematic. Keeping track of source material has always been tough, and technology has made it easy to cut text from an online source and copy it into your paper. You may have intended to modify or acknowledge it later but then forgot where it came from. Omitting a citation of a source by accident is still a breach of academic ethics. Here are four steps that you can use to help avoid plagiarism.

Step 1: Manage Sources Efficiently

Many academic professionals and students take notes and keep track of sources using index cards. Write one piece of evidence—a quote, a fact, an idea—on each card along with the original source of that data. This can also be done electronically, by creating a single file for each source that you consult and housing all of these files in a folder called ‘Sources.’

Step 2: Use Sources Properly

Using sources properly as you take notes and incorporate them into your writing is another crucial component of the research and writing process. You will not be able to cite your sources properly if you don’t know which note is a quote, which note is a partial paraphrase of another author’s point, and which one is paraphrased fully.

Step 3: Acknowledge Sources Appropriately

There are some general rules about what types of information require citation or acknowledgment and what types do not. Widely accepted facts or common knowledge do not need to be cited, but another person’s words or ideas (even if not quoted verbatim) require a citation.

Step 4: Cite Sources Completely and Consistently

Historians and others writing about history have adopted the citation guidelines from the Chicago Manual of Style (C M S). The citations are indicated by superscript numbers within the text that refer to a note with a corresponding number either at the bottom of the

page (footnote) or at the end of the paper (endnote). Here are just a couple brief examples of C M S-style notes:

Book: David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 73.

Journal Article: Alden T. Vaughan and Virginia Mason Vaughan, ‘Before Othello: Elizabethan Representations of Sub-Saharan Africans,’ William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 54 (January 1997): 19 hyphen 44.

Text at the bottom of the inside front cover reads, Instructors: For more information on the Bedford Tutorials for History, contact your Bedford representative, or visit macmillanlearning.com/historytutorials.

Text near the top margin of the inside front cover reads, (Continued from the inside front cover).

About the Cover Image

Female Iron Worker With baby boomers retiring in droves and construction companies facing labor shortages, women are entering the construction trades in growing numbers. Here a female ironworker on a job site in Massachusetts goes about her job. Although 97 percent of the

workforce in the construction trades is still male, women are working to break down the perception of what has been considered a “man’s job.”

VALUE EDITION

The American Promise A History of the United States

VALUE EDITION

The American Promise A History of the United States

Eighth Edition

VOLUME 2 FROM 1865

James L. Roark Emory University

Michael P. Johnson Johns Hopkins University

François Furstenberg Johns Hopkins University

Patricia Cline Cohen University of California, Santa Barbara

Sarah Stage Arizona State University

Susan M. Hartmann The Ohio State University

Sarah E. Igo Vanderbilt University

FOR BEDFORD/ST. MARTIN’S Vice President, Editorial, Macmillan Learning Humanities: Leasa Burton Senior Program Director for History: Michael Rosenberg Senior Program Manager for History: William J. Lombardo History Marketing Manager: Melissa Rodriguez Director of Content Development, Humanities: Jane Knetzger Senior Developmental Editor: Leah R. Strauss Senior Content Project Manager: Kendra LeFleur Assistant Content Project Manager: Natalie Jones Senior Workflow Project Supervisor: Susan Wein Production Supervisor: Lawrence Guerra Executive Media Project Manager: Michelle Camisa Media Editor: Mary P. Starowicz Editorial Assistant: Julia Bell Editorial Services: Lumina Datamatics, Inc. Composition: Lumina Datamatics, Inc. Cartographer: Mapping Specialists, Ltd. Text Permissions Manager: Kalina Ingham Senior Photo Permissions Editor: Cecilia Varas Photo Researcher: Naomi Kornhauser Director of Design, Content Management: Diana Blume Text Design: SPi Global Cover Design: William Boardman Cover Image: Steve Dunwell/Getty Images

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except as may be permitted by law or expressly permitted in writing by the Publisher.

For information, write: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 75 Arlington Street, Boston, MA 02116

ISBN 978-1-319-25898-6 (mobi)

Acknowledgments Acknowledgments and copyrights appear on the same page as the text and art selections they cover; these acknowledgments and copyrights constitute an extension of the copyright page.

Preface: Why This Book This Way? We are delighted to present the Value Edition of The American Promise, Eighth Edition. The Value Edition provides our signature approach to history in a smaller, more affordable trim size. Featuring the unabridged narrative, full map program and select images from the parent text, the Value Edition tells the story of the American Promise in an accessible, student-friendly manner. From the outset we have sought to meet this challenge by providing a story students enjoy for its readability, clear chronology, and lively voices of ordinary Americans. The American Promise delivers a narrative with political backbone, documents for analysis and discussion, and overall support for teaching.

New Authors for the Eighth Edition With the eighth edition, we are delighted to welcome two new coauthors to the book. François Furstenberg is Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University, and Sarah Igo is the Andrew Jackson Professor of American History and Director of American Studies at Vanderbilt University. Both are universally recognized as outstanding scholars, and equally important, they are excellent teachers, able to engage and stimulate their students. Their deep knowledge of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century America (François) and of recent America (Sarah) and their outstanding skills in the classroom mean that they are ideal additions to our author team.

What Makes The American Promise Special The American Promise grew out of many conversations among ourselves and with others about the teaching and learning of history. We know that instructors want a U.S. history text that introduces students to overarching trends and developments and, at the same time, gives voice to the diverse people who have made American history. We know that students of history often come away overwhelmed and confused about what information is most important to know. Because many students have difficulty understanding the most important concepts when they read a traditional U.S. survey text, we seek to provide a text that does not overwhelm them with detail, offers clear signposts about the key questions to focus on, and introduces them to historical thinking skills.

The approach of our narrative is reflected in our title, The American Promise. We emphasize human agency and demonstrate our conviction that the essence of America has been its promise. For millions, the nation has held out the promise of a better life, unfettered worship, equality before the law, representative government, democratic politics, and other freedoms seldom found elsewhere. But none of these promises has come with guarantees. Throughout our history, the promise has been marred by disappointments, compromises, and denials, but it lives on. Throughout the narrative, we demonstrate how much of American history is a continuing struggle over the definition and realization of the nation’s promise.

We offer a clear chronology and a framework that braids political and social history, as we have found that students need both the structure a

political narrative provides and the insights gained from examining social and cultural experience. To write a comprehensive, balanced account of American history, we focus on the public arena — the place where politics intersects social and cultural developments — to show how Americans confronted the major issues of their day and created far-reaching historical change.

An Inquiry-Based Model With the eighth edition, we present the narrative within a unique pedagogical design orchestrated to aid students’ understanding of the most important developments while also fostering students’ ability to think historically. The pedagogical format will be familiar to instructors who have previously assigned the version of the book called Understanding the American Promise. We continue to employ innovative pedagogy to help students understand the book’s major arguments and also begin to grasp the question-driven methodology that is at the heart of the historian’s craft.

New Pedagogical Design Our pedagogical design reinforces the truth that history is a discipline rooted in debate and inquiry. Each chapter begins with Learning Objectives that drive students toward the overarching themes of the chapter, followed by An American Story, a story that emphasizes human agency and invites students to evaluate to what extent individuals make history.

Helping Students Understand the Narrative Too often textbook authors write with other historians in mind. In this eighth edition, we tried particularly hard to keep our focus on students. To make American history more easily understood, we have reexamined our language to make sure our telling of the story is clear, direct, and accessible. Where possible, we have streamlined the story to keep from overwhelming students with details and to help them understand what is important.

Section-opening headings expressed as questions and section-ending review questions model the kinds of questions historians ask and help students engage in inquiry-based reading and understanding. Key terms highlighted in the text further remind students of what’s most important to know.

To engage students in this American story and to portray fully the diversity of the American experience, we stitch into our narrative the voices of hundreds of contemporaries. The book is rich with many viewpoints from people from all walks of life, highlighting voices of both ordinary Americans and notable figures.

The Chapter Review section helps students build a deeper understanding of the chapter material. In Explain Why It Matters, students identify the chapter’s key terms, which are also collected in the Glossary at the end of the book, and explain why each term matters. In Put It All Together, students answer analytical and synthetic questions. In Looking Backward, Looking Ahead, students consider the connection between events or circumstances to think about the relation between major events and developments over time. The Chronology presents important dates from the chapter and helps students keep events in context. In addition, there are more than 160 maps and more than 90 images in The American Promise, Value Edition.

New to This Edition The eighth edition has been significantly updated to reflect current scholarship. Two sections of the book in particular have been substantially revised. The coverage of early American history from the Seven Years’ War through the early Republic has been updated by François Furstenberg (chapters 6–11), and the last chapters in the book have been revised and restructured by Sarah Igo to provide a better chronological balance in coverage of the post-1960s period (chapters 26–31).

Updated and Expanded Coverage of Early American History A major area of revision focused on inserting Native American history more fully into the narrative of early American history. Chapters 6–11 now focus much more on Native Americans’ struggles in the west to maintain their autonomy and territorial sovereignty, struggles which had a decisive effect on many of the great events of early American history, from the Seven Years’ War to the American Revolution, the drafting of the Constitution, and beyond. We hope students will have a better understanding of the complex interplay of forces at work in early American history, forces in which Europeans were not the only main actors. This emphasis extends to the maps (such as Map 6.1, European Areas of Influence and the Seven Years’ War, 1756–1763), where we have made changes to better locate and emphasize Native American peoples.

The second major area of revision focused on incorporating transnational forces more fully into the narrative. Thus, the discussions of the Seven Years’ War, the Revolution, and the political conflicts of the 1790s and

beyond all emphasize the importance of European imperial objectives and of wars in Europe and the Caribbean. It’s important to remember, for example, that battles in North America were only part of the war we know as the “American Revolution.” Fighting also took place in the Caribbean, in Europe, and even in India.

Updated and Revised Organization of U.S. History since 1945 The last six chapters of the book (chapters 26–31) have been thoroughly updated to include new scholarship on global political developments, social movements, technological innovations, and environmental challenges. These chapters have also been restructured to provide a better chronological balance in coverage of the post-1960s period. Chapters 26 and 27 employ longer timeframes, allowing students to grasp (in chapter 26) how Cold War foreign policy and ongoing militarization shaped geopolitics, the federal state, and domestic affairs from 1945 all the way to 1960. Chapter 27 considers domestic policy and culture during the same years, highlighting postwar continuities and departures from the New Deal era. Chapter 28 emphasizes the complex roots and tactics of the “rights revolution,” emphasizing the dynamic between grassroots protest and national policy- making. Chapter 29 revolves less around the Vietnam War itself than the interrelated geopolitical and social challenges of the later 1960s and 1970s, including military defeat, racial tensions, the oil crisis, and stagflation. Chapter 30 begins with Reagan’s election and closes at the turn of the twenty-first century, allowing the events of the 1980s and 1990s — for example, the end of the Cold War, the outbreak of new global conflicts, and the “culture wars” — to be considered in the same frame. Chapter 31 now

opens with the 9/11 attacks and offers a full analysis of the Obama years as well as Trump’s election and the first two years of his administration. It includes new material on immigration debates, natural disasters, surveillance technologies, and the twenty-first-century economy.

Enriched Coverage of Science and Technology In response to reviewers who noted students’ interest in technology, we have included more coverage of issues related to science and technology. From railroads and airplanes to telephones and the evolution of the Internet, technological change has been one of the drivers of American history and, of course, remains so today. The theme extends to coverage of related environmental issues. Some highlights of this coverage include a new section on the latest DNA evidence of the first human migrants to the New World (chapter 1); a new map activity that asks students to connect environmental/geographical considerations to politics (chapter 6); a consideration of the centrality of steam power and railroads in early industrialization (chapter 12); a discussion of Custer that employs recent developments in disaster archaeology, as well as a reconsideration of the role of hydraulic mining in western development (chapter 17); a feature on the technology of electricity with up-to-date inclusion on Tesla’s role (chapter 18); new material on conservation and Hetch Hetchy Valley (chapter 21); new coverage of radar technology (chapter 25); and a discussion of the personal computer revolution and the federal government’s subsidizing of the high-tech sector in the 1980s, as well as a fuller description of the information economy and tech boom in the 1990s (chapter 30).

Helping Instructors Teach with Digital Resources for the Classroom The eighth edition of The American Promise offers flexibility in formats, including easy-to-use digital resources that can make an immediate impact in classrooms. Available for the first time with this edition, Achieve Read & Practice puts the most affordable and easy-to-use e-book with built-in assessment into the hands of students wherever they go. Achieve Read & Practice’s interactive e-book, adaptive quizzing, and gradebook is built with an intuitive interface that can be read on mobile devices and is fully accessible and available at a discounted price so anyone can use it. It comes preloaded with LearningCurve adaptive quizzing, which, when assigned, ensures students come to class prepared. Instructors can set due dates for reading assignments and LearningCurve quizzes in just a few clicks, making it an effective option for a simple and affordable way to engage students with the narrative.

For instructors who want an e-book with a full suite of primary sources and autograded assessments, The American Promise is offered in Macmillan’s premier learning platform, LaunchPad, an intuitive, interactive e-book and course space. Ready to assign as is with key assessment resources built into each chapter, instructors can also edit and customize LaunchPad as their imaginations and innovations dictate. Free when packaged with the print text, LaunchPad grants students and teachers access to a wealth of online tools and resources built specifically for our text to enhance reading comprehension and promote in-depth study.

Developed with extensive feedback from history instructors and students, LaunchPad for The American Promise includes: the complete narrative of the print book, including the primary source feature Analyzing Historical Evidence; the companion reader Reading the American Promise; and accompanying auto-graded quizzes, video sources, map activities, flash cards, and LearningCurve, an adaptive learning tool that is designed to get students to read before they come to class. With source-based questions in the test bank and in the LearningCurve and the ability to sort test bank questions by chapter learning objectives, instructors now have more ways to test students on their understanding of sources and narrative in the book.

To learn more about digital product offerings, see the “Versions and Supplements” section.

Acknowledgments We gratefully acknowledge all of the helpful suggestions from those who have read and taught from previous editions of The American Promise and cared enough to take the time to advise us. We hope that our many classroom collaborators will be pleased to see their influence in the eighth edition. In particular, we wish to thank the talented scholars and teachers who gave generously of their time and knowledge to review the previous edition in preparation for its revision: Ann Ackerman, Nashua Counity College; Ian Aebel, Harris-Stowe State University; Joseph Bagley, Georgia State University; Timothy Buckner, Troy University; Kara Carroll, Central New Mexico Community College; Leilah Davidson, Northern Arizona University; Wayne Drews, Kennesaw State University; Donna Dunakey, Florida Southwestern State College – Thomas Edison; Robert Genter, Nassau Community College; Jessica Gerard, Ozarks Technical Community College; Diane Gill, North Lake College; Patricia Herb, North Central State College; Peter Hoffer, University of Georgia; Andrew Hollinger, Tarrant County College NE; Robin Krawitz, Delaware State University; Alan Lehmann, Blinn College – Brenham; Alexander Marriott, Alvin College; Michael McCormick, Houston Community College; Stacy Reikowsky, North Dakota State University; Gary Ritter, Central Piedmont Community College; Carey Roberts, Liberty University; Scott Seagle, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga; Edward Simmons, Georgia Gwinnett College; John Smith, Texas A&M – Commerce; David Toye, Northeast State Community College NE; James Tuten, Juniata College; Leah Vallely, Calhoun Community College; Stephanie Vincent, Kent State University – Maine.

A project as complex as this requires the talents of many individuals. First, we would like to acknowledge our families for their support, forbearance, and toleration of our textbook responsibilities. We would also like to thank the many people at Bedford/St. Martin’s and Macmillan Learning who have been crucial to this project. Thanks are due to Leah R. Strauss, senior developmental editor, who shepherded the project from start to finish, always with good humor; William J. Lombardo, senior program manager for history; Michael Rosenberg, senior program director for history; and Leasa Burton, vice president, for their support and guidance. Thanks are also due to Mary Starowicz, media editor; Mollie Chandler, associate editor; and Julia Bell, editorial assistant. We thank history marketing manager Melissa Rodriguez and marketing assistant Morgan Ratner. We thank assistant content project manager Natalie Jones, who pulled together the many pieces related to proofreading, design, and composition. Thanks are also due to senior content project manager Kendra LeFleur; Naomi Kornhauser for her diligent visual source research; workflow manager Susan Wein; designer Jerilyn Bockorick; copy editor Jeannine Thibodeau; proofreaders Arthur Johnson and Kim Kosmatka; indexer Sonya Dintaman; cover designer William Boardman; and executive media project manager Michelle Camisa, who oversaw the production of digital components of The American Promise.

Versions and Supplements Adopters of The American Promise and their students have access to abundant print and digital resources and tools, the acclaimed Bedford Series in History and Culture volumes, and much more. The LaunchPad course space for The American Promise provides access to the narrative and a wealth of primary sources and other features, along with assignment and assessment opportunities. Achieve Read & Practice supplies adaptive quizzing and our mobile, accessible Value Edition e-book in one easy-to- use, affordable product. See below for more information, visit the book’s catalog site at macmillanlearning.com, or contact your local Bedford/St. Martin’s sales representative.

http://macmillanlearning.com/

Get the Right Version for Your Class To accommodate different course lengths and course budgets, The American Promise is available in several different versions and formats to best suit your course needs. The comprehensive The American Promise includes a full-color art program, a robust set of features, and a chapter study guide. The American Promise, Concise Edition, also provides the unabridged narrative in full color, with a streamlined art and feature program, at a lower price. The American Promise, Value Edition, offers a trade-sized two-color option with the unabridged narrative and selected art and maps at a steep discount. The Value Edition is also offered at the lowest price point in loose-leaf format, and all of these versions are available as e- books. For the best value of all, package a new print book with Achieve Read & Practice or LaunchPad at no additional charge to get the best each format offers. Achieve Read & Practice users get a print version for easy portability with a mobile, interactive Value Edition e-book plus LearningCurve adaptive quizzing in one exceptionally affordable, easy-to- use product; LaunchPad users get a print version plus an interactive e-book of the full-feature text, including a multitude of primary sources and the companion reader, along with LearningCurve and loads of additional assignment and assessment options all in one course space.

Combined Volume (Chapters 1–31): available in a comprehensive edition, Concise Edition, Value Edition, loose-leaf, and e-book formats and in LaunchPad and Achieve Read & Practice Volume 1, To 1877 (Chapters 1–16): available in a comprehensive edition, Concise Edition, Value Edition, loose-leaf, and e-book formats and in LaunchPad and Achieve Read & Practice

Volume 2, From 1865 (Chapters 16–31): available in a comprehensive edition, Concise Edition, Value Edition, loose-leaf, and e-book formats and in LaunchPad and Achieve Read & Practice

As noted below, any of these volumes can be packaged with additional titles for a discount. To get ISBNs for discount packages, visit macmillanlearning.com, or contact your Bedford/St. Martin’s representative.

http://macmillanlearning.com/

Assign Achieve Read & Practice So Your Students Can Read and Study Wherever They Go Available for discount purchase on its own or for packaging with new books at no additional charge, Achieve Read & Practice is Bedford/St. Martin’s most affordable digital solution for history courses. Intuitive and easy to use for students and instructors alike, Achieve Read & Practice is ready to use as is and can be assigned quickly. Achieve Read & Practice for The American Promise includes the Value Edition interactive e-book, LearningCurve adaptive quizzing, assignment tools, and a gradebook. Through the adaptive learning program of LearningCurve (see the full description ahead), students gain confidence and get into their reading before class. All this is built with an intuitive interface that can be read on mobile devices and is fully accessible, easily integrates with course management systems, and is available at a discounted price so anyone can use it. Instructors can set due dates for reading assignments and LearningCurve quizzes in just a few clicks, making it a simple and affordable way to engage students with the narrative and hold students accountable for course reading so they will come to class better prepared. For more information, visit macmillanlearning.com/ReadandPractice, or to arrange a demo, contact us at [email protected].

http://macmillanlearning.com/ReadandPractice

Assign LearningCurve So Your Students Come to Class Prepared Students using LaunchPad or Achieve Read & Practice receive access to LearningCurve for The American Promise. Assigning LearningCurve in place of reading quizzes is easy for instructors, and the reporting features help instructors track overall class trends and spot topics that are giving students trouble so instructors can adjust their lectures and class activities. This online learning tool is popular with students because it was designed to help them comprehend content at their own pace in a nonthreatening, game- like environment. The feedback for wrong answers provides instructional coaching and sends students back to the book for review. Students answer as many questions as necessary to reach a target score, with repeated chances to revisit material they haven’t mastered. When LearningCurve is assigned, students come to class better prepared.

Assign LaunchPad—an Assessment-Ready Interactive e-Book with Sources and Course Space Available for discount purchase on its own or for packaging with new books at no additional charge, LaunchPad is a breakthrough solution for history courses. Intuitive and easy-to-use for students and instructors alike, LaunchPad is ready to use as is; it can be edited, customized with your own material, and assigned quickly. LaunchPad for The American Promise includes Bedford/St. Martin’s high-quality content all in one place, including the full interactive e-book and the companion reader Reading the American Past, plus LearningCurve adaptive quizzing, guided reading activities designed to help students read actively for key concepts, auto- graded quizzes for each primary source, and chapter summative quizzes. Through a wealth of formative and summative assessments, including the adaptive learning program of LearningCurve (see the full description ahead), students gain confidence and get into their reading before class. These features, plus additional primary source documents, video sources and tools for making video assignments, map activities, flashcards, and customizable test banks, make LaunchPad an invaluable asset for any instructor.

LaunchPad easily integrates with course management systems, and with fast ways to build assignments, rearrange chapters, and add new pages, sections, or links, it lets teachers build the courses they want to teach and hold students accountable. For more information, visit

launchpadworks.com, or to arrange a demo, contact us at [email protected].

http://launchpadworks.com/

Tailor Your Text to Match Your Course with Bedford Select for History Create the ideal textbook for your course with only the chapters you need. Starting from the Value Edition history text, you can rearrange chapters, delete unnecessary chapters, select chapters of primary sources from the companion reader, add primary source document projects from the Bedford Document Collections, or choose to improve your students’ historical thinking skills with the Bedford Tutorials for History. In addition, you can add your own original content to create just the book you’re looking for. With Bedford Select, students pay only for material that will be assigned in the course, and nothing more. Order your textbook every semester, or modify from one term to the next. It is easy to build your customized textbook without compromising the quality and affordability you’ve come to expect from Bedford/St. Martin’s. For more information, talk to your Bedford/St. Martin’s representative or visit macmillanlearning.com/bedfordselect.

http://macmillanlearning.com/bedfordselect

iClicker, Active Learning Simplified iClicker offers simple, flexible tools to help you give students a voice and facilitate active learning in the classroom. Students can participate with the devices they already bring to class using our iClicker Reef mobile apps (which work with smartphones, tablets, or laptops) or iClicker remotes. We’ve now integrated iClicker with Macmillan’s LaunchPad to make it easier than ever to synchronize grades and promote engagement — both in and out of class. iClicker Reef access cards can also be packaged with LaunchPad or your textbook at a significant savings for your students. To learn more, talk to your Macmillan Learning (Bedford/St. Martin’s) representative or visit www.iclicker.com.

http://www.iclicker.com/

Take Advantage of Instructor Resources Bedford/St. Martin’s has developed a rich array of teaching resources for this book and for this course. They range from lecture and presentation materials and assessment tools to course management options. Most can be found in LaunchPad or can be downloaded or ordered from the Instructor Resources tab of the book’s catalog site at macmillanlearning.com.

Bedford Coursepack for Blackboard, Canvas, Brightspace by D2L, or Moodle We can help you integrate our rich content into your course management system. Registered instructors can download coursepacks that include our popular free resources and book-specific content for The American Promise. To find your version or download your coursepack, visit macmillanlearning.com.

Instructor’s Resource Manual The instructor’s manual offers both experienced and first-time instructors tools for presenting textbook material in engaging ways. It includes content learning objectives, annotated chapter outlines, and strategies for teaching with the textbook, plus suggestions on how to get the most out of LearningCurve and a survival guide for first-time teaching assistants.

Guide to Changing Editions Designed to facilitate an instructor’s transition from the previous edition or version of The American Promise to this new edition, this guide presents an overview of major changes and of changes within each chapter.

http://macmillanlearning.com/

Online Test Bank The test bank includes a mix of fresh, carefully crafted multiple-choice, matching, short-answer, and essay questions for each chapter. Many of the multiple-choice questions feature a map, an image, or a primary source excerpt as the prompt. All questions appear in Microsoft Word format and in easy-to-use test bank software that allows instructors to add, edit, re- sequence, filter (by question type or learning objective), and print questions and answers. Instructors can also export questions into a variety of course management systems.

The Bedford Lecture Kit: Lecture Outlines, Maps, and Images Look good and save time with The Bedford Lecture Kit. These presentation materials include fully customizable multimedia presentations built around chapter outlines that are embedded with maps, figures, and images from the textbook, and they are supplemented by more detailed instructor notes on key points and concepts. These materials are downloadable from the Instructor Resources tab at macmillanlearning.com.

http://macmillanlearning.com/

Print, Digital, and Custom Options for More Choice and Value For information on free packages and discounts up to 50 percent, contact your local Bedford/St. Martin’s representative or visit macmillanlearning.com.

Reading the American Past, Eighth Edition Edited by Michael P. Johnson, one of the authors of The American Promise, and designed to complement the textbook, Reading the American Past provides a broad selection of more than 150 primary source documents, as well as editorial apparatus to help students understand the sources. Available free when packaged with the print text and included in the LaunchPad e-book with auto-graded quizzes for each source. Also available on its own as a downloadable e-book.

Bedford Select for History Create the ideal textbook for your course with only the chapters you need. Starting from a Value Edition history text, you can rearrange chapters, delete unnecessary chapters, select chapters of primary sources from the companion reader and add primary source document projects from the Bedford Document Collections, or choose to improve your students’ historical thinking skills with the Bedford Tutorials for History. In addition, you can add your own original content to create just the book you’re looking for. With Bedford Select, students pay only for material that will be assigned in the course, and nothing more. Order your textbook every semester, or modify from one term to the next. It is easy to build your

http://macmillanlearning.com/

customized textbook without compromising the quality and affordability you’ve come to expect from Bedford/St. Martin’s.

Bedford Tutorials for History Designed to customize textbooks with resources relevant to individual courses, this collection of brief units, each sixteen pages long and loaded with examples, guides students through basic skills such as using historical evidence effectively, working with primary sources, taking effective notes, avoiding plagiarism and citing sources, and more. Up to two tutorials can be added to a Bedford/St. Martin’s history survey title at no additional charge, freeing you to spend your class time focusing on content and interpretation. For more information, visit macmillanlearning.com/historytutorials.

Bedford Document Collections for U.S. History These affordable, brief document projects provide five to seven primary sources, an introduction, historical background and other pedagogical features. Each curated project — designed for use in a single class period and written by a historian about a favorite topic — poses a historical question and guides students through analysis of the sources. Examples include Witch Accusations in Seventeenth-Century New England; The Legend of John Henry: Folklore and the Lives of African Americans in the Postwar South; and The Texas Rangers: Vanguard of Anglo Settlement in the Lone Star State. For more information, visit macmillanlearning.com/bdc/ushistory/catalog. You can also select up to two document projects from the collection to add in print for free to

http://macmillanlearning.com/historytutorials

http://macmillanlearning.com/bdc/ushistory/catalog

customize your Bedford/St. Martin’s textbook. Additional document projects can be added for a reasonable cost. For more information, visit macmillanlearning.com/custombdc/ushistory or contact your Bedford/St. Martin’s representative.

The Bedford Series in History and Culture The more than one hundred titles in this highly praised series combine first- rate scholarship, historical narrative, and important primary documents for undergraduate courses. Each book is brief, inexpensive, and focused on a specific topic or period. Recently published titles include The Chinese Exclusion Act and Angel Island: A Brief History with Documents, by Judy Yung; American Working Women in World War II: A Brief History with Documents, by Lynn Dumenil; Brown v. Board of Education: A Brief History with Documents, Second Edition, by Waldo E. Martin Jr.; and Defending Slavery: Proslavery Thought in the Old South, Second Edition, by Paul Finkelman. For a complete list of titles, visit macmillanlearning.com. Package discounts are available.

Rand McNally Atlas of American History This collection of more than eighty full-color maps illustrates key events and eras from early exploration, settlement, expansion, and immigration to U.S. involvement in wars abroad and on U.S. soil. Introductory pages for each section include a brief overview, timelines, graphs, and photos to quickly establish a historical context. Free when packaged.

The Bedford Glossary for U.S. History

http://macmillanlearning.com/custombdc/ushistory

http://macmillanlearning.com/

This handy supplement for the survey course gives students historically contextualized definitions for hundreds of terms — from abolitionism to zoot suit — that they will encounter in lectures, reading, and exams. Free when packaged.

Trade Books Titles published by sister companies Hill and Wang; Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Henry Holt and Company; St. Martin’s Press; Picador; and Palgrave Macmillan are available at a 50 percent discount when packaged with Bedford/St. Martin’s textbooks. For more information, visit macmillanlearning.com/tradeup.

A Pocket Guide to Writing in History Updated to reflect changes made in the 2017 Chicago Manual of Style revision, this portable and affordable reference tool by Mary Lynn Rampolla provides reading, writing, and research advice useful to students in all history courses. Concise yet comprehensive advice on approaching typical history assignments, developing critical reading skills, writing effective history papers, conducting research, using and documenting sources, and avoiding plagiarism — enhanced with practical tips and examples throughout — have made this slim reference a best seller. Package discounts are available.

A Student’s Guide to History This complete guide to success in any history course provides the practical help students need to be successful. In addition to introducing students to

http://macmillanlearning.com/tradeup

the nature of the discipline, author Jules Benjamin teaches a wide range of skills, from preparing for exams to approaching common writing assignments, and explains the research and documentation process with plentiful examples. Package discounts are available.

Going to the Source: The Bedford Reader in American History Developed by Victoria Bissell Brown and Timothy J. Shannon, this reader combines a rich diversity of primary and secondary sources with in-depth instructions for how to use each type of source. Mirroring the chronology of the U.S. history survey, each of the main chapters familiarizes students with a single type of source — from personal letters to political cartoons — while focusing on an intriguing historical episode such as the Cherokee Removal or the 1894 Pullman strike. The reader’s wide variety of chapter topics and sources provokes students’ interest as it teaches them the skills they need to successfully interrogate historical sources. Package discounts are available.

America Firsthand With its distinctive focus on first-person accounts from ordinary people, this primary documents reader by Anthony Marcus, John M. Giggie, and David Burner offers a remarkable range of perspectives on America’s history from those who lived it. Popular Points of View sections expose students to different perspectives on a specific event or topic. Package discounts are available.

Brief Contents

Preface

Versions and Supplements

Contents

Maps and Figures

16 Reconstruction, 1863–1877

17 The Contested West, 1865–1900

18 The Gilded Age, 1865–1900

19 The City and Its Workers, 1870–1900

20 Dissent, Depression, and War, 1890–1900

21 Progressive Reform, 1890–1916

22 World War I: The Progressive Crusade, 1914–1920

23 From New Era to Great Depression, 1920–1932

24 The New Deal Experiment, 1932–1939

25 The United States and the Second World War, 1939–1945

26 The New World of the Cold War, 1945–1960

27 Postwar Culture and Politics, 1945–1960

28 Rights, Rebellion, and Reaction, 1960–1974

29 Confronting Limits, 1961–1979

30 Divisions at Home and Abroad in a Conservative Era, 1980– 2000

31 America in a New Century, since 2000

Appendix

Glossary

Index

About the Authors

Contents

P��

V�� S��

B�� C��

M�� F��

CHAPTER 16

Reconstruction 1863–1877

An American Story

Why did Congress object to Lincoln’s wartime plan for reconstruction?

“To Bind Up the Nation’s Wounds”

Land and Labor

The African American Quest for Autonomy

How did the North respond to the passage of black codes in the southern states?

Johnson’s Program of Reconciliation

White Southern Resistance and Black Codes

Expansion of Federal Authority and Black Rights

How radical was congressional reconstruction?

The Fourteenth Amendment and Escalating Violence

Radical Reconstruction and Military Rule

Impeaching a President

The Fifteenth Amendment and Women’s Demands

What brought the elements of the South’s Republican coalition together?

Freedmen, Yankees, and Yeomen

Republican Rule

White Landlords, Black Sharecroppers

Why did Reconstruction collapse?

Grant’s Troubled Presidency

Northern Resolve Withers

White Supremacy Triumphs

An Election and a Compromise

Conclusion: Was Reconstruction “a revolution but half accomplished”?

��

CHAPTER 17

The Contested West 1865–1900

An American Story

What did U.S. expansion mean for Native Americans?

Indian Removal and the Reservation System

The Decimation of the Great Bison Herds

The Santee Uprising and the Collapse of Comanchería

Red Cloud’s War and the Fight for the Black Hills

In what ways did different Indian groups defy and resist colonial rule?

Indian Schools and the War on Indian Culture

The Dawes Act and Indian Land Allotment

Indian Resistance and Survival

How did mining shape American expansion?

Life on the Comstock Lode

The Diverse Peoples of the West

How did the fight for land and resources in the West unfold?

Moving West: Homesteaders and Speculators

Tenants, Sharecroppers, and Migrants

Commercial Farming and Industrial Cowboys

Territorial Government and the Political Economy of the West

Conclusion: How did the West set the tone for the Gilded Age?

��

CHAPTER 18

The Gilded Age 1865–1900

An American Story

How did the railroads stimulate big business?

Railroads: America’s First Big Business

Andrew Carnegie, Steel, and Vertical Integration

John D. Rockefeller, Standard Oil, and the Trust

New Inventions: The Telephone and Electricity

Why did the ideas of social Darwinism appeal to wealthy Americans?

J. P. Morgan and Finance Capitalism

Social Darwinism, Laissez-Faire, and the Supreme Court

What factors influenced political life in the late nineteenth century?

Political Participation and Party Loyalty

Sectionalism and the New South

Gender, Race, and Politics

Women’s Activism

What issues shaped party politics in the late nineteenth century?

Corruption and Party Strife

Garfield’s Assassination and Civil Service Reform

Reform and Scandal: The Campaign of 1884

Henry George and the Politics of Inequality

What role did economic issues play in party realignment?

The Tariff and the Politics of Protection

Railroads, Trusts, and the Federal Government

The Fight for Free Silver

Panic and Depression

Conclusion: How did business dominate the Gilded Age?

��

CHAPTER 19

The City and Its Workers 1870–1900

An American Story

Why did American cities experience explosive growth in the late nineteenth century?

The Urban Explosion: A Global Migration

Racism and the Cry for Immigration Restriction

The Social Geography of the City

What kinds of work did people do in industrial America?

America’s Diverse Workers

The Family Economy: Women and Children

White-Collar Workers: Managers, “Typewriters,” and Salesclerks

Why did the fortunes of the Knights of Labor rise in the late 1870s and decline in the 1890s?

The Great Railroad Strike of 1877

The Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor

Haymarket and the Specter of Labor Radicalism

How did urban industrialism shape home life and the world of leisure?

Domesticity and “Domestics”

Cheap Amusements

How did municipal governments respond to the challenges of urban expansion?

Building Cities of Stone and Steel

City Government and the “Bosses”

New York and the Consolidation of the Capitalist Class

White City or City of Sin?

Conclusion: Who built the cities?

��

CHAPTER 20

Dissent, Depression, and War 1890–1900

An American Story

Why did American farmers organize alliances in the late nineteenth century?

The Farmers’ Alliance

The Populist Movement

What led to the labor wars of the 1890s?

The Homestead Lockout

The Cripple Creek Miners’ Strike of 1894

Eugene V. Debs and the Pullman Strike

How were women involved in late-nineteenth-century politics?

Frances Willard and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and the Movement for Woman Suffrage

How did economic depression affect American politics in the 1890s?

Coxey’s Army

The People’s Party and the Election of 1896

Why did the United States largely abandon its isolationist foreign policy in the 1890s?

Markets and Missionaries

The Monroe Doctrine and the Open Door Policy

“A Splendid Little War”

The Debate over American Imperialism

Conclusion: What was the connection between domestic strife and foreign policy?

��

CHAPTER 21

Progressive Reform 1890–1916

An American Story

How did grassroots progressives attack the problems of urban industrial America?

Civilizing the City

Progressives and the Working Class

What were the key tenets of progressive theory?

Reform Darwinism and Social Engineering

Progressive Government: City and State

How did Theodore Roosevelt advance the progressive agenda?

The Square Deal

Roosevelt the Reformer

Roosevelt and Conservation

The Big Stick

The Troubled Presidency of William Howard Taft

How did progressivism evolve during Woodrow Wilson’s first term?

Progressive Insurgency and the Election of 1912

Wilson’s Reforms: Tariff, Banking, and the Trusts

Wilson, Reluctant Progressive

What were the limits of progressive reform?

Radical Alternatives

Progressivism for White Men Only

Conclusion: How did the Progressive Era give rise to the liberal state?

��

CHAPTER 22

World War I: The Progressive Crusade 1914–1920

An American Story

What was Woodrow Wilson’s foreign policy agenda?

Taming the Americas

The European Crisis

The Ordeal of American Neutrality

The United States Enters the War

What role did the United States play in World War I?

The Call to Arms

The War in France

What impact did the war have on the home front?

The Progressive Stake in the War

Women, War, and the Battle for Suffrage

Rally around the Flag — or Else

What part did Woodrow Wilson play at the Paris peace conference?

Wilson’s Fourteen Points

The Paris Peace Conference

The Fight for the Treaty

Why was America’s transition from war to peace so turbulent?

Economic Hardship and Labor Upheaval

The Red Scare

The Great Migrations of African Americans and Mexicans

Postwar Politics and the Election of 1920

Conclusion: Victory, but at what cost?

��

CHAPTER 23

From New Era to Great Depression 1920–1932

An American Story

How did big business shape the “New Era” of the 1920s?

A Business Government

Promoting Prosperity and Peace Abroad

Automobiles, Mass Production, and Assembly-Line Progress

Consumer Culture

In what ways did the Roaring Twenties challenge traditional values?

Prohibition

The New Woman

The New Negro

Entertaining the Masses

The Lost Generation

Why did the relationship between urban and rural America deteriorate in the 1920s?

Rejecting the Undesirables

The Rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan

The Scopes Trial

Al Smith and the Election of 1928

How did President Hoover respond to the economic crash of 1929?

Herbert Hoover: The Great Engineer

The Distorted Economy

The Crash of 1929

Hoover and the Limits of Individualism

What impact did the economic depression have on everyday life?

The Human Toll

Denial and Escape

Working-Class Militancy

Conclusion: Why did the hope of the 1920s turn to despair?

��

CHAPTER 24

The New Deal Experiment 1932–1939

An American Story

Why was Franklin D. Roosevelt elected president in 1932?

The Making of a Politician

The Election of 1932

What were the goals and achievements of the first New Deal?

The New Dealers

Banking and Finance Reform

Relief and Conservation Programs

Agricultural Initiatives

Industrial Recovery

Who opposed the New Deal?

Resistance to Business Reform

Casualties in the Countryside

Politics on the Fringes

Why did the New Deal begin to create a welfare state?

Relief for the Unemployed

Empowering Labor

Social Security and Tax Reform

Neglected Americans and the New Deal

Why did the New Deal lose support during Roosevelt’s second term as president?

The Election of 1936

Court Packing

Reaction and Recession

The Last of the New Deal Reforms

Conclusion: What were the achievements and limitations of the New Deal?

��

CHAPTER 25

The United States and the Second World War 1939–1945

An American Story

How did isolationism shape American foreign policy in the 1930s?

Roosevelt and Reluctant Isolation

The Good Neighbor Policy

The Price of Isolation

How did war in Europe and Asia influence U.S. foreign policy?

Nazi Aggression and War in Europe

From Neutrality to the Arsenal of Democracy

Japan Attacks America

How did the United States mobilize for war?

Home-Front Security

Building a Citizen Army

Conversion to a War Economy

How did the Allies reverse Axis advances in Europe and the Pacific?

Turning the Tide in the Pacific

The Campaign in Europe

How did war change the American home front?

Women and Families, Guns and Butter

The Double V Campaign

Wartime Politics and the 1944 Election

Reaction to the Holocaust

How did the Allies win the war?

From Bombing Raids to Berlin

The Defeat of Japan

Atomic Warfare

Conclusion: Why did the United States emerge as a superpower at the end of the war?

��

CHAPTER 26

The New World of the Cold War 1945–1960

An American Story

How did the Cold War begin?

U.S.-Soviet Tensions Emerge

The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan

Building a National Security State

How did anticommunism drive U.S. policy at home and abroad?

Superpower Rivalry around the Globe

The Domestic Chill: McCarthyism

Why did the United States go to war in Korea?

Military Implementation of Containment

From Containment to Rollback to Containment

Korea’s Political Fallout

An Armistice and the War’s Costs

How did Truman’s and Eisenhower’s approaches to the superpower struggle differ?

The “New Look” in Foreign Policy

Applying Containment to Vietnam

Interventions in Latin America and the Middle East

The Nuclear Arms Race

Conclusion: What were the costs and consequences of the Cold War?

��

CHAPTER 27

Postwar Culture and Politics 1945–1960

An American Story

What were the prospects for domestic reform in the Truman years?

Reconverting to a Peacetime Economy

The Fair Deal Falters

Race and Rights in the 1940s

To what extent did Eisenhower dismantle the New Deal?

A Republican “Middle Way”

A Shifting Indian Policy

What fueled postwar prosperity?

Technology Transforms Agriculture and Industry

Suburban Migrations

The Rise of the Sun Belt

The Democratization of Higher Education

How did economic growth affect American society, politics, and culture?

A Consumer Culture

The Revival of Domesticity and Religion

Television Transforms Culture and Politics

Countercurrents

What mobilized African Americans to fight for civil rights in the 1950s?

African Americans Challenge the Supreme Court and the President

Montgomery and Mass Protest

Conclusion: What challenges did peace and prosperity mask?

��

CHAPTER 28

Rights, Rebellion, and Reaction 1960–1974

An American Story

What were the achievements of JFK’s New Frontier and LBJ’s Great Society?

Kennedy and a New Frontier in the 1960s

Johnson and the War on Poverty

Liberalism at High Tide

Legacies of the Great Society

The Judicial Revolution

How did the black freedom movement evolve?

The Flowering of Civil Rights

The Response in Washington

Black Power and Urban Rebellions

What other social movements emerged in the 1960s?

Native American Protest

Latino Struggles for Justice

Youth Rebellions, the New Left, and the Counterculture

Gay Men and Lesbians Organize

Environmental Activists Mobilize

What were the goals of the new wave of feminism?

A Multifaceted Movement Emerges

Feminist Gains Spark a Countermovement

Why and where did the conservative movement gain ground?

A Grassroots Right

Nixon and the Election of 1968

Conclusion: What were the lasting effects of sixties-era reform?

��

CHAPTER 29

Confronting Limits 1961–1979

An American Story

What led to the United States’ deepening involvement in Vietnam?

Anticommunism in the Kennedy Years

A Growing War in Southeast Asia

An All-Out Commitment in Vietnam

Those Who Served

How did a war abroad provoke a war at home?

The Antiwar Movement

The Tet Offensive and Steps toward Peace

The Tumultuous Election of 1968

How did U.S. foreign policy change under Nixon?

Détente with the Soviet Union and China

U.S. Interventions around the World

Nixon’s War in Vietnam

Peace Accords

The Legacy of Defeat

What accounted for the growth of conservatism in the 1970s?

The End of the Boom

Nixon Courts the Right

The Election of 1972

The Watergate Scandal

The Ford Presidency and the 1976 Election

What challenges did the Carter administration face?

A Retreat from Liberalism

Energy and Environmental Reform

Promoting Human Rights Abroad

New Foreign Crises

Conclusion: How did the constraints of the 1970s reshape U.S. policy and politics?

��

CHAPTER 30

Divisions at Home and Abroad in a Conservative Era 1980–2000

An American Story

What conservative goals were realized during Reagan’s presidency?

Appealing to the New Right and Beyond

Unleashing Free Enterprise

Winners and Losers in a Flourishing Economy

What strategies did liberals use to fight the conservative turn?

Battles in the Courts and Congress

Feminism on the Defensive

The Gay and Lesbian Rights Movement

Why did the Cold War intensify, and how did it end?

Militarization and Interventions Abroad

The Iran-Contra Scandal

Soviet-American Relations Transformed

A “New World Order”

War in Central America and the Persian Gulf

What led to increased political polarization in the 1990s?

Gridlock in Government

The 1992 Election

Clinton’s Reforms

Accommodating the Right

Impeaching the President

How did Clinton respond to the challenges of globalization?

The Booming Economy of the 1990s

Debates over Free Trade

Defining America’s Place in a New World Order

Conclusion: What were the legacies of the “Reagan Revolution”?

��

CHAPTER 31

America in a New Century since 2000

An American Story

How did George W. Bush alter the focus of U.S. foreign and domestic policy?

The Disputed Election of 2000

The 9/11 Attacks

Security and Civil Liberties

Unilateralism and the “War on Terror”

Domestic Achievements — and Disasters

What were the strengths and weaknesses of the American economy?

Globalized Labor and Production

Immigration and Its Discontents

The New Economy and the Old

What obstacles stood in the way of Obama’s reform agenda?

A Post-Racial America?

Governing with Resistance

Multilateralism in Foreign Policy

How did new social movements change politics?

Progressives Mobilize

Civil Rights and Black Lives

Social Media and Activism

What was the significance of the 2016 election?

Platforms, Polls, and Protests

Right-Wing Populism on the Rise

A Retreat from U.S. Global Leadership

Conclusion: In a deeply polarized America, was there any common ground?

��

A��

The Declaration of Independence

The Constitution of the United States

Amendments to the Constitution (including the six unratified amendments)

G��

I��

A�� A��

Maps and Figures

CHAPTER 16

FIGURE 16.1 Southern Congressional Delegations, 1865–1877

MAP 16.1 A Southern Plantation in 1860 and 1881

MAP 16.2 The Election of 1868

MAP 16.3 The Reconstruction of the South

MAP 16.4 The Election of 1876

CHAPTER 17

MAP 17.1 The Loss of Indian Lands, 1850–1890

MAP 17.2 Western Mining, 1848–1890

FIGURE 17.1 Changes in Rural and Urban Populations, 1870–1900

CHAPTER 18

MAP 18.1 Railroad Expansion, 1870–1890

FIGURE 18.1 Iron and Steel Production, 1870–1900

MAP 18.2 Federal Land Grants to Railroads and the Development of the West, 1850–1900

CHAPTER 19

MAP 19.1 Economic Regions of the World, 1890

MAP 19.2 The Impact of Immigration, to 1910

FIGURE 19.1 Global Comparison: European Emigration, 1870–1890

FIGURE 19.2 European Emigration, 1870–1910

FIGURE 19.3 Women and Work, 1870–1890

MAP 19.3 The Great Railroad Strike of 1877

CHAPTER 20

FIGURE 20.1 Consumer Prices and Farm Income, 1865–1910

MAP 20.1 The Election of 1892

MAP 20.2 The Election of 1896

FIGURE 20.2 Expansion in U.S. Trade, 1870–1910

MAP 20.3 The Spanish-American War, 1898

MAP 20.4 U.S. Overseas Expansion through 1900

CHAPTER 21

MAP 21.1 National Parks and Forests

MAP 21.2 The Panama Canal, 1914

MAP 21.3 The Election of 1912

CHAPTER 22

MAP 22.1 U.S. Involvement in Latin America and the Caribbean, 1895–1941

MAP 22.2 European Alliances after the Outbreak of World War I

MAP 22.3 The American Expeditionary Force, 1918

FIGURE 22.1 Global Comparison: Casualties of the First World War

FIGURE 22.2 Industrial Wages, 1912–1920

MAP 22.4 Women’s Voting Rights before the Nineteenth Amendment

MAP 22.5 Europe after World War I

MAP 22.6 The Election of 1920

CHAPTER 23

MAP 23.1 Auto Manufacturing

FIGURE 23.1 Production of Consumer Goods, 1921–1929

MAP 23.2 The Shift from Rural to Urban Population, 1920–1930

MAP 23.3 The Election of 1928

FIGURE 23.2 Manufacturing and Agricultural Income, 1920–1940

CHAPTER 24

MAP 24.1 The Election of 1932

MAP 24.2 Electoral Shift, 1928–1932

FIGURE 24.1 Bank Failures and Farm Foreclosures, 1932–1942

MAP 24.3 The Tennessee Valley Authority

FIGURE 24.2 Global Comparison: National Populations and Economies, ca. 1938

CHAPTER 25

MAP 25.1 Axis Aggression through 1941

MAP 25.2 Japanese Aggression through 1941

MAP 25.3 Western Relocation Authority Centers

FIGURE 25.1 Global Comparison: Weapons Production by the Axis and Allied Powers during World War II

MAP 25.4 The European Theater of World War II, 1942–1945

MAP 25.5 The Pacific Theater of World War II, 1941–1945

CHAPTER 26

MAP 26.1 The Division of Europe after World War II

MAP 26.2 The Korean War, 1950–1953

CHAPTER 27

FIGURE 27.1 Women Workers in Selected Industries, 1940–1950

MAP 27.1 The Election of 1948

MAP 27.2 The Interstate Highway System, 1930 and 1970

MAP 27.3 The Rise of the Sun Belt, 1940–1980

FIGURE 27.2 The Postwar Economic Boom: GNP and Per Capita Income, 1945–1970

CHAPTER 28

MAP 28.1 The Election of 1960

FIGURE 28.1 Poverty in the United States, 1960–1974

MAP 28.2 The Rise of the African American Vote, 1940–1976

MAP 28.3 Urban Uprisings, 1965–1968

CHAPTER 29

MAP 29.1 The Vietnam War, 1964–1975

MAP 29.2 The Election of 1968

MAP 29.3 The Middle East, 1948–1989

CHAPTER 30

MAP 30.1 U.S. Involvement in Latin America and the Caribbean, 1954–1994

MAP 30.2 Events in Eastern Europe, 1985–1995

MAP 30.3 The Election of 1992

FIGURE 30.1 The Growth of Inequality: Changes in Family Income, 1969–1998

CHAPTER 31

MAP 31.1 The Election of 2000

FIGURE 31.1 Global Comparison: Countries with the Highest Military Expenditures, 2005

MAP 31.2 Events in the Middle East, 1990–2018

MAP 31.3 Poverty in the United States, 2015

MAP 31.4 The Election of 2016

Description The data are as follows:

Over 13001 feet, Over 3001 meters: The areas include scattered parts of Central Idaho, southwestern part of Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada.

Feet, 6561 to 13000; Meters, 2001 to 3000: The areas include scattered parts of Washington, Oregon, Sierra Nevada, Great Basin, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico.

Feet, 3281 to 6560; Meters, 1001 to 2000: The areas include scattered parts of Washington, major portions of Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Sierra Nevada, Great Basin, Utah,

Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, parts of South Dakota, Nebraska, and Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Appalachian mountains, and areas around Mount Mitchell.

Feet, 1641 to 3240; Meters, 501 to 1000: The areas include parts of Washington, Oregon, Western borders of Idaho, eastern parts of Montana, western parts of North Dakota and South Dakota, northern parts of Sioux falls, parts of Nebraska, Kansas, western parts of Oklahoma, southwestern parts of Arizona, north western parts of Phoenix, Las Vegas, surrounding areas of Mojave desert, borders of Coast Ranges and California, scattered parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas and South Carolina.

Feet, 661 to 1640; Meters, 201 to 500: The areas include parts of Washington, Cascade, borders of Coast Ranges and California, Arizona, Eastern parts of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas including Austin and San Antonio, major portions of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Central Lowland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, parts North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Maine, Washington, and New Hampshire.

Feet, 0 to 660; Meters, 0 to 200: The areas include parts of Washington, borders of Oregon, and Columbia River, Central parts of Sierra Nevada, western borders of California and Arizona, eastern parts of Texas including Fort Worth, eastern border of Minnesota, north eastern borders of Wisconsin, parts of Illinois, south western borders of Indiana, borders of Michigan, northern border of Ohio, borders of New York, eastern borders of Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, south eastern parts of Georgia, Florida, southern parts of Alabama including Montgomery, Mississippi, Louisiana, parts of Arkansas, Kentucky and eastern parts of Tennessee including Nashville.

Feet, Below sea level; Meters, Below sea level: The area includes the Southern part of California east of San Diego.

Over 13001 feet, Over 3001 meters: The areas include scattered parts of Central Idaho, southwestern part of Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada.

Feet, 6561 to 13000; Meters, 2001 to 3000: The areas include scattered parts of Washington, Oregon, Sierra Nevada, Great Basin, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico.

Feet, 3281 to 6560; Meters, 1001 to 2000: The areas include scattered parts of Washington, major portions of Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Sierra Nevada, Great Basin, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, parts of South Dakota, Nebraska, and Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Appalachian mountains, and areas around Mount Mitchell.

Feet, Below sea level; Meters, Below sea level: The area includes the Southern part of California east of San Diego.

Description The data are as follows:

The North American countries include Alaska to the west of Canada, Canada to the north of United States, United States to the north of Mexico, to the south of Mexico are Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama.

The South American countries include Colombia, Venezuela to the east of Colombia, Guyana to the east of Venezuela, Suriname to the east of Guyana, French Guiana to the east of Suriname, Brazil to the south of French Guinea, Uruguay to the south of Brazil, Argentina to the south of Uruguay, Paraguay to the west of Uruguay, Bolivia to the north of Argentina, Chile to the south of Argentina, Peru to the north west of Brazil, Ecuador to the north of Peru.

The Western European countries include United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Côte d’ivoire, Burkina Faso, Ghana. The Eastern European countries include Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Slavonia, Italy, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro,

Kosovo, North Macedonia, Albania, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithonia.

The Asian countries include Russian Federation, Georgia, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, China, Mongolia, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. Asia is surrounded by the Arctic Ocean, Pacific Ocean, and Indian Ocean.

The African countries include, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Niger, Chad, Sudan, Eritrea, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, Central African Republic, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, E Q. Guinea, Gabon, Congo, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Burundi, Tanzania, Angola, Zambia, Malawi, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, South Africa, Lesotho, and Eswatini and the island of Madagascar.

Australia is located between the Indian Ocean and South Pacific Ocean surrounded by New Zealand, New Caledonia, Fiji, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Philippines.

�� 16 �� 1863–1877

�� This chapter will explore the following questions:

Why did Congress object to Lincoln’s wartime plan for reconstruction? How did the North respond to the passage of black codes in the southern states? How radical was congressional reconstruction? What brought the elements of the South’s Republican coalition together? Why did Reconstruction collapse? Conclusion: Was Reconstruction “a revolution but half accomplished”?

�� IN 1856, JOHN RAPIER, A FREE BLACK BARBER IN FLORENCE, ALABAMA, urged his four freeborn sons to flee the increasingly repressive and dangerous South. Nineteen-year-old James T. Rapier chose Canada, where he went to live with his uncle in a largely black community and studied in a log schoolhouse. In a letter to his father, he vowed, “I will endeavor to do my part in solving the problems [of African Americans] in my native land.”

The Union victory in the Civil War gave James Rapier the opportunity to redeem his pledge. In 1865, after more than eight years of exile, Rapier returned to Alabama, where he presided over the first political gathering of former slaves in the state. He soon discovered, however, that Alabama’s whites found it agonizingly difficult to accept defeat and black freedom. They responded to the revolutionary changes under the banner “White Man — Right or Wrong — Still the White Man!”

During the elections of 1868, when Rapier and other Alabama blacks vigorously supported the Republican ticket, the recently organized Ku Klux Klan went on a bloody rampage. A mob of 150 outraged whites raced through Rapier’s neighborhood seeking four black politicians they claimed were trying to “Africanize Alabama.” They caught and hanged three, but the “nigger carpetbagger from Canada” escaped. After briefly considering fleeing the state, Rapier decided to stay and fight for his rights. In 1872, Rapier won election to the House of Representatives, where he joined six other black congressmen in

Washington, D.C. Defeated for reelection in 1874 in a campaign marked by ballot-box stuffing, Rapier turned to cotton farming. But unrelenting racial violence convinced him that blacks could never achieve equality and prosperity in the South. He purchased land in Kansas and urged Alabama’s blacks to escape with him. In 1883, however, before he could leave Alabama, the forty-five-year-old Rapier died of tuberculosis.

In 1865, Union general Carl Schurz had foreseen many of the troubles Rapier encountered in the postwar South. The Civil War, Schurz observed, was “a revolution but half accomplished.” He meant that while northern victory had freed the slaves, it had not changed former slaveholders’ minds about blacks’ unfitness for freedom. Left to themselves, whites would “introduce some new system of forced labor, not perhaps exactly slavery in its old form but something similar to it,” Schurz predicted. To defend their freedom, blacks would need federal protection, land of their own, and voting rights. Until whites “cut loose from the past, it will be a dangerous experiment to put Southern society upon its own legs.”

As Schurz understood, the end of the war did not mean peace. Indeed, the nation entered one of its most turbulent and violent eras — Reconstruction. Answers to the era’s central questions — about the defeated South’s status within the Union and the meaning of freedom for ex-slaves — came from many directions and often clashed. In Washington, D.C., the federal government played an active role, passing the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution

that strengthened the claim of African Americans to equal rights. But state legislatures and county seats across the South also featured blacks and whites vigorously disagreeing about the future of the South. The struggle over the future also took place on the South’s farms and plantations, where former slaves sought to become free workers while former slaveholders clung to old, oppressive habits. Whites often backed their opinions with racial violence. In the end, the efforts of African Americans and their allies to secure full citizenship and racial equality failed. In the contest to determine the consequences of Confederate defeat and emancipation, white Southerners prevailed.

Why did Congress object to Lincoln’s wartime plan for reconstruction? Reconstruction did not wait for the end of war. As the odds of a northern victory increased, thinking about reunification quickened. But who had authority to devise a plan for reconstructing the Union? President Abraham Lincoln firmly believed that reconstruction was a matter of executive responsibility. Congress just as firmly asserted its jurisdiction. Fueling the argument were significant differences about the terms of reconstruction.

In their eagerness to formulate a plan for political reunification, neither Lincoln nor Congress gave much attention to the South’s land and labor problems. Yet the war rapidly eroded slavery, and Yankee military commanders in the Union-occupied areas of the Confederacy had no choice but to oversee the emergence of a new labor system.

“To Bind Up the Nation’s Wounds” As early as 1863, Lincoln began contemplating how “to bind up the nation’s wounds” and achieve “a lasting peace.” While deep compassion for the enemy guided his thinking about peace, his plan for reconstruction aimed primarily at shortening the war and ending slavery.

Lincoln’s Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction in December 1863 set out his terms. He offered a full pardon, restoring property (except slaves) and political rights, to most rebels willing to renounce secession and

to accept emancipation. When 10 percent of a state’s voting population had taken an oath of allegiance, the state could organize a new government and be readmitted into the Union. Lincoln’s plan did not require ex-rebels to extend civil rights to ex-slaves, nor did it anticipate a program of long-term federal assistance to freedmen. Clearly, the president looked forward to the rapid, forgiving restoration of the broken Union.

Lincoln’s easy terms enraged abolitionists such as Wendell Phillips of Boston, who charged that the president “makes the negro’s freedom a mere sham.” He “is willing that the negro should be free but seeks nothing else for him.” Comparing Lincoln to the Union’s most passive general, Phillips declared, “What McClellan was on the battlefield — ‘Do as little hurt as possible!’ — Lincoln is in civil affairs — ‘Make as little change as possible!’” Phillips and other northern Radicals called instead for a thorough overhaul of southern society. Their ideas proved to be too drastic for most Republicans during the war years, but Congress agreed that Lincoln’s plan was inadequate.

In July 1864, Congress put forward a plan of its own. Congressman Henry Winter Davis of Maryland and Senator Benjamin Wade of Ohio jointly sponsored a bill that demanded that at least half of the voters in a conquered rebel state take the oath of allegiance before reconstruction could begin. The Wade-Davis bill also banned almost all ex-Confederates from participating in the drafting of new state constitutions. Finally, the bill guaranteed the equality of freedmen before the law. Congress’s reconstruction would be neither as quick nor as forgiving as Lincoln’s.

When Lincoln refused to sign the bill and let it die, Wade and Davis charged the president with tyranny.

Undeterred, Lincoln continued to nurture the formation of loyal state governments under his own plan. Four states — Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Virginia — fulfilled the president’s requirements, but Congress refused to seat representatives from the “Lincoln states.” Lincoln admitted that a government based on only 10 percent was not ideal, but he argued, “We shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it.” Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner responded, “The eggs of crocodiles can produce only crocodiles.” In his last public address in April 1865, Lincoln defended his plan but expressed his endorsement of voting rights for southern blacks, at least “the very intelligent, and … those who serve our cause as soldiers.” The announcement demonstrated that Lincoln’s thinking about reconstruction was still evolving. Four days later, he was dead.

Land and Labor Of all the problems raised by the North’s victory in the war, none proved more critical than the South’s transition from slavery to free labor. As federal armies occupied the Confederacy, hundreds of thousands of slaves became free workers. In addition, Union armies controlled vast territories in the South where legal title to land had become unclear. The Confiscation Acts passed during the war punished “traitors” by taking away their property. The question of what to do with federally occupied land and how

to organize labor on it engaged ex-slaves, ex-slaveholders, Union military commanders, and federal government officials long before the war ended.

In the Mississippi valley, occupying federal troops announced a new labor code. It required landholders to give up whipping, sign contracts with ex- slaves, pay wages, and provide food, housing, and medical care. The code also required black laborers to enter into contracts, work diligently, and remain subordinate and obedient. The Union military clearly had no intention of promoting a social or economic revolution. Instead, they sought to restore traditional plantation agriculture with wage labor. The effort resulted in a hybrid system that one contemporary called “compulsory free labor,” which satisfied no one.

Planters complained because the new system fell short of slavery. Blacks could not be “transformed by proclamation,” a Louisiana sugar planter declared. Without the right to whip, he argued, the new labor system did not have a chance. Either Union soldiers must “compel the negroes to work,” or the planters themselves must “be authorized and sustained in using force.”

African Americans found the new regime too similar to slavery to be called free labor. Its chief deficiency, they believed, was the failure to provide them with land of their own. Freedmen believed they had a moral right to land because they and their ancestors had worked it without pay for centuries. “What’s the use of being free if you don’t own land enough to be buried in?” one man asked. Several wartime developments led freedmen to believe that the federal government planned to defend black freedom with landownership.

In January 1865, General William Tecumseh Sherman set aside part of the coast south of Charleston for black settlement. By June, some 40,000 freedmen sat on 400,000 acres of “Sherman land.” In addition, in March 1865, Congress passed a bill establishing the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. The Freedmen’s Bureau, as it was called, distributed food and clothing to destitute Southerners and eased the transition of blacks from slaves to free persons. Congress also authorized the agency to divide abandoned and confiscated land into 40-acre plots, to rent them to freedmen, and eventually to sell them “with such title as the United States can convey.” By June 1865, the Bureau had situated nearly 10,000 black families on one-half million acres.

Despite the flurry of activity, wartime reconstruction failed to produce agreement about whether the president or Congress had the authority to devise policy or what proper policy should be.

The African American Quest for Autonomy Ex-slaves never had any doubt about what they wanted from freedom. They had only to contemplate what they had been denied as slaves. Slaves had to remain on their plantations; freedom allowed blacks to see what was on the other side of the hill. Slaves had to be at work in the fields by dawn; freedom permitted blacks to sleep through a sunrise. Freedmen also tested the etiquette of racial subordination. “Lizzie’s maid passed me today when I was coming from church without speaking to me,” huffed one plantation mistress.

To whites, emancipation looked like pure anarchy. Blacks, they said, had reverted to their natural condition: lazy, irresponsible, and wild. Actually, former slaves were experimenting with freedom, but they could not long afford to roam the countryside, neglect work, and casually provoke whites. Soon, most were back at work in whites’ kitchens and fields.

But they continued to dream of land and independence. “The way we can best take care of ourselves is to have land,” one former slave declared in 1865, “and turn it and till it by our own labor.” A South Carolina freedman agreed, declaring that ex-slaves wanted land, “not a Master or owner[,] Neither a driver with his Whip.”

Slavery had deliberately kept blacks illiterate, and freedmen emerged from bondage eager to learn to read and write. “I wishes the Childern all in School,” one black military veteran asserted. “It is beter for them then [than] to be their Surveing a mistes [mistress].” Freedmen looked on schools as “first proof of their independence.”

Harry Stephens and Family, 1866 The seven members of the Stephens family sit proudly for a photograph just after the Civil War ended. Many black families were not as fortunate as these Virginians. Separated by slavery or war, former slaves desperately sought news of missing family members through newspaper advertisements.

The restoration of broken families was another persistent black aspiration. Thousands of freedmen took to the roads in 1865 to look for kin who had been sold or to free those who were being held illegally as slaves. A black soldier from Missouri wrote his daughters that he was coming for them. “I will have you if it cost me my life,” he declared. “Your Miss Kitty said that I tried to steal you,” he told them. “But I’ll let her know that god never intended for a man to steal his own flesh and blood.” And he swore that “if she meets me with ten thousand soldiers, she [will] meet her enemy.”

Independent worship was another dream. African Americans greeted freedom with a mass exodus from white churches, where they had been required to worship when slaves. Some joined the newly established southern branches of all-black northern churches, such as the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Others formed black versions of the major southern denominations, Baptists and Methodists.

��

To what extent did Lincoln’s wartime plan for reconstruction reflect the concerns of newly freed slaves?

How did the North respond to the passage of black codes in the southern states? Abraham Lincoln died on April 15, 1865, just hours after John Wilkes Booth shot him at a Washington, D.C., theater. Vice President Andrew Johnson of Tennessee became president. Congress had adjourned in March and would not reconvene until December. Throughout the summer and fall, Johnson drew up and executed a plan of reconstruction without congressional advice.

Congress returned to the capital in December to find that, as far as the new president and former Confederates were concerned, reconstruction was over. Most Republicans, however, thought Johnson’s plan made far too few demands of ex-rebels and made a mockery of the sacrifice of Union soldiers. They claimed that Johnson’s leniency had encouraged the rebirth of the Old South, that he had achieved political reunification at the cost of black freedom. Republicans in Congress then proceeded to dismantle Johnson’s program and substitute a program of their own.

Johnson’s Program of Reconciliation Born in 1808 in Raleigh, North Carolina, Andrew Johnson was the son of illiterate parents. Self-educated and ambitious, Johnson moved to Tennessee, where he worked as a tailor, accumulated a fortune in land and five slaves, and built a career in politics championing the South’s common white people and assailing its planter class. The only senator from a

Confederate state to remain loyal to the Union, Johnson held planters responsible for secession. Less than two weeks before he became president, he announced what he would do to planters if he ever had the chance: “I would arrest them — I would try them — I would convict them and I would hang them.”

A Democrat all his life, Johnson occupied the White House only because the Republican Party in 1864 had needed a vice presidential candidate who would appeal to Union-supporting Democrats. Johnson vigorously defended states’ rights (but not secession) and opposed Republican efforts to expand the power of the federal government. A steadfast supporter of slavery, Johnson had owned slaves until 1862, when Tennessee rebels, angry at his Unionism, confiscated them. When he grudgingly accepted emancipation, it was more because he hated planters than sympathized with slaves. “Damn the negroes,” he said. “I am fighting those traitorous aristocrats, their masters.” The new president harbored unshakable racist convictions. Africans, Johnson said, were “inferior to the white man in point of intellect — better calculated in physical structure to undergo drudgery and hardship.”

Like Lincoln, Johnson stressed the rapid restoration of civil government in the South. Like Lincoln, he promised to pardon most, but not all, ex-rebels. Johnson recognized the state governments created by Lincoln but set out his own requirements for restoring the other rebel states to the Union. All that the citizens of a state had to do was to renounce the right of secession, repudiate the debts of the Confederacy, and ratify the Thirteenth

Amendment abolishing slavery, which became part of the Constitution in December 1865.

Johnson also returned all confiscated and abandoned land to pardoned ex- Confederates, even if it was in the hands of freedmen. Reformers were shocked. Instead of punishing planters as he had promised, Johnson canceled the promising beginnings made by General Sherman and the Freedmen’s Bureau to settle blacks on land of their own. As one freedman observed, “Things was hurt by Mr. Lincoln getting killed.”

White Southern Resistance and Black Codes In the summer of 1865, white Southerners drew up the new state constitutions Johnson’s plan of reconstruction required. But they refused to accept even the president’s mild requirements. Refusing to renounce secession, the South Carolina and Georgia conventions merely “repudiated” their secession ordinances, preserving in principle their right to secede. South Carolina and Mississippi refused to disown their Confederate war debts. Mississippi rejected the Thirteenth Amendment, and Alabama rejected it in part. Despite this defiance, Johnson did nothing. White Southerners began to think that by standing up for themselves they could shape the terms of reconstruction.

New state governments across the South adopted a series of laws known as black codes, which denied black rights. The codes sought to keep ex-slaves subordinate to whites by subjecting them to every sort of discrimination.

Several states made it illegal for blacks to own a gun. Mississippi made insulting gestures and language by blacks a criminal offense. The codes barred blacks from jury duty. Not a single southern state granted any black the right to vote.

At the core of the black codes, however, lay the matter of labor. Legislators sought to hustle freedmen back to the plantations. South Carolina attempted to limit blacks to either farmwork or domestic service by requiring them to pay annual taxes of $10 to $100 to work in any other occupation. Mississippi declared that blacks who did not possess written evidence of employment could be declared vagrants and be subject to involuntary plantation labor. Under so-called apprenticeship laws, courts bound thousands of black children — orphans and others whose parents were deemed unable to support them — to work for planter “guardians.”

Johnson refused to intervene. A staunch defender of states’ rights, he believed that citizens of every state should be free to write their own constitutions and laws. He was as eager as other white Southerners to restore white supremacy. “White men alone must manage the South,” he declared.

Johnson also recognized that his do-nothing response offered him political advantage. A conservative Tennessee Democrat at the head of a northern Republican Party, he had begun to look southward for political allies. Despite tough talk about punishing traitors, he personally pardoned fourteen thousand wealthy or high-ranking ex-Confederates. By pardoning powerful whites, by accepting state governments even when they failed to satisfy his

minimal demands, and by acquiescing in the black codes, he won useful southern friends.

In the fall elections of 1865, white Southerners dramatically expressed their mood. To represent them in Congress, they chose former Confederates. Of the eighty senators and representatives they sent to Washington, fifteen had served in the Confederate army, ten of them as generals. Another sixteen had served in civil and judicial posts in the Confederacy. Nine others had served in the Confederate Congress. One — Alexander Stephens — had been vice president of the Confederacy. As one Georgian remarked, “It looked as though Richmond had moved to Washington.”

Expansion of Federal Authority and Black Rights White Southerners had blundered monumentally. They had assumed that what Andrew Johnson was willing to accept, northern Republicans would accept as well. But southern resistance compelled even moderates to conclude that ex-rebels were a “generation of vipers,” still disloyal and dangerous. The black codes became a symbol of southern intentions to “restore all of slavery but its name.” “We tell the white men of Mississippi,” the Chicago Tribune roared, “that the men of the North will convert the State of Mississippi into a frog pond before they will allow such laws to disgrace one foot of the soil in which the bones of our soldiers sleep and over which the flag of freedom waves.”

The moderate majority of the Republican Party wanted only assurance that slavery and treason were dead. They did not champion black equality, the confiscation of plantations, or black voting, as did the Radical minority within the party. But southern resistance had succeeded in forging unity (at least temporarily) among Republican factions. In December 1865, Republicans refused to seat the Southerners elected in the fall elections. Rather than accept Johnson’s claim that the “work of restoration” was done, Congress challenged Johnson’s reconstruction.

Republican senator Lyman Trumbull declared that the president’s policy meant that an ex-slave would “be tyrannized over, abused, and virtually reenslaved without some legislation by the nation for his protection.” Early in 1866, the moderates produced two bills that strengthened the federal shield. The Freedmen’s Bureau bill prolonged the life of the agency established by the previous Congress. Arguing that the Constitution never contemplated a “system for the support of indigent persons,” President Andrew Johnson vetoed the bill. Congress failed by a narrow margin to override the president’s veto.

The moderates designed their second measure, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, to nullify the black codes by affirming African Americans’ rights to “full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property as is enjoyed by white citizens.” The act boldly required the end of racial discrimination in state laws and represented an extraordinary expansion of black rights and federal authority. The president argued that the civil rights bill amounted to “unconstitutional invasion of states’ rights”

and vetoed it. In essence, he denied that the federal government had the authority to protect the civil rights of African Americans.

In April 1866, an outraged Republican Party again pushed the civil rights bill through Congress and overrode the presidential veto. In July, it passed another Freedmen’s Bureau bill and overrode Johnson’s veto. For the first time in American history, Congress had overturned presidential vetoes of major legislation. As a worried South Carolinian observed, Johnson’s vetoes would probably touch off “a fight this fall such as has never been seen.”

��

When the southern states passed the black codes, how did the U.S. Congress respond?

How radical was congressional reconstruction? By the summer of 1866, President Andrew Johnson and Congress had dropped their gloves and stood toe-to-toe in a bare-knuckle contest unprecedented in American history. Johnson made it clear that he would not budge on either executive authority or policy. Moderate Republicans responded by amending the Constitution. But Johnson’s and white Southerners’ stubbornness pushed Republican moderates ever closer to the Radicals and to acceptance of additional federal intervention in the South. To end presidential interference, Congress voted to impeach the president for the first time in the nation’s history. Soon after, Congress debated whether to make voting rights color-blind, while women championed making voting sex-blind as well.

The Fourteenth Amendment and Escalating Violence In June 1866, Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and two years later the states ratified it. The most important provisions of this complex amendment made all native-born or naturalized persons American citizens and prohibited states from abridging the “privileges and immunities” of citizens, depriving them of “life, liberty, or property without due process of law,” and denying them “equal protection of the laws.” By making blacks national citizens, the amendment provided a national guarantee of equality before the law. In essence, it protected blacks against violation by southern state governments.

The Fourteenth Amendment also dealt with voting rights. It gave Congress the right to reduce the congressional representation of states that withheld suffrage from some of its adult male population. In other words, white Southerners could either allow black men to vote or see their representation in Washington slashed. Whatever happened, Republicans stood to benefit. If southern whites granted voting rights to freedmen, Republicans would gain valuable black votes. If whites refused, the number of southern Democrats in Congress would plunge.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, 1870 Stanton, left, and Anthony were lifelong friends and veteran reformers who advocated, among other things, improved working conditions for labor, married women's property rights, liberalization of divorce laws, and women's admission to colleges and trade schools. Their broad agenda led some conservatives to oppose women's political equality because they equated the suffragist cause with radicalism in general.

The Fourteenth Amendment’s suffrage provisions ignored the small band of women who had emerged from the war demanding “the ballot for the two disenfranchised classes, negroes and women.” Founding the American Equal Rights Association in 1866, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton lobbied for “a government by the people, and the whole people; for the people and the whole people.” They felt betrayed when their old antislavery allies refused to work for woman suffrage. “It was the Negro’s hour,” Frederick Douglass explained. Senator Charles Sumner suggested that woman suffrage could be “the great question of the future.”

Tennessee approved the Fourteenth Amendment in July, and Congress promptly welcomed the state’s representatives and senators back. Had President Johnson counseled other southern states to ratify the amendment, they might have listened. Instead, Johnson advised Southerners to reject the Fourteenth Amendment and to rely on him to trounce the Republicans in the fall congressional elections.

Johnson had decided to make the Fourteenth Amendment the overriding issue of the 1866 elections and to gather its white opponents into a new conservative party, the National Union Party. The president’s strategy suffered a setback when whites in several southern cities went on rampages

against blacks. Mobs killed thirty-four blacks in New Orleans and forty-six blacks in Memphis. The slaughter shocked Northerners and renewed skepticism about Johnson’s claim that southern whites could be trusted. “Who doubts that the Freedmen’s Bureau ought to be abolished forthwith,” a New Yorker observed sarcastically, “and the blacks remitted to the paternal care of their old masters, who ‘understand the nigger, you know, a great deal better than the Yankees can.’”

The 1866 elections resulted in an overwhelming Republican victory. Johnson had bet that Northerners would not support federal protection of black rights and that a racist backlash would punish the Republican Party. But the war was still fresh in northern minds, and as one Republican explained, southern whites “with all their intelligence were traitors, the blacks with all their ignorance were loyal.”

Radical Reconstruction and Military Rule When Johnson continued to urge Southerners to reject the Fourteenth Amendment, every southern state except Tennessee voted it down. “The last one of the sinful ten,” thundered Representative James A. Garfield of Ohio, “has flung back into our teeth the magnanimous offer of a generous nation.” After the South rejected the moderates’ program, the Radicals seized the initiative.

Each act of defiance by southern whites had boosted the standing of the Radicals within the Republican Party. Except for freedmen themselves, no

one did more to make freedom the “mighty moral question of the age.” Radicals such as Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner and Pennsylvania representative Thaddeus Stevens united in demanding civil and political equality. Southern states were “like clay in the hands of the potter,” Stevens declared in January 1867, and he called on Congress to begin reconstruction all over again.

In March 1867, Congress overturned the Johnson state governments and initiated military rule of the South. The Military Reconstruction Act (and three subsequent acts) divided the ten unreconstructed Confederate states into five military districts. Congress placed a Union general in charge of each district and instructed him to “suppress insurrection, disorder, and violence” and to begin political reform. After the military had completed voter registration, which would include black men, voters in each state would elect delegates to conventions that would draw up new state constitutions. Each constitution would guarantee black suffrage. When the voters of each state had approved the constitution and the state legislature had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress could seat the state’s senators and representatives, and political reunification would be completed.

Radicals proclaimed the provision for black suffrage “a prodigious triumph,” for it extended far beyond the limited voting provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment. When combined with the disfranchisement of thousands of ex-rebels, it promised to cripple any neo-Confederate resurgence and guarantee Republican state governments in the South.

Despite its bold suffrage provision, the Military Reconstruction Act of 1867 disappointed those who also advocated the confiscation of southern plantations and their redistribution to ex-slaves. Thaddeus Stevens agreed with the freedman who said, “Give us our own land and we take care of ourselves, but without land, the old masters can hire us or starve us, as they please.” But most Republicans believed they had provided blacks with all they needed: equal legal rights and the ballot. Besides, confiscation was too radical, even for some Radicals. Taking private property, declared the New York Times, “strikes at the root of all property rights in both sections. It concerns Massachusetts quite as much as Mississippi.” If blacks were to get land, they would have to gain it themselves.

Declaring that he would rather sever his right arm than sign such a formula for “anarchy and chaos,” Andrew Johnson vetoed the Military Reconstruction Act, but Congress overrode his veto. With the passage of the Reconstruction Acts of 1867, congressional reconstruction was virtually completed. Congress left whites owning most of the South’s land but, in a departure that justified the term radical reconstruction, had given black men the ballot.

Impeaching a President Despite his defeats, Andrew Johnson had no intention of yielding control of reconstruction. In a dozen ways, he sabotaged Congress’s will and encouraged southern whites to resist. He issued a flood of pardons, waged war against the Freedmen’s Bureau, and replaced Union generals eager to enforce Congress’s Reconstruction Acts with conservative officers eager to

block them. Johnson claimed that he was merely defending the “violated Constitution.” At bottom, however, the president acted to protect southern whites from what he considered the horrors of “Negro domination.”

Radicals argued that Johnson’s abuse of his power and his failure to fulfill constitutional obligations to enforce the law were impeachable offenses. According to the Constitution, the House of Representatives can impeach and the Senate can try any federal official for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” But moderates interpreted the Constitution to mean violation of criminal statutes. As long as Johnson refrained from breaking the law, impeachment (the process of bringing formal charges of wrongdoing against the president or another federal official) remained stalled.

In August 1867, Johnson suspended Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton from office. As required by the Tenure of Office Act, which demanded the approval of the Senate for the removal of any government official who had been appointed with Senate approval, the president requested the Senate to consent to Stanton’s dismissal. When the Senate declined, Johnson removed Stanton anyway. “Is the President crazy, or only drunk?” asked a dumbfounded Republican moderate. “I’m afraid his doings will make us all favor impeachment.”

News of Johnson’s open defiance of the law convinced every Republican in the House to vote for a resolution impeaching the president. Supreme Court chief justice Salmon Chase presided over the Senate trial, which lasted from March until May 1868. When the vote came, thirty-five senators voted

guilty and nineteen not guilty. Impeachment fell one vote short of the two- thirds needed to convict.

After his trial, Johnson called a truce, and for the remaining ten months of his term, congressional reconstruction proceeded unhindered by presidential interference. Without interference from Johnson, Congress revisited the suffrage issue.

The Fifteenth Amendment and Women’s Demands In February 1869, Republicans passed the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibited states from depriving any citizen of the right to vote because of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” The Reconstruction Acts of 1867 already required black suffrage in the South; the Fifteenth Amendment extended black voting nationwide.

Some Republicans, however, found the final wording of the Fifteenth Amendment “lame and halting.” Rather than guaranteeing the right to vote, the amendment merely prohibited exclusion on grounds of race. The distinction would prove to be significant. In time, white Southerners would devise tests of literacy and property and other apparently nonracial measures that would effectively disfranchise blacks yet not violate the Fifteenth Amendment. But an amendment that guaranteed the right to vote courted defeat outside the South. Rising antiforeign sentiment — against the Chinese in California and European immigrants in the Northeast — caused states to resist giving up control of suffrage requirements. In March

1870, after three-fourths of the states had ratified it, the Fifteenth Amendment became part of the Constitution.

Woman suffrage advocates, however, condemned the Fifteenth Amendment’s failure to extend voting rights to women. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony rejected the Republicans’ “negro first” strategy and pointed out that women remained “the only class of citizens wholly unrepresented in the government.” Activist women concluded that woman “must not put her trust in man.” The Fifteenth Amendment severed the early feminist movement from its abolitionist roots. Over the next several decades, feminists established an independent suffrage crusade that drew millions of women into political life.

After the Fifteen Amendment, Republicans concluded that black suffrage was the “last great point that remained to be settled of the issues of the war” and promptly scratched the “Negro question” from the agenda of national politics. Even that steadfast crusader for equality Wendell Phillips reasoned that the black man now held “sufficient shield in his own hands…. Whatever he suffers will be largely now, and in future, his own fault.” Northerners had no idea of the violent struggles that lay ahead in the South.

��

Why did Congress impeach President Andrew Johnson?

What brought the elements of the South’s Republican coalition together? Northerners believed they had discharged their responsibilities with the Reconstruction Acts and the amendments to the Constitution, but Southerners knew that the battle had just begun. Black suffrage had destroyed traditional southern politics and established the foundation for the rise of the Republican Party. Gathering outsiders and outcasts, southern Republicans won elections, wrote new state constitutions, and formed new state governments.

Challenging the established class for political control was dangerous business. Equally dangerous were the confrontations that took place on southern farms and plantations, where blacks sought to give fuller meaning to their newly won legal and political equality. Ex-masters had their own ideas about the labor system that should replace slavery, and freedom remained contested territory. Southerners fought pitched battles with one another to determine the contours of their new world.

Freedmen, Yankees, and Yeomen African Americans made up the majority of southern Republicans. After gaining voting rights in 1867, nearly all eligible black men registered to vote as Republicans, grateful to the party that had freed them and granted them the franchise. “It is the hardest thing in the world to keep a negro away from the polls,” observed a critical Alabama white man. Southern

blacks did not all have identical political priorities, but they united in their desire for education and equal treatment before the law.

Northern whites who made the South their home after the war were a second element of the South’s Republican Party. Most white Southerners called them carpetbaggers, opportunists who stuffed all their belongings in a single carpet-sided suitcase and headed south to “fatten on our misfortunes.” But most Northerners who moved south were young men who looked upon the South as they did the West — as a promising place to make a living. Northerners in the southern Republican Party supported programs that encouraged vigorous economic development along the lines of the northern free-labor model.

Southern whites made up the third element of the South’s Republican Party. Approximately one out of four white Southerners voted Republican. The other three condemned the one who did as a traitor to his region and his race and called him a scalawag, a term for runty horses and low-down, good-for-nothing rascals. Yeoman farmers accounted for the majority of southern white Republicans. Some were Unionists who emerged from the war with bitter memories of Confederate persecution. Others were small farmers who wanted to end state governments’ favoritism toward plantation owners. Yeomen supported initiatives for public schools and for expanding economic opportunity in the South.

The South’s Republican Party, then, was made up of freedmen, Yankees, and yeomen — an improbable coalition. The mix of races, regions, and classes inevitably meant friction as each group maneuvered to define the

party. Still, Reconstruction represented an extraordinary moment in American politics: Blacks and whites joined together in the Republican Party to pursue political change. Formally, of course, only men participated in politics — casting ballots and holding offices — but white and black women also played a part in the political struggle by joining in parades and rallies, attending stump speeches, and even campaigning.

Most whites in the South condemned southern Republicans as illegitimate and felt justified in doing whatever they could to stamp them out. Violence against blacks — the “white terror” — took brutal institutional form in 1866 with the formation in Tennessee of the Ku Klux Klan, a group of Confederate veterans that quickly developed into a paramilitary organization supporting Democrats. The Klan went on a rampage of whipping, hanging, shooting, burning, and throat-cutting to defeat Republicans and restore white supremacy.

Rapid demobilization of the Union army after the war left only a handful of troops to patrol the entire South. Without effective military protection, southern Republicans had to take care of themselves.

Republican Rule In the fall of 1867, southern states held elections for delegates to state constitutional conventions, as required by the Reconstruction Acts. About 40 percent of the white electorate stayed home because they had been disfranchised or because they had decided to boycott politics. Republicans won three-fourths of the seats. About 15 percent of the Republican

delegates to the conventions were Northerners who had moved south, 25 percent were African Americans, and 60 percent were white Southerners. As a British visitor observed, the delegate elections reflected “the mighty revolution that had taken place in America.”

The conventions brought together serious, purposeful men who hammered out the legal framework for a new society. The reconstruction constitutions introduced two broad categories of changes in the South: those that reduced aristocratic privilege and increased democratic equality and those that expanded the state’s responsibility for the general welfare. In the first category, the constitutions adopted universal male suffrage, abolished property qualifications for holding office, and made more offices elective and fewer appointed. In the second category, they enacted prison reform; made the state responsible for caring for orphans, the insane, and the deaf and mute; and exempted debtors’ homes from seizure.

To Democrats, these progressive constitutions looked like wild revolution. They were blind to the fact that no constitution confiscated and redistributed land, as virtually every former slave wished, or disfranchised ex-rebels wholesale, as most southern Unionists advocated. Yet Democrats were convinced that the new constitutions initiated “Negro domination.” In fact, although 80 percent of Republican voters were black men, only 6 percent of Southerners in Congress during Reconstruction were black (Figure 16.1). The sixteen black men in Congress included exceptional men, such as Representative James T. Rapier of Alabama. No state legislature experienced “Negro rule,” despite black majorities in the populations of some states.

FIGURE 16.1 Southern Congressional Delegations, 1865–1877

The statistics contradict the myth of black domination of congressional representation during Reconstruction.

Southern voters ratified the new state constitutions and swept Republicans into power. When the former Confederate states ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress readmitted them. Southern Republicans then turned to a staggering array of problems at home. Wartime destruction littered the landscape. Making matters worse, racial harassment and reactionary violence dogged Southerners who sought reform. Democrats mocked Republican officeholders as ignorant field hands who had only “agricultural

degrees” and “brick yard diplomas,” but Republicans began a serious effort to rebuild and reform the region.

Activity focused on three areas — education, civil rights, and economic development. Every state inaugurated a system of public education. Before the Civil War, whites had deliberately kept slaves illiterate, and planter- dominated governments rarely spent tax money to educate the children of yeomen. By 1875, half of Mississippi’s and South Carolina’s eligible children were attending school. Although schools were underfunded, literacy rates rose sharply. Public schools were racially segregated, but education remained for many blacks a deeply satisfying benefit of freedom and Republican rule.

State legislatures also attacked racial discrimination and defended civil rights. Republicans resisted efforts to segregate blacks from whites, especially in public transportation. Mississippi levied fines and jail terms for owners of railroads and steamboats that pushed blacks into “smoking cars” or to lower decks. But passing color-blind laws was one thing; enforcing them was another. A Mississippian complained: “Education amounts to nothing, good behavior counts for nothing, even money cannot buy for a colored man or woman decent treatment and the comforts that white people claim and can obtain.” Despite the laws, segregation — later called Jim Crow — developed at white insistence. Determined to underscore the social inferiority of blacks, whites saw to it that separation by race became a feature of southern life long before the end of the Reconstruction era.

Republican governments also launched ambitious programs of economic development. They envisioned a South of diversified agriculture, roaring factories, and booming towns. State legislatures chartered scores of banks and industrial companies, appropriated funds to fix ruined levees and drain swamps, and went on a railroad-building binge. These efforts fell far short of solving the South’s economic troubles, however. Republican spending to stimulate economic growth meant rising taxes and enormous debt that siphoned funds from schools and other programs.

The southern Republicans’ record was mixed. To their credit, the biracial party adopted an ambitious agenda to change the South. But money was scarce, the Democrats continued their vicious harassment, and differences threatened the Republican Party from within. Corruption infected Republican governments. Nonetheless, the Republican Party made headway in its efforts to purge the South of aristocratic privilege and racist oppression. Republican governments had less success in overthrowing the long-established white oppression of black farm laborers in the rural South.

White Landlords, Black Sharecroppers Ex-slaves who wished to escape slave labor and ex-masters who wanted to reinstitute old oppressions clashed repeatedly. Except for having to pay subsistence wages, planters had not been required to offer many concessions to emancipation. They continued to believe that African Americans would not work without coercion. A Tennessee man declared

two years after the war ended that blacks were “a trifling set of lazy devils who will never make a living without Masters.”

Some planters were so discouraged about the prospect of farming with free black labor that they fled the South. Their determination “to get away from the free Negro” carried them around the world, but especially to Brazil, which seemed to offer the best chance of resurrecting antebellum southern society because slavery was still legal there. Firsthand experience in Brazil shocked most southern migrants, however. They found “decay” everywhere, race relations that challenged their notions of white supremacy, and most important, abolition on the horizon. By 1870, most migrating planters were back home, where they joined those who had stayed in their efforts to restore as much of slavery as they could get away with.

Ex-slaves resisted every effort to turn back the clock. They argued that if any class could be described as “lazy,” it was the planters, who, as one former slave noted, “lived in idleness all their lives on stolen labor.” Freedmen believed that land of their own would anchor their economic independence and end planters’ interference in their personal lives. They could then, for example, make their own decisions about whether women and children would labor in the fields. Indeed, within months after the war, perhaps one-third of black women abandoned field labor to work on chores in their own cabins just as poor white women did. Black women also negotiated about work ex-mistresses wanted done in the big house. Hundreds of thousands of black children enrolled in school. But without their own land, ex-slaves had little choice but to work on plantations.

Although forced to return to the planters’ fields, they resisted efforts to restore slavelike conditions. Instead of working for wages, a South Carolinian observed, “the negroes all seem disposed to rent land,” which increased their independence from whites. Out of this tug-of-war between white landlords and black laborers emerged a new system of southern agriculture.

Sharecropping was a compromise that offered something to both ex- masters and ex-slaves, but satisfied neither. Under the new system, planters divided their cotton plantations into small farms that freedmen rented, paying with a share of each year’s crop, usually half. Sharecropping gave blacks more freedom than the system of wages and labor gangs and released them from day-to-day supervision by whites. Black families abandoned the old slave quarters and built separate cabins for themselves on the land they rented (Map 16.1). Still, most black families remained dependent on white landlords, who had the power to evict them at the end of each growing season. For planters, sharecropping offered a way to resume agricultural production, but it did not allow them to restore the old slave plantation.

MAP 16.1 A Southern Plantation in 1860 and 1881

These maps of the Barrow cotton plantation in Georgia illustrate some of the ways in which ex- slaves expressed their freedom. Freedmen and freedwomen deserted the clustered living quarters behind the master’s house, scattered over the plantation, built family cabins, and farmed rented land. The former Barrow slaves also worked together to build a school and a church.

Description “In 1860,

The road goes through the middle of the plantation and across a creek. On one side of the road is the Gin House. On the other side of the road, the master’s house stands almost opposite to the Gin House, with the service and farm buildings on either side. The slave quarters, arranged in well-defined rows, stand behind the master’s house and the service and farm buildings.

In 1881,

The road goes through the middle of the plantation and across the a creek with the Gin house and the master’s house at the same location. However, the size of the house is larger. Although there are no service and farm buildings, the slave quarters are widely spread throughout the plantation, on either side of the road. A church and a school stand at one end of the plantation, next to the road.”

Sharecropping introduced the country merchant into the agricultural equation. Landlords supplied sharecroppers with land, mules, seeds, and tools, but sharecroppers also needed credit to obtain essential food and clothing before they harvested their crops. Under an arrangement called a crop lien, a merchant would advance goods in exchange for a lien, or legal claim, on the sharecropper’s future crop. Some merchants charged exorbitant rates of interest, as much as 60 percent, on the goods they sold. At the end of the growing season, after the landlord had taken half of the farmer’s crop for rent, the merchant took most of the rest. Sometimes, the farmer did not earn enough to repay the debt to the merchant, so he would have to borrow more from the merchant and begin the cycle again.

An experiment at first, sharecropping soon dominated the cotton South. Lien merchants forced tenants to plant cotton, which was easy to sell, instead of food crops. The result was excessive production of cotton and falling cotton prices, developments that cost thousands of small white farmers their land and pushed them into the great army of poor sharecroppers. The new sharecropping system of agriculture took shape just as the political power of Republicans in the South began to buckle under Democratic pressure.

��

How did Reconstruction shape politics and economic change in the South?

Why did Reconstruction collapse? By 1870, after a decade of war and reconstruction, Northerners wanted to put “the southern problem” behind them. Businessmen came to dominate the Republican Party, replacing the band of reformers and idealists who had been prominent in the 1860s. Civil War hero Ulysses S. Grant succeeded Andrew Johnson as president in 1869 and quickly became an issue himself, proving that brilliance on the battlefield does not necessarily translate into accomplishment in the White House. As northern commitment to defend black freedom eroded, southern commitment to white supremacy intensified. Without northern protection, southern Republicans were no match for the Democrats’ economic coercion, political fraud, and bloody violence. One by one, Republican state governments fell in the South. The election of 1876 both confirmed and completed the collapse of reconstruction.

Grant’s Troubled Presidency In 1868, the Republican Party’s presidential nomination went to Ulysses S. Grant, the North’s favorite general. His Democratic opponent, Horatio Seymour of New York, ran on a platform that blasted reconstruction as “a flagrant usurpation of power … unconstitutional, revolutionary, and void.” The Republicans answered by “waving the bloody shirt” — that is, they reminded voters that the Democrats were “the party of rebellion.” Despite a reign of terror in the South, costing hundreds of Republicans their lives, Grant gained a narrow 309,000-vote margin in the popular vote and a substantial victory (214 votes to 80) in the electoral college (Map 16.2).

MAP 16.2 The Election of 1868

Description “The results were as follows:

Ulysses S. Grant (Republican) won 214 electoral votes in total, 3,012,833 popular votes with the percentage of popular vote being 52.7 percent. Starting from the east, there were: 7 votes in Maine; 5 votes in New Hampshire; 5 votes in Vermont; 12 votes in Massachusetts; 4 votes in Rhode Island; 6 votes in Connecticut; 26 votes in Pennsylvania; 5 votes in West Virginia; 21 votes in Ohio; 9 votes in North Carolina; 6 votes in South Carolina; 3 votes in Florida; 8 votes in Alabama; 10 votes in Tennessee; 13 votes in Indiana; 16 votes in Illinois; 8 votes in Michigan; 8 votes in Wisconsin; 4 votes in Minnesota; 8 votes in Iowa; 11 votes in Missouri; 5 votes in Arkansas; 3 votes in Nebraska; 3 votes in Kansas; 5 votes in California; and 3 votes in Nevada.

Horatio Seymour (Democrat) won 80 electoral votes in total, 2,703,249 popular votes with the percentage of popular votes being 47.3 percent. The electoral votes included: 33 votes in New York; 7 votes in New Jersey; 3 votes in Delaware; 7 votes in Maryland; 9 votes in Georgia; 11 votes in Kentucky; 7 votes in Louisiana; and 3 votes in Oregon.

Non-voting states (Reconstruction): Virginia, Mississippi, and Texas.”

The talents Grant had demonstrated on the battlefield — decisiveness, clarity, and resolution — were less obvious in the White House. While Grant sought both justice for blacks and sectional reconciliation, he surrounded himself with fumbling kinfolk and old friends from his army days and made a string of dubious appointments that led to a series of damaging scandals. Charges of corruption tainted his vice president, Schuyler Colfax, and brought down two of his cabinet officers. Though never personally implicated in any scandal, Grant was naive and blind to the rot that filled his administration. Republican congressman James A. Garfield declared: “His imperturbability is amazing. I am in doubt whether to call it greatness or stupidity.”

In 1872, anti-Grant Republicans bolted and launched the Liberal Party. To clean up the corruption, Liberals proposed ending the spoils system, by which victorious parties rewarded loyal workers with public office, and replacing it with a nonpartisan civil service commission that would oversee competitive examinations for appointment to office. Liberals also demanded that the federal government remove its troops from the South and restore “home rule” (southern white control). Democrats liked the Liberals’ southern policy and endorsed the Liberal presidential candidate, Horace Greeley, the longtime editor of the New York Tribune. The nation, however, still felt enormous affection for the man who had saved the Union and reelected Grant with 56 percent of the popular vote.

Northern Resolve Withers Although Grant genuinely wanted to protect blacks’ civil and political rights, he understood that most Northerners had grown weary of reconstruction. Citizens wanted to shift their attention to other issues, especially after the nation slipped into a devastating economic depression in 1873. More than eighteen thousand businesses collapsed, leaving more than a million workers on the streets. Northern businessmen wanted to invest in the South but believed that repeated federal intrusion was itself a major cause of instability in the region. Republican leaders began to question the wisdom of their party’s alliance with the South’s lower classes — its small farmers and sharecroppers. One member of Grant’s administration proposed allying with the “thinking and influential native southerners … the intelligent, well-to-do, and controlling class.”

Congress, too, wanted to leave reconstruction behind, but southern Republicans made that difficult. When the South’s Republicans begged for federal protection from increasing Klan violence, Congress enacted three laws in 1870 and 1871 that were intended to break the back of white terrorism. The severest of the three, the Ku Klux Klan Act (1871), made interference with voting rights a felony. Federal marshals arrested thousands of Klansmen and came close to destroying the Klan, but they did not end terrorism against blacks. Congress also passed the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which boldly outlawed racial discrimination in transportation, public accommodations, and juries. Federal authorities never enforced the law aggressively, however, and segregation remained the rule throughout the South.

By the early 1870s, the Republican Party had lost its leading champions of African American rights to death or defeat at the polls. Other Republicans concluded that the quest for black equality was mistaken or hopelessly naive. In May 1872, Congress restored the right of officeholding to all but three hundred ex-rebels. Many Republicans had come to believe that traditional white leaders offered the best hope for honesty, order, and prosperity in the South.

Underlying the North’s abandonment of reconstruction was unyielding racial prejudice. Northerners had learned to accept black freedom during the war, but deep-seated prejudice prevented many from accepting black equality. Even the actions they took on behalf of blacks often served partisan political advantage. Northerners generally supported Indiana senator Thomas A. Hendricks’s harsh declaration that “this is a white man’s Government, made by the white man for the white man.”

The U.S. Supreme Court also did its part to undermine reconstruction. The Court issued a series of decisions that significantly weakened the federal government’s ability to protect black Southerners. In the Slaughterhouse cases (1873), the Court distinguished between national and state citizenship and ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment protected only those rights that stemmed from the federal government, such as voting in federal elections and interstate travel. Since the Court decided that most rights derived from the states, it sharply curtailed the federal government’s authority to defend black citizens. Even more devastating, the United States v. Cruikshank ruling (1876) said that the reconstruction amendments gave Congress the power to legislate against discrimination only by states, not by individuals.

The “suppression of ordinary crime,” such as assault, remained a state responsibility. The Supreme Court did not declare reconstruction unconstitutional but eroded its legal foundation.

The mood of the North found political expression in the election of 1874, when for the first time in eighteen years the Democrats gained control of the House of Representatives. As one Republican observed, the people had grown tired of the “negro question, with all its complications, and the reconstruction of Southern States, with all its interminable embroilments.” Rather than defend reconstruction from its southern enemies, Northerners steadily backed away from the challenge. By the early 1870s, southern Republicans faced the forces of southern racism largely on their own.

White Supremacy Triumphs To most white Southerners, Reconstruction meant intolerable insults: Black militiamen patrolled town streets, black laborers negotiated contracts with former masters, black maids stood up to former mistresses, black voters cast ballots, and black legislators such as James T. Rapier helped enact laws. Whites fought back by extolling the “great Confederate cause,” or Lost Cause. They celebrated their soldiers, “the noblest band of men who ever fought,” and made an idol of Robert E. Lee, the embodiment of the southern gentleman.

But the most important way white Southerners responded to reconstruction was their assault on Republican governments in the South. These biracial governments attracted more hatred than did any other political regimes in

American history. The northern retreat from reconstruction permitted southern Democrats to set things right. Taking the name Redeemers, Democrats in the South promised to replace “bayonet rule” (a few federal troops continued to be stationed in the South) with “home rule.” They promised that honest, thrifty Democrats would supplant corrupt tax-and- spend Republicans. Above all, Redeemers swore to save southern civilization from a descent into “African barbarism.” As one man put it, “We must render this either a white man’s government, or convert the land into a Negro man’s cemetery.”

Southern Democrats adopted a multipronged strategy to overthrow Republican governments. First, they sought to polarize the parties around race. They went about gathering all the South’s white voters into the Democratic Party, leaving the Republicans to depend on blacks, who made up a minority of the population in almost every southern state. To dislodge whites from the Republican Party, Democrats fanned the flames of racism. A South Carolina Democrat crowed that his party appealed to the “proud Caucasian race, whose sovereignty on earth God has proclaimed.”

Democrats also exploited the severe economic plight of small white farmers by blaming it on Republicans. Government spending soared during Reconstruction, and small farmers saw their tax burden skyrocket. “This is tax time,” a South Carolinian reported. “They are so high & so little money to pay with” that farmers were “selling every egg and chicken they can get.” In 1871, Mississippi reported that one-seventh of the state’s land — 3.3 million acres — had been forfeited for nonpayment of taxes. The small farmers’ economic distress had a racial dimension. Because few freedmen

succeeded in acquiring land, they rarely paid taxes. In Georgia in 1874, blacks made up 45 percent of the population but paid only 2 percent of the taxes. From the perspective of a small white farmer, Republican rule meant that he was not only paying more taxes but paying them to aid blacks.

If racial pride and financial hardship proved insufficient to drive yeomen from the Republican Party, Democrats turned to terrorism. “Night riders” targeted white Republicans as well as blacks for murder and assassination. Whether white or black, a “dead Radical is very harmless,” South Carolina Democratic leader Martin Gary told his followers.

Still, the primary victims of white violence were black Republicans. Violence escalated to an unprecedented ferocity on Easter Sunday in 1873 in tiny Colfax, Louisiana. When Democrats turned to fraud to win a local election, black Republicans refused to accept the result and occupied the courthouse. After three weeks, 165 white men attacked and set the courthouse on fire. When the blacks tried to surrender, the attackers murdered them. At least 81 black men were slaughtered that day. Although the federal government indicted the white killers, the Supreme Court ruled that it did not have the right to prosecute. And since local whites would not prosecute neighbors who killed blacks, the defendants in the Colfax massacre went free.

“Of Course He Wants to Vote the Democratic Ticket” This Republican cartoon from the October 21, 1876, issue of Harper’s Weekly comments sarcastically on the possibility of honest elections in the South. The caption reads: “You’re free as air, ain’t you? Say you are or I’ll blow yer black head off.” The cartoon demonstrates not only some Northerners’ concern that violence would deliver the election to the Democrats but also the perception that white Southerners were crude, drunken, ignorant brutes.

Description Two ballot boxes are on a table in front of them with a liquor bottle beside them. The black man is holding a Democratic ticket in his hand. White men look on from behind them.

Even before adopting the all-out white supremacist tactics of the 1870s, Democrats had taken control of the governments of Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina. The new campaign brought fresh gains. The

Redeemers retook Georgia in 1871, Texas in 1873, and Arkansas and Alabama in 1874. As the state election approached in Mississippi in 1876, the Republican governor appealed to Washington for federal troops to control the violence, only to hear from the attorney general that the “whole public are tired of these annual autumnal outbreaks in the South.” Abandoned, Mississippi Republicans succumbed to the Democratic onslaught in the fall elections. By 1876, only three Republican state governments survived in the South (Map 16.3).

MAP 16.3 The Reconstruction of the South

Myth has it that Republican rule of the former Confederacy was not only harsh but long. In most states, however, conservative southern whites stormed back into power in months or just a few years. By the election of 1876, Republican governments could be found in only three states, and they soon fell.

Description “The map mentions the date of readmission to the union and the date of reestablishment of conservative government in the eleven states.

Former confederate states: Texas; Arkansas; Louisiana; Mississippi; Alabama; Georgia; Florida; South Carolina; North Carolina; Virginia; and Tennessee.

Date of readmission to the Union: Texas was readmitted in 1870; Arkansas in 1868; Louisiana in 1868; Mississippi in 1870; Alabama in 1868; Georgia in 1870; Florida in 1868; South Carolina in 1868; North Carolina in 1868; Virginia in 1870; and Tennessee in 1866.

Date of reestablishment of conservative government: Texas re-established its government in 1873; Arkansas in 1874; Louisiana in 1877; Mississippi in 1876; Alabama in 1874; Georgia in 1871; Florida in 1877; South Carolina in 1876; North Carolina in 1870; Virginia in 1869; and Tennessee in 1869.”

An Election and a Compromise The year 1876 witnessed one of the most chaotic elections in American history. The election took place in November, but not until March 2 of the following year did the nation know who would be inaugurated president on March 4. Sixteen years after Lincoln’s election, Americans feared that a presidential election would again precipitate civil war.

The Democrats nominated New York’s governor, Samuel J. Tilden, who targeted the corruption of the Grant administration and the “despotism” of Republican reconstruction. The Republicans put forward Rutherford B. Hayes, governor of Ohio. Privately, Hayes considered “bayonet rule” a mistake but concluded that waving the bloody shirt remained the Republicans’ best political strategy.

On election day, Tilden tallied 4,288,590 votes to Hayes’s 4,036,298. But in the all-important electoral college, Tilden fell one vote short of the majority required for victory. The electoral votes of three states — South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida, the only remaining Republican governments in the South — remained in doubt because both Republicans and Democrats in those states claimed victory. To win, Tilden needed only one of the nineteen contested votes. Hayes had to have all of them.

Congress had to decide who had actually won the elections in the three southern states and thus who would be president. The Constitution provided no guidance. Democrats controlled the House, and Republicans controlled the Senate. Congress created a special electoral commission to arbitrate the disputed returns. All of the commissioners voted their party affiliation, giving every state to the Republican Hayes and putting him over the top in electoral votes (Map 16.4).

MAP 16.4 The Election of 1876

Description “The map shows that Samuel J. Tilden (Democrat) lost the electoral vote but won the popular vote by margin as opposed to Rutherford B. Hayes (Republican) in the Presidential elections held in America in 1876.

Rutherford B. Hayes (Republican) won 185 electoral votes in total. They included: 7 were in Maine; 5 votes in New Hampshire; 5 votes in Vermont; 13 votes in Massachusetts; 29 votes in Pennsylvania; 22 votes in Ohio; 7 votes in South Carolina; 4 votes in Florida; 8 votes in Louisiana (in South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana 19 votes were disputed); 21 votes in Illinois; 11 votes in Michigan; 10 votes in Wisconsin; 5 votes in Minnesota; 11 votes in Iowa; 3 votes in Nebraska; 5 votes in Kansas; 3 votes in Colorado; 6 votes in California; 3 votes in Oregon; and 3 votes in Nevada.

Samuel J. Tilden (Democrat) won 184 votes in total. These were: 35 votes in New York; 4 votes in Rhode Island; 6 votes in Connecticut; 9 votes in New Jersey; 3 votes in Delaware; 8 votes in Maryland; 5 votes in West Virginia; 11 votes in Virginia; 10 votes in North Carolina; 8 votes in Mississippi; 10 votes in Alabama; 11 votes in Georgia; 12 votes in Tennessee; 12 votes in Kentucky; 15 votes in Indiana; 8 votes in Texas; 15 votes in Missouri; and 6 votes in Arkansas.

Rutherford got 4,036,298 popular votes, which is 49.7 percent of the total popular votes as opposed to 4,288,590 popular votes, 51 percent for Samuel.”

Some outraged Democrats vowed to resist Hayes’s victory. Rumors flew of an impending coup and renewed civil war. But the impasse was broken when negotiations behind the scenes resulted in an informal understanding known as the Compromise of 1877. In exchange for a Democratic promise not to block Hayes’s inauguration and to deal fairly with the freedmen, Hayes vowed to refrain from using the army to uphold the remaining

Republican regimes in the South and to provide the South with substantial federal subsidies for railroads.

Stubborn Tilden supporters bemoaned the “stolen election” and damned “His Fraudulency,” Rutherford B. Hayes. Old-guard Radicals such as William Lloyd Garrison denounced Hayes’s bargain as a “policy of compromise, of credulity, of weakness, of subserviency, of surrender.” But the nation as a whole celebrated, for the country had weathered a grave crisis. The last three Republican state governments in the South fell quickly once Hayes withdrew the U.S. Army. Reconstruction came to an end.

��

How did the Supreme Court undermine Reconstruction?

Conclusion: Was Reconstruction “a revolution but half accomplished”? In 1865, when General Carl Schurz visited the South, he discovered, he said, “a revolution but half accomplished.” White Southerners resisted the passage from slavery to free labor, from white racial despotism to equal justice, and from white political monopoly to biracial democracy. The old elite wanted to get “things back as near to slavery as possible,” Schurz reported, while African Americans such as James T. Rapier and some whites were eager to exploit the revolutionary implications of defeat and emancipation.

Although the northern-dominated Republican Congress refused to provide for blacks’ economic welfare, it employed constitutional amendments to require ex-Confederates to accept legal equality and share political power with black men. Congress was not willing to extend such power to women, however. Conservative southern whites fought ferociously to recover their power and privilege. When Democrats regained control of politics, whites used both state power and private violence to wipe out many of the gains of Reconstruction, leading one observer to conclude that the North had won the war but the South had won the peace.

The Redeemer counterrevolution, however, did not mean a return to slavery. Northern victory in the Civil War ensured that ex-slaves no longer faced the auction block and could send their children to school, worship in their own churches, and work independently on their own rented farms. Sharecropping, with all its hardships, provided more autonomy and

economic welfare than bondage had. It was limited freedom, to be sure, but it was not slavery.

The Civil War and emancipation set in motion the most profound upheaval in the nation’s history. War destroyed the largest slave society in the New World. The world of masters and slaves gave way to that of landlords and sharecroppers. Washington increased its role in national affairs, and the victorious North set the nation’s compass toward the expansion of industrial capitalism and the final conquest of the West.

Despite massive changes, however, the Civil War remained only a “half accomplished” revolution. By not fulfilling the promises, the nation seemed to hold out to black Americans at war’s end, Reconstruction represents a tragedy of enormous proportions. The failure to protect blacks and guarantee their rights had enduring consequences. It was the failure of the first reconstruction that made the modern civil rights movement necessary.

Chapter Review

��

Freedmen’s Bureau black codes Civil Rights Act of 1866 Fourteenth Amendment Military Reconstruction Act Fifteenth Amendment carpetbaggers scalawag Ku Klux Klan sharecropping Redeemers Compromise of 1877

�� Presidential and Congressional Reconstruction

What role did the black codes play in shaping the course of Reconstruction?

What steps did Congress take between 1865 and 1869 to assist ex-slaves in their lives as freedmen? Were these actions effective?

Southern Reconstruction in Action

How did white Southerners respond during Reconstruction? Consider both Democrats and Republicans in your response.

How did southern African Americans attempt to shape their own lives during Reconstruction?

The End of Reconstruction

How and why did the decline of northern support for Reconstruction help southern Democrats “redeem” the South?

Why did white supremacy become the foundation of southern politics in the 1870s?

�� , ��

How did long-held racial views among whites, in both the South and the North, shape Reconstruction?

What were the lasting accomplishments of Reconstruction? What were its most important failures?

��

1863 Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction pardons most rebels.

1864 Lincoln refuses to sign Wade-Davis bill.

1865 Freedmen’s Bureau established. Lincoln assassinated; Andrew Johnson becomes president. First black codes enacted. Thirteenth Amendment becomes part of Constitution.

1866 Civil Rights Act passes. Congress approves Fourteenth Amendment. American Equal Rights Association founded. Ku Klux Klan founded.

1867 Military Reconstruction Act passes. Tenure of Office Act passes. Southern African Americans gain voting rights under Military Reconstruction Act. Southern states hold elections for state convention delegates.

1868 Impeachment trial of President Johnson held.

Ulysses S. Grant elected president. 1869

Congress approves Fifteenth Amendment. 1871

Ku Klux Klan Act passes. 1872

Liberal Party formed. President Grant reelected.

1873 Economic depression sets in. Slaughterhouse cases decided. Colfax massacre kills more than eighty blacks.

1874 Democrats win majority in House of Representatives.

1875 One-half of South Carolina’s and Mississippi’s children, the majority black, attend school. Sharecropping is dominant labor system for rural southern blacks.

1877 Republican Rutherford B. Hayes inaugurated president and Reconstruction ends.

�� 17 �� 1865–1900

�� This chapter will explore the following questions:

What did U.S. expansion mean for Native Americans? In what ways did different Indian groups defy and resist colonial rule? How did mining shape American expansion? How did the fight for land and resources in the West unfold? Conclusion: How did the West set the tone for the Gilded Age?

�� TO CELEBRATE THE 400TH ANNIVERSARY OF COLUMBUS’S VOYAGE TO the New World, Chicago hosted the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, creating a magical White City on the shores of Lake Michigan. Among the organizations vying to hold meetings at the fair was the American Historical Association, whose members gathered on a warm July evening to hear Frederick Jackson Turner deliver his landmark essay “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.” Turner began by noting that the 1890 census no longer discerned a clear frontier line. His tone was elegiac: “The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of settlement westward,” he observed, “explained American development.”

Turner, who studied the old frontier east of the Mississippi, viewed the West as a process as much as a place. The availability of land provided a “safety valve,” releasing social tensions and providing opportunities for social mobility that worked to Americanize Americans. Turner’s West demanded strength and nerve, fostered invention and adaptation, and produced self-confident, individualistic Americans. His frontier thesis underscored the exceptionalism of America’s history, highlighting its difference from the colonialism practiced by European powers in Asia and Africa.

Yet the historians who applauded Turner in Chicago had short memories. That afternoon, many had crossed the midway to attend

Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West extravaganza — a cowboys-and-Indians shoot-’em-up. The historians cheering in the stands that hot afternoon no doubt dismissed Buffalo Bill’s history as amateur, but he made a point that Turner glossed over: The West was neither free nor open. It was the story of a fierce and violent contest for land and resources.

In the decades following the Civil War, the United States pursued empire in the American West in Indian wars that lasted until 1890. Pushed off their land and onto reservations, Native Americans resisted as they faced waves of miners and settlers as well as the degradation of the environment by railroads, mines, barbed wire, and mechanized agriculture. The Sioux and the Zulu in South Africa were just two of the most colorful losers in the fierce world contest for land and resources that fueled imperial adventures.

The mythic pastoral agrarianism Turner celebrated in his frontier thesis clashed with the reality of the urban, industrial West emerging on the Comstock Lode in Nevada and in the commercial farms of California. Turner’s rugged white “frontiersman” masked the racial diversity of the West and failed to acknowledge the role of women in community building.

Yet in the waning decade of the nineteenth century, as history blurred with nostalgia, Turner’s evocation of the frontier as a crucible for American identity hit a nerve in a population facing rapid changes. A major depression started even before the Columbian Exposition opened its doors. Americans worried about the economy, immigration, and

urban industrialism found in Turner’s message a new cause for concern. Would America continue to be America now that the frontier was closed?

What did U.S. expansion mean for Native Americans? While the European powers expanded their authority and wealth through imperialism and colonialism in far-flung empires abroad, the United States focused its attention on its own western lands. From the U.S. Army attack on the Dakota Sioux in the Santee Uprising to the expropriation of the Black Hills, whites pushed Indians aside as they moved west. Frederick Jackson Turner’s American exceptionalism stressed how the history of the United States differed from that of European nations, citing America’s western frontier as a cause. Yet expansion in the trans-Mississippi West involved the conquest, displacement, and rule over native peoples — a process best understood in the global context of imperialism and colonialism.

The U.S. government, through trickery and conquest, forced tribes off their lands (Map 17.1) and onto designated Indian territories or reservations. The Indian wars depleted the Native American population and handed most Indian land to white settlers. The decimation of the bison herds pushed the Plains Indians onto reservations, where they lived as wards of the state.

MAP 17.1 The Loss of Indian Lands, 1850–1890

By 1890, western Indians were isolated on small, scattered reservations. Native Americans had struggled to retain their land in major battles, from the Great Sioux Uprising in Minnesota in 1862 to the massacre at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1890.

Description “As much as half of the United States on the east were Ceded by the following Indian tribes’ before 1850: Menominee and Winnebago tribes from Wisconsin, Sauk and Dox tribes from Iowa, Pawnee tribe from Nebraska, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Caddo tribe from Louisiana, and East of Texas, and Michigan.

Between 1850 and 1870 most of the central and western regions were ceded by the following tribes: Quinault, Chinook, Yakima, Salish tribes from Washington; Walla Walla, Umpqua, and Coos tribes from Oregon; Huia and Yurok, Maidu, Pomo, Chumash, and Serrano tribes from California; Idaho, Nez Perce tribe belonging to Idaho; Ute from Utah Territory; Shoshoni tribe from Wyoming; Navajo and Hopi tribes from Arizona Territory;

Arapaho and Cheyenne tribes from Colorado; Sioux tribe from the borders of South Dakota; Tonkawa tribe from Texas and Chippewa from Minnesota.

The following tribes ceded their territories between 1870 and 1890: Paiute tribe from the boarders of Nevada , Havasupai, Mohave, Yuma, Pima tribes from Arizona Territory; Zuni, Taos, and Pueblo tribes from New Mexico city; Apache tribe from Texas; Sioux tribe from North Dakota, Arikara, Black hills, Sioux, and Cheyenne from Wyoming.

Reservations, 1890: Indian Territory, Creek, Chickasaw, Seminole, Choctaw, Cherokee, and Osage on the south. Navajo, Hopi, San Calos, Parts of Utah territory, Wyoming on the West. Colville, Blackfoot, Yakima, Umpqua, Huia, Montana, Mandan, Sioux, and Chippewa on the North.

Battles: Skeleton Canyon Geronimo surrenders, 1886 on the south, Sand Creek Massacre 1864, Pine Ridge sitting bull killed 1890, Wounded Knee Massacre 1890, Fetterman’s defeat 1886, Little Big Horn 1876, Bear paw mountain Chief Joseph surrenders, 1877, and Great Sioux Uprising 1862.”

Indian Removal and the Reservation System Manifest destiny — the belief that the United States had a “God-given” right to aggressively spread the values of white civilization and expand the nation from ocean to ocean — dictated U.S. policy toward Indians and other nations. In the name of manifest destiny, Americans demanded the removal of the Five Civilized Tribes of the South (the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole peoples) to Oklahoma in the 1830s; colonized Texas and won its independence from Mexico in 1836; conquered California, Arizona, New Mexico, and parts of Utah and Colorado in the Mexican-American War of 1846–1848; invaded Oregon in the mid-1840s;

and paid Mexico for land in Arizona and New Mexico in the Gadsden Purchase of 1854.

By midcentury, western lands no longer seemed inexhaustible. Hordes of settlers crossed the Great Plains on their way to the goldfields of California or the rich farmland of Washington and Oregon. In their path stood a solid wall of Indian land. To solve this “Indian problem,” the U.S. government took Indian lands with the promise to pay annuities in return and put the Indians on lands reserved for their use — reservations. In 1851, some ten thousand Plains Indians came together at Fort Laramie in Wyoming to negotiate a treaty that ceded a wide swath of their land to allow whites passage to the West. In return, the government lavished the Indians with gifts and promised to prevent settlers from trespassing onto Indian land.

The Indians who “touched the pen” to the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie hoped to preserve their land and culture in the face of the white onslaught. Settlers and miners cut down trees, polluted streams, and killed off the bison. Whites brought alcohol, guns, and something even more deadly — disease. Between 1780 and 1870, the population of the Plains tribes declined by half. “If I could see this thing, if I knew where it came from, I would go there and fight it,” a Cheyenne warrior anguished. Disease shifted the power from woodland agrarian tribes, whose proximity to whites meant they died at high rates, to the Lakota (Western) Sioux, who fled the contagion by pursuing an equestrian nomadic existence that displaced weaker tribes in the western plains.

Ute Chief and His Family Ute chief Sevaro and three generations of his family posed for this studio portrait in Denver in 1885. The patriarch wears a suit, vest, white neckerchief, and hat, while his family members dress in traditional Indian clothing, the sons in quill shirts, braids, and feathers. The women wear mantuas over their dresses. The babies rest on cradleboards decorated with fringe. The woman in the center holds an Anglo purse with a chain handle. The mix of native and Anglo clothing shows the impact of acculturation.

Description The chief is standing with his two sons on either side in the top row. Three women are sitting in front of them along with a little girl. Two babies, inside cradleboards, are on either end.

In the Southwest, the Navajo people, in a removal similar to that of the Cherokee, endured a forced march called the “Long Walk” from their homeland to the desolate Bosque Redondo Reservation in New Mexico in 1864. “This ground we were brought on, it is not productive,” complained the Navajo leader Barboncito. “All the stock we brought here have nearly all died.”

Poverty and starvation stalked the reservations. Confined by armed force, the Indians eked out an existence on stingy government rations. Styled as stepping-stones to “civilization,” Indian reservations closely resembled colonial societies where native populations, ruled by outside bureaucrats, saw their culture assaulted, their religious practices outlawed, their children sent away to schools, and their way of life attacked in the name of progress.

To Americans raised on theories of racial superiority, the Indians, in the words of one Colorado militia major, constituted “an obstacle to civilization … [and] should be exterminated.” This attitude pervaded the military. As a result, the massacre of Native American men, women, and children became commonplace in the West. In November 1864 at Sand Creek in Colorado Territory, Colonel John M. Chivington and his militia descended on a village of Cheyenne, mostly old men, women, and children. Their leader, Black Kettle, raised a white flag and an American flag to signal surrender, but the charging cavalry ignored his signal and butchered 270 Indians.

Chivington watched as his men scalped and mutilated their victims and later justified the killing of Indian children with the terse remark, “Nits make

lice.” The city of Denver feted Chivington and his men as heroes, but a congressional inquiry eventually castigated the soldiers for their “fiendish malignity” and condemned the “savage cruelty” of the massacre. Four years later, Black Kettle, who had survived Sand Creek, died in another massacre when George Armstrong Custer slaughtered more than one hundred people on the banks of the Washita River in Oklahoma.

The Decimation of the Great Bison Herds After the Civil War, the accelerating pace of industrial expansion brought about the near extinction of the American bison (buffalo). By 1850, the dynamic ecology of the Great Plains, with its droughts, fires, and blizzards, along with the demands of Indian buffalo-robe traders as well as whites and their cattle, had already driven the bison herds onto the far western plains.

In the 1870s, industrial demand for heavy leather belting used in machinery along with the development of larger, more accurate rifles combined to hasten the slaughter of the bison. The nation’s transcontinental railroad systems cut the range in two and divided the dwindling herds. For the Sioux and other nomadic tribes of the plains, the buffalo constituted a way of life — a source of food, fuel, and shelter and a central part of religion and ritual. Railroad owners, however, considered bison a nuisance — at best a cheap source of meat for their workers and a target for sport.

Although the army took credit for the conquest of the Plains Indians, the decimation of the great bison herds proved largely responsible for the

Indians’ fate. With their food supply gone, Indians had to choose between starvation and the reservation. “A cold wind blew across the prairie when the last buffalo fell,” the great Sioux leader Sitting Bull lamented, “a death wind for my people.”

On the southern plains in 1867, more than five thousand warring Comanches, Kiowas, and Southern Arapahos gathered at Medicine Lodge Creek in Kansas to negotiate the Treaty of Medicine Lodge, hoping to preserve limited land and hunting by moving to a reservation. Three years after the treaty became law, hide hunters poured into the region; within a decade, they had nearly exterminated the southern bison herds. Luther Standing Bear recounted the sight and stench: “I saw the bodies of hundreds of dead buffalo lying about, just wasting, and the odor was terrible…. They were letting our food lie on the plains to rot.” Once an estimated 40 million bison roamed the West; by 1895, fewer than 1,000 remained. With the buffalo gone, the Indians faced starvation and reluctantly moved onto the reservations.

The Santee Uprising and the Collapse of Comanchería The Indian wars in the West marked the last resistance of a Native American population devastated by disease and demoralized by the federal government’s reservation policy. The Dakota Sioux in Minnesota went to war in 1862. For years, under the leadership of Chief Little Crow, the Dakota — also known as the Santee — had pursued a policy of accommodation, ceding land in return for the promise of annuities. But with

his people on the verge of starvation (the local Indian agent told the hungry Dakota, “Go and eat grass”), Little Crow led his angry warriors in a desperate campaign against the intruders, killing more than 1,000 settlers. American troops quelled the Great Sioux Uprising (also called the Santee Uprising) and marched 1,700 Sioux to Fort Snelling, where 400 Indians went on trial for murder and 38 died in the largest mass execution in American history.

Further west, the great Indian empire of Comanchería had once stretched from the Canadian plains to Mexico. By 1865, after two decades of what one historian has labeled “ethnic cleansing,” fewer than five thousand Comanches remained in west Texas and Oklahoma. Through decades of dealings with the Spanish and French, the Comanche had built a complex empire based on trade in horses, hides, guns, and captives. Expert riders, the Comanche waged war in the saddle, giving the U.S. Cavalry reason to hate and fear them.

After the Civil War, President Ulysses S. Grant faced the prospect of protracted Indian war. Reluctant to spend more money and sacrifice more lives, Grant adopted a “peace policy” designed to segregate and control the Indians while opening up land to white settlers. This policy won the support of both friends of the Indians and those who coveted the Indians’ land. The army herded the Indians onto reservations (see Map 17.1), where the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs hired agents who, in the words of Paiute Sarah Winnemucca, did “nothing but fill their pockets.”

In 1871, Congress determined to no longer deal with Indians as sovereign nations but to eliminate treaties and treat Indians as wards of the state. Grant’s peace policy in the West gave way to all-out warfare, as the U.S. Army dispatched 3,000 soldiers to wipe out the remains of Comanchería. Raiding parties of Comanche had virtually obliterated white settlements in west Texas. To defeat the Indians, the army adopted the practice of burning and destroying everything in its path, using the tactics that General William Tecumseh Sherman had perfected in his march through Georgia during the Civil War. At the decisive battle of Palo Duro Canyon in 1874, only three Comanche warriors died in battle, but U.S. soldiers took the Indians’ camp; burned more than 200 tepees, hundreds of robes and blankets, and thousands of pounds of winter supplies; and shot more than 1,000 horses. Coupled with the decimation of the bison, the army’s scorched-earth policy led to the final collapse of the Comanche people. The surviving Indians of Comanchería, now numbering fewer than 1,500, reluctantly retreated to the reservation at Fort Sill.

Red Cloud’s War and the Fight for the Black Hills On the northern plains the Lakota Sioux chief Red Cloud surveyed the situation in 1866. “When the Great Father at Washington sent us his chief soldier to ask for a path through our hunting ground, a way for his iron road to the mountains and the western sea, we were told that they wished merely to pass through our country, not to tarry among us, but to seek for gold in the far west.” But the 1851 Treaty of Ft. Laramie fell casualty to gold discoveries in Montana. Migrants flocked to the Powder River basin, the

traditional hunting grounds of the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho. “[T]he Great Father is building his forts among us. You have the heard the sound of the white soldier’s ax upon the Little Piney,” Red Cloud lamented. Incensed by this “insult and threat to the spirits of our ancestors,” the great chief sounded the war cry. “Are we then to give up their sacred graves to be plowed for corn? Dakotas, I am for war!”

For the next year, Red Cloud, with the help of the legendary Crazy Horse and other young warriors, waged a tormenting campaign of guerrilla warfare against the army and its forts along the Bozeman Trail, known as Red Cloud’s War. Taunting braves lured cavalry into ambush time and again. Although early on the Indians lacked guns, they were rarely outshot. A skilled brave could fire off a dozen arrows in the time it took a hapless soldier to reload his single-shot rifle. Eyewitness accounts told of one battlefield corpse riddled with over 120 arrows. As the Indians obtained modern firearms through battle and in trade, they became even more formidable foes.

Indians took revenge for the Sand Creek massacre in December 1866, when they wiped out Ft. Kearney’s cavalry led by Captain William Fetterman, a decorated soldier who had boasted that with 80 men he could ride though Sioux territory. Fetterman and his troops faced slaughter when they followed Crazy Horse and a small decoy force into a mass of Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho estimated at up to 1,000 braves. In the wake of the battle, women mutilated the army corpses. The Indians believed that gouging out eyeballs and cutting off noses and genitals would prevent the sprits of the dead from enjoying the afterlife.

After the Fetterman massacre the army capitulated, abandoning its forts and the Bozeman Trail. Red Cloud could claim to be the only Indian chief to successfully wage war against the United States. The Indians’ impressive victories led to the second Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868, in which the United States guaranteed the Indians control of the Black Hills, land sacred to the Lakota Sioux.

The government’s fork-tongued promises induced some of the tribes to accept the treaty. Red Cloud led many of his people onto the reservation, but he soon regretted his action. “Think of it!” he told a visitor to the Pine Ridge Reservation. “I, who used to own … country so extensive that I could not ride through it in a week … must tell Washington when I am hungry. I must beg for that which I own.” On a visit to Washington, D.C., in 1870, Red Cloud told the secretary of the interior, “We are melting like snow on the hillside, while you are grown like spring grass…. When the white man comes in my country he leaves a trail of blood behind him.” Sioux leadership passed to Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, who refused to sign the treaty and called for armed resistance. Crazy Horse later declared that he wanted no part of the “piecemeal penning” of his people.

In 1874, the discovery of gold in the Black Hills led the government to break its promise to Red Cloud. Miners began pouring into the Dakotas, and the Northern Pacific Railroad made plans to lay tracks. At first, the government offered to purchase the Black Hills. But the Sioux refused to sell. The army responded by issuing an ultimatum ordering all Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne bands onto the Pine Ridge Reservation and threatening to hunt down those who refused.

In the summer of 1876, the army launched a three-pronged attack led by Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, General George Crook, and Colonel John Gibbon. Crazy Horse stopped Crook at the Battle of the Rosebud. Custer, leading the second prong of the army’s offensive, divided his Seventh Cavalry troops and ordered an attack. On June 25, he spotted signs of the Indians’ camp. Crying “Hurrah boys, we’ve got them,” he charged into the largest gathering of Indians ever assembled on the Great Plains — more than 8,000 — camped along the banks of the Greasy Grass River. Indian warriors led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse set upon Custer and his two hundred troopers and quickly annihilated them. “It took us about as long as a hungry man to eat his dinner,” the Cheyenne chief Two Moons recalled.

“Custer’s Last Stand,” or the Battle of the Little Big Horn, soon became part of national mythology. But it proved to be the last stand for the Sioux. The nomadic bands that had massed at the Little Big Horn scattered, and the army hunted them down. “Wherever we went,” wrote the Oglala holy man Black Elk, “the soldiers came to kill us.” In 1877, Crazy Horse was captured and killed. Four years later, Sitting Bull surrendered. The government took the Black Hills and confined the Lakota to the reservation. The Sioux never accepted the loss of the Black Hills. In 1923, they filed suit, demanding the return of the land taken from them. After a protracted court battle lasting nearly sixty years, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1980 that the government had illegally violated the Treaty of Fort Laramie. Declaring “a more ripe and rank case of dishonorable dealings will never, in all probability, be found in our history,” the Court awarded the tribes $122.5

million. The Sioux refused the settlement and continue to press for the return of the Black Hills.

��

How did the slaughter of the bison contribute to the Plains Indians’ removal to reservations?

In what ways did different Indian groups defy and resist colonial rule? Imperialistic attitudes of whites toward Indians continued to evolve in the late nineteenth century. To “civilize” the Indians, the U.S. government sought to force assimilation on their children. Reservations became increasingly unpopular among whites who coveted Indian land and among friends of the Indians appalled by the conditions on the reservations. A new policy of allotment gained favor. It promised to put Indians on parcels of land, forcing them into farming, and then to redistribute the remaining land to white settlers. In the face of this ongoing assault on their way of life, Indians actively resisted, contested, and adapted to colonial rule.

Indian Schools and the War on Indian Culture Indian schools constituted the cultural battleground of the Indian wars in the West, their avowed purpose being, in the words of one of their supporters, to “kill the Indian … and save the man.” In 1877, Congress appropriated funds for Indian education, reasoning, in the words of one congressman, that it was less expensive to educate Indians than to kill them. That education effort focused on Native American boys and girls from toddlers to teenagers. Virginia’s Hampton Institute, created in 1868 to school newly freed slaves, accepted its first Indian students in 1878. Although many Indian schools operated on the reservations, authorities much preferred

boarding facilities that isolated students from the “contamination” of tribal values.

Many Native American parents resisted sending their children away. When all else failed, the military kidnapped the children and sent them off to school. An agent at the Mescalero Apache Agency in Arizona Territory reported in 1886 that “it became necessary to visit the camps unexpectedly with a detachment of police, and seize such children as were proper and take them away to school, willing or unwilling.” The parents put up a struggle. “Some hurried their children off to the mountains or hid them away in camp, and the police had to chase and capture them like so many wild rabbits,” the agent observed. “This unusual proceeding created quite an outcry. The men were sullen and muttering, the women loud in their lamentations and the children almost out of their wits with fright.”

Once at school, the children were stripped and scrubbed, their clothing and belongings confiscated, and their hair hacked off and doused with kerosene to kill lice. Issued stiff new uniforms, shoes, and what Luther Standing Bear recalled as the “torture” of woolen long underwear, the children often lost not only their possessions but also their names. Children were asked to stand at the blackboard, take a pointer, and select a proper English name, recalled Standing Bear, who immediately became Luther.

The Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, founded in 1879, became the model for later institutions. To encourage assimilation, Carlisle pioneered the “outing system” — sending students to live with white families during summer vacations. The policy reflected the school’s slogan: “To civilize the

Indian, get him into civilization. To keep him civilized, let him stay.” The curriculum featured agricultural and manual arts for boys and domestic skills for girls, training designed to eliminate Indians’ dependence on government support.

Merrill Gates, a member of the Board of Indian Commissioners, summed up the goal of Indian education: “To get the Indian out of the blanket and into trousers, — and trousers with a pocket in them, and with a pocket that aches to be filled with dollars!” Gates’s faith in the “civilizing” power of the dollar reflected the unabashed materialism of the age. But the cultural annihilation that Gates cheerfully predicted did not prove so easy.

Despite whites’ efforts, Indians continued being Indians. Even in the “iron routine” of the “civilizing machine” at boarding school, Zitkala-Sa recounted how Indians retained their tribal loyalties and Indian identities. Luther Standing Bear, whose father enrolled him at Carlisle to learn white ways, confessed, “Though my hair had been cut and I wore civilian clothes, I never forsook the blanket.” Students continued to speak tribal languages and attend tribal dances, even though the punishment was whipping with a leather belt. The schools themselves ultimately subverted their goal by creating generations of Indians who shared a common language, English, and would later create a pan-Indian reform movement in the Progressive Era.

The Dawes Act and Indian Land Allotment

In the 1880s, the practice of rounding up and herding Indians onto reservations lost momentum in favor of allotment — a new policy designed to encourage assimilation through farming and the ownership of private property. Americans vowing to avenge Custer’s defeat urged the government to get tough with the Indians. Reservations, they argued, took up too much good land that white settlers coveted and forced Americans to support “lazy” reservation Indians. At the same time, people sympathetic to the Indians were appalled at the desperate poverty on the reservations and feared for the Indians’ survival. Helen Hunt Jackson, in her classic work A Century of Dishonor (1881), convinced many readers that the Indians had been treated unfairly. “Our Indian policy,” the New York Times concluded, “is usually spoliation behind the mask of benevolence.”

The Indian Rights Association, a group of mainly white easterners formed in 1882, campaigned for the dismantling of the reservations, now viewed as obstacles to progress. To “cease to treat the Indian as a red man and treat him as a man” meant putting an end to tribal communalism and fostering individualism. “Selfishness,” declared Senator Henry Dawes of Massachusetts, “is at the bottom of civilization.” Dawes called for “allotment in severalty” — the institution of private property.

In 1887, Congress passed the Dawes Allotment Act, which divided up reservations and allotted parcels of land to individual Indians as private property. Each unmarried Indian man and woman as well as married men and children (married women were excluded) became eligible to receive 160 acres of land from reservation property. Indians who took allotments

earned U.S. citizenship. This fostering of individualism through land distribution ultimately dealt a crippling blow to traditional tribal culture.

To protect Indians from land speculators, the government held most of the allotted land in trust — Indians could not sell it for twenty-five years. Since Indian land far surpassed the acreage needed for allotments, the government reserved the right to sell the “surplus” to white settlers. Many Indians eventually sold their allotments and moved to urban areas, where they lost touch with tribal ways.

The Dawes Act effectively reduced Indian land from 138 million acres to a scant 48 million. The legislation, in the words of one critic, worked “to despoil the Indians of their lands and to make them vagabonds on the face of the earth.” By 1890, the United States controlled 97.5 percent of the territory formerly occupied by Native Americans.

Indian Resistance and Survival Faced with the extinction of their entire way of life, different groups of Indians responded in different ways. In the 1870s, Comanche and Kiowa raiding parties frustrated the U.S. Army by brazenly using the reservations as a seasonal supply base during the winter months. When spring came, they resumed their nomadic hunting as long as there were buffalo to hunt.

Some tribes, including the Crow and Shoshoni, chose to fight alongside the army against their old enemies, the Sioux. The Crow chief Plenty Coups explained why he allied with the United States: “Not because we loved the

white man … or because we hated the Sioux … but because we plainly saw that this course was the only one which might save our beautiful country for us.” The Crow and Shoshoni got to stay in their homelands and avoided the fate of other tribes shipped to reservations far away.

Indians who refused to stay on reservations risked being hunted down. The Nez Percé war is perhaps the most harrowing example of the army’s policy. In 1863, the government dictated a treaty drastically reducing Nez Percé land. Most of the chiefs refused to sign the treaty and did not move to the reservation. When the army cracked down in 1877, some eight hundred Nez Percé people, many of them women and children, fled across the mountains of Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana, heading for the safety of Canada. After a 1,300-mile trek, 50 miles from freedom, they stopped in the Bear Paw Mountains to rest in the snow. The army caught up with them and attacked. Fewer than three hundred of the Indians escaped and made it to Canada. Yellow Wolf recalled the plight of those trapped: “Children crying with cold. No fire. There could be no light. Everywhere the crying, the death wail.” After a five-day siege, the Nez Percé leader, Chief Joseph, surrendered. His speech, reported by a white soldier, would become famous. “I am tired of fighting,” he said as he surrendered his rifle. “Our chiefs are killed. It is cold and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death…. I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.”

In the Southwest, the Apaches resorted to armed resistance. They roamed the Sonoran Desert of southern Arizona and northern Mexico, perfecting a hit-and-run guerrilla warfare that terrorized white settlers and bedeviled the

army in the 1870s and 1880s. General George Crook combined a policy of dogged pursuit with judicious diplomacy. Crook relied on Indian scouts to track the raiding parties, recruiting nearly two hundred Apaches, Navajos, and Paiutes. By 1882, Crook had succeeded in persuading most of the Apaches to settle on the San Carlos Reservation in Arizona Territory. A desolate piece of desert inhabited by scorpions and rattlesnakes, San Carlos, in the words of one Apache, was “the worst place in all the great territory stolen from the Apaches.”

Geronimo, a respected shaman (medicine man) of the Chiricahua Apache, refused to stay at San Carlos and repeatedly led raiding parties in the early 1880s. His warriors attacked ranches to obtain ammunition and horses. Among Geronimo’s band was Lozen, a woman who rode with the warriors, armed with a rifle and a cartridge belt. Lozen’s brother, a great chief, described her as being as “strong as a man, braver than most, and cunning in strategy.” In the spring of 1885, Geronimo and his band went on a ten- month offensive, moving from the Apache sanctuary in the Sierra Madre to raid and burn ranches and towns on both sides of the Mexican border. General Crook caught up with Geronimo in the fall and persuaded him to return to San Carlos, only to have him slip away on the way back to the reservation. Chagrined, Crook resigned his post. General Nelson Miles, Crook’s replacement, adopted a policy of search and destroy.

Geronimo’s band consisted of only eighteen braves and some twenty women and children. Miles commanded a force of five thousand. Yet the Apaches managed to elude Miles’s troops for more than five months. The pursuit left Miles’s cavalry ragged. Over time, Lieutenant Leonard Wood

had discarded his horse and was reduced to wearing nothing “but a pair of canton flannel drawers, and an old blouse, a pair of moccasins and a hat without a crown.” Eventually, Miles’s scouts cornered Geronimo in 1886 at Skeleton Canyon, where he agreed to march north and negotiate a settlement. “We have not slept for six months,” he admitted, “and we are worn out.”

Although fewer than three dozen Apaches had been considered “hostile,” when General Miles induced them to surrender, the government rounded up nearly five hundred Apaches and sent them as prisoners to the South. Among them were the two scouts who had tracked Geronimo, still wearing their Army uniforms when they were thrown on the train. By 1889, more than one-quarter of the Indians had died, some as a result of malaria contracted in the damp lowland climate of Florida and Alabama and some by suicide. Their plight roused public opinion, and in 1892, they were moved to Fort Sill in Oklahoma and later to New Mexico.

Geronimo lived to become something of a celebrity. He appeared at the St. Louis Exposition in 1904 and rode in President Theodore Roosevelt’s inaugural parade in 1905. In a newspaper interview, he confessed, “I want to go to my old home before I die…. Want to go back to the mountains again. I asked the Great White Father to allow me to go back, but he said no.” None of the Apaches were permitted to return to Arizona; when Geronimo died of pneumonia in 1909, he was buried in Oklahoma.

On the plains, many tribes turned to a nonviolent form of resistance — a compelling new religion called the Ghost Dance. A Nevada cowhand

named Jack Fisher whose Paiute name was Wovoka founded the Ghost Dance in 1889, promising it would bring rain to the drought-stricken region. Drawing on a cult developed in the 1870s, Wovoka received a vision in which the Great Spirit spoke through him to all Indians, prophesying that if they would unite in the Ghost Dance ritual, whites would be destroyed in an apocalypse and the buffalo would return. His religion, born of despair with its message of hope, spread like wildfire over the plains. The Ghost Dance, a slow and stately dance, was performed both by Indians educated at Carlisle and by their uneducated brethren. In Idaho, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, the Dakotas, and Indian Territory, tribes as diverse as the Sioux, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Pawnee, and Shoshoni practiced the new religion. Dancers often went into hypnotic trances, dancing until they dropped from exhaustion.

Ghost Dancers, 1891 Here a group of Sioux perform the Ghost Dance. Different tribes performed variations of the dance, but generally dancers formed a circle and danced until they reached the trancelike state. Whites feared the dancers and demanded that the army dispatch troops to subdue them. The result was the killing of Sitting Bull and the massacre at Wounded Knee.

Description They lift one leg and their hands as they move in a circle. A few men, out of the circle, observe. Others also dance as they look to the sky and lift their hands while dancing.

White reaction became hysterical. “Indians are dancing in the snow and are wild and crazy,” wrote the Bureau of Indian Affairs agent at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Frantic, he pleaded for reinforcements. “We are at the mercy of these dancers. We need protection, and we need it now.”

President Benjamin Harrison dispatched several thousand federal troops to Sioux country to handle any outbreak.

In December 1890, when Sitting Bull attempted to join the Ghost Dance, Indian police killed him as they tried to arrest him at his cabin on the Standing Rock Reservation. His people, fleeing the scene, joined with a larger group of Miniconjou Sioux, who were apprehended by the Seventh Cavalry, Custer’s old regiment, near Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota. The soldiers demanded that the Indians turn over their guns, and as a soldier attempted to take a rifle from a deaf Miniconjou man, the gun went off. The soldiers opened fire, immediately killing eighty-three men and boys. In the ensuing massacre, more than two hundred Indian men, women, and children were mowed down in minutes by the army’s brutally efficient Hotchkiss machine guns. Settler Jules Sandoz surveyed the scene the day after the massacre at Wounded Knee. “Here in ten minutes an entire community was as the buffalo that bleached on the plains,” he wrote. “There was something loose in the world that hated joy and happiness as it hated brightness and color, reducing everything to drab agony and gray.”

It had taken Euro-Americans 250 years to wrest control of the eastern half of the United States from the Indians. It took them only 40 years to take the western half. The subjugation of the American Indians marked the first chapter in a national mission of empire that would anticipate U.S. overseas imperialistic adventures in Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Pacific islands.

��

How and why did U.S. Indian policy change between 1870 and 1890?

How did mining shape American expansion? Mining stood at the center of the quest for empire in the West. The California gold rush of 1849 touched off the frenzy. The four decades following witnessed equally frenetic rushes for gold and other metals, most notably on the Comstock Lode in Nevada and later in New Mexico, Colorado, the Dakotas, Montana, Idaho, Arizona, and Utah (Map 17.2). At first glance, the mining West may seem much different from the East, but by the 1870s the term urban industrialism described Virginia City, Nevada, as accurately as it did Pittsburgh or Cleveland. A close look at life on the Comstock Lode indicates some of the patterns and paradoxes of western mining. The diversity of peoples drawn to the West by the promise of mining riches and land made the region the most cosmopolitan in the nation, as well as the most contested. And although mining was often a tale of boom and bust, it was also a story of community building.

MAP 17.2 Western Mining, 1848–1890

Rich deposits of gold, silver, copper, lead, and iron larded the mountains of the West. Miners from all over the world flocked to the region. Few struck it rich, but many stayed on as paid workers in the increasingly mechanized corporate mines.

Description “The location of deposits is as follows:

Gold Bonanza: Weaverville; Coloma; Aurora; Mariposa; Wickenburg; Tubac; Central City; Denver; Pikes Peak; Cripple Creek; Custer City; Deadwood; Boise City; Florence; Butte; South Pass; and Virginia City.

Silver Bonanza: Leadville; Creede; Santa Rita; Tombstone; Virginia City; Coeur d’Alene; and Silver City.

Date of Strike: Coloma (1848); Wickenburg (1863); Tubac (1854); Pikes Peak (1859); Cripple Creek (1890); Boise City (1861); South Pass (1868); Leadville (1876); Tombstone (1878); Virginia City (1859); Black Hills (1874); and Virginia City (1862).

Gold Mining (primarily): A small area in the northwestern region of Washington; northeastern and southwestern parts of Oregon; and small patches in northern, eastern, and southern California; and western part of Idaho.

Intermountain region (gold, silver, copper, iron): The western region of Utah Territory; most of Nevada (barring some northern and southern regions); southeastern California; southern part of Arizona Territory; and the southwestern region of New Mexico Territory.

rocky Mountain region (gold, silver, lead, copper): The belt stretches from the eastern region Washington and the western part of Montana to the northeastern and eastern border of Idaho, the western and southern part of Wyoming, the central part of Colorado and New Mexico Territory, and southwestern border of Texas. The region also covers the northeastern part of the Utah Territory.

A map of the U. S. in the inset highlights the region being discussed.”

Life on the Comstock Lode

By 1859, refugees from California’s played-out goldfields flocked to the Washoe basin in Nevada. While searching for gold, miners stumbled on the richest vein of silver ore on the continent — the legendary Comstock Lode, named for prospector Henry Comstock.

To exploit even potentially valuable silver claims required capital and expensive technology well beyond the means of the prospector. An active San Francisco stock market sprang up to finance operations on the Comstock. Shrewd businessmen soon recognized that the easiest way to get rich was to sell their claims or to form mining companies and sell shares of stock. The most unscrupulous mined the wallets of gullible investors by selling shares in bogus mining companies. Speculation, misrepresentation, and outright thievery ran rampant. In twenty years, more than $300 million poured from the earth in Nevada alone, most of it going to speculators in San Francisco.

The promise of gold and silver drew thousands to the mines of the West. As Mark Twain observed in Virginia City’s Territorial Enterprise, “All the peoples of the earth had representative adventures in the Silverland.” Irish, Chinese, Germans, English, Scots, Welsh, Canadians, Mexicans, Italians, Scandinavians, French, Swiss, Chileans, and other South and Central Americans came to share in the bonanza. With them came a sprinkling of Russians, Poles, Greeks, Japanese, Spaniards, Hungarians, Portuguese, Turks, Pacific Islanders, and Moroccans, as well as other North Americans, African Americans, and American Indians. This polyglot population, typical of mining boomtowns, made Virginia City in the 1870s more cosmopolitan than New York or Boston. In the part of the Utah Territory

that eventually became Nevada, as many as 30 percent of the people came from outside the United States, compared to 25 percent in New York and 21 percent in Massachusetts.

Irish immigrants formed the largest ethnic group in the mining district. In Virginia City, fully one-third of the population claimed at least one parent from Ireland. Irish women constituted the largest group of women on the Comstock. As servants, boardinghouse owners, and washerwomen, they made up a significant part of the workforce. In contrast, the Chinese community, numbering 642 in 1870, remained overwhelmingly male. Virulent anti-Chinese sentiment barred the men from work in the mines; nevertheless, the mining community came to depend on Chinese labor.

The discovery of precious metals on the Comstock spelled disaster for the Indians. No sooner had the miners struck pay dirt than they demanded that army troops “hunt Indians” and establish forts to protect transportation to and from the diggings. This sudden and dramatic intrusion left Nevada’s native tribes — the Northern Paiute and Bannock Shoshoni — exiles in their own land. At first they resisted, but over time they adapted and preserved their culture and identity despite the havoc wreaked by western mining and settlement.

In 1873, Comstock miners uncovered a new vein of ore, a veritable cavern of gold and silver. This “Big Bonanza” speeded the transition from small- scale industry to corporate oligopoly, creating a radically new social and economic environment. The Comstock became a laboratory for new mining technology. Huge stamping mills pulverized rock with pistonlike hammers

driven by steam engines. Enormous Cornish pumps sucked water from the mine shafts, and huge ventilators circulated air in the underground chambers. No backwoods mining camp, Virginia City was an industrial center with more than 1,200 stamping mills working on average a ton of ore every day. Almost four hundred men worked in milling, nearly three hundred labored in manufacturing industries, and roughly three thousand toiled in the mines. The Gould and Curry mine covered sixty acres. Most of the miners who came to the Comstock ended up as laborers for the big companies.

New technology eliminated some of the dangers of mining but often created new ones. In the hard-rock mines of the West, accidents in the 1870s disabled one out of every thirty miners and killed one in eighty. Ross Moudy, who worked as a miner in Cripple Creek, Colorado, recalled how a stockholder visiting the mine nearly fell to his death. The terrified visitor told the miner next to him that “instead of being paid $3 a day, they ought to have all the gold they could take out.” On the Comstock Lode, because of the difficulty of obtaining skilled labor, the richness of the ore, and the need for a stable workforce, labor unions formed early and held considerable bargaining power. Comstock miners commanded $4 a day, the highest wage in the mining West.

The mining towns of the “Wild West” are often portrayed as lawless outposts, filled with saloons and rough gambling dens and populated almost exclusively by men. The truth is more complex, as Virginia City’s development attests. As an established urban community built to serve an industrial giant, Virginia City in its first decade boasted churches, schools,

theaters, an opera house, and hundreds of families. By 1870, women composed 30 percent of the population, and 75 percent of the women listed their occupation in the census as housekeeper. Mary McNair Mathews, a widow from Buffalo, New York, who lived on the Comstock in the 1870s, worked as a teacher, nurse, seamstress, laundress, and lodging-house operator. She later published a book about her adventures.

By 1875, Virginia City boasted a population of 25,000 people, making it one of the largest cities between St. Louis and San Francisco. The city, dubbed the “Queen of the Comstock,” hosted American presidents as well as legions of lesser dignitaries. Virginia City represented, in the words of a recent chronicler, “the distilled essence of America’s newly established course — urban, industrial, acquisitive, and materialistic, on the move, ‘a living polyglot’ of cultures that collided and converged.”

The Diverse Peoples of the West The West of the late nineteenth century was a polyglot place, as much so as the big cities of the East. The sheer number of peoples who mingled in the West produced a complex blend of racism and prejudice. One historian has noted, not entirely facetiously, that there were at least eight oppressed “races” in the West — Indians, Latinos, Chinese, Japanese, blacks, Mormons, strikers, and radicals.

Determined to keep the Golden State for “white men only,” mobs set upon and murdered any hapless group they deemed a threat. The numbers of Native Americans in California dropped so precipitously; historians agree

that if genocide occurred anywhere in the United States, it happened in California. Other groups faced similar treatment. In 1871, vigilantes in Los Angeles torched Chinatown. In the resulting melee, the crowd lynched seventeen Chinese, including one woman. The scene would repeat in towns and hamlets across the West. No act was judged too ruthless or too bloody in the attempt to drive out the Chinese. American slang underscored a grim reality: Someone facing overwhelming odds was said not to have “a Chinaman’s chance.”

African Americans who ventured out to the territories responded to racism by forming all-black communities such as Nicodemus, Kansas. That settlement, founded by thirty black Kentuckians in 1877, grew to a community of seven hundred by 1880. Isolated and often separated by great distances, small black settlements grew up throughout the West, in Nevada, Utah, and the Pacific Northwest, as well as in Kansas. Black soldiers who served in the West during the Indian wars often stayed on as settlers. Called “buffalo soldiers” because Native Americans thought their hair resembled that of the bison, these black troops numbered up to twenty-five thousand. African Americans, along with immigrants — mostly Irish and German — and the nation’s poor, constituted the frontier army. Underfed and often poorly armed, soldiers deserted in large numbers — up to 33 percent in 1871–1872. In the face of discrimination, poor treatment, and harsh conditions, the buffalo soldiers served with distinction and boasted the lowest desertion rate in the army.

Hispanic peoples had lived in Texas and the Southwest since Juan de Oñate led pioneer settlers up the Rio Grande in 1598. Hispanics had occupied the

Pacific coast since San Diego was founded in 1769. Overnight, they were reduced to a minority after the United States annexed Texas in 1845 and took land stretching to California after the Mexican-American War ended in 1848. At first, the Hispanic owners of large ranchos in California, New Mexico, and Texas greeted conquest as an economic opportunity. But racial prejudice soon ended their optimism. Californios (Mexican residents of California), who had been granted American citizenship by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848), faced discrimination by Anglos who sought to keep them out of California’s mines and commerce. Whites illegally squatted on rancho land while protracted litigation over Spanish and Mexican land grants forced the Californios into court. Although the U.S. Supreme Court eventually validated most of their claims, it took so long — seventeen years on average — that many Californios sold their property to pay taxes and legal bills.

Swindles, trickery, and intimidation dispossessed scores of Californios. Many ended up segregated in urban barrios (neighborhoods) in their own homeland. Their percentage of California’s population declined from 82 percent in 1850 to 19 percent in 1880 as Anglos migrated to the state. In New Mexico and Texas, Mexicans remained a majority of the population but became increasingly impoverished as Anglos dominated business and took the best jobs. Skirmishes between Hispanics and whites in northern New Mexico over the fencing of the open range lasted for decades. Groups of Hispanics with names such as Las Manos Negras (the Black Hands) cut fences and burned barns. In Texas, violence along the Rio Grande pitted Tejanos (Mexican residents of Texas) against the Texas Rangers, who saw their role as “keeping Mexicans in their place.”

Mormons, too, faced prejudice and hostility. The followers of Joseph Smith, the founder and prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, fled west to the Utah Territory in 1844 to avoid religious persecution. They believed they had a divine right to the land, and their messianic militancy made others distrust them. The Mormon practice of polygamy (church leader Brigham Young had twenty-three wives) also came under attack. To counter the criticism of polygamy, the Utah territorial legislature gave women the right to vote in 1870, the first universal woman suffrage act in the nation. (Wyoming had granted suffrage to white women in 1869.) Although women’s rights advocates argued that the newly enfranchised women would “do away with the horrible institution of polygamy,” it remained in force. Not until 1890 did the church hierarchy yield to pressure and renounce polygamy. The fierce controversy over polygamy postponed statehood for Utah until 1896.

Legislation as well as intimidation sought to keep Chinese out of California. As early as the 1850s California’s governor called for laws curtailing Chinese immigration. Some 20,000 Chinese had joined the rush to California by 1852. Miners succeeded in passing prohibitive foreign license laws to keep the Chinese out of the mines. But Chinese immigration continued. In the 1860s, when white workers moved on to find riches in the bonanza mines of Nevada, Chinese laborers took jobs abandoned by the whites. Railroad magnate Charles Crocker hired Chinese gangs to work on the Central Pacific, reasoning that “the race that built the Great Wall” could lay tracks across the treacherous Sierra Nevada. Some 10,000 Chinese, representing 90 percent of Crocker’s workforce, completed America’s first transcontinental railroad in 1869.

By 1870, more than 63,000 Chinese immigrants lived in America, 77 percent of them in California. A 1790 federal statute that limited naturalization to “white persons” was modified after the Civil War to extend naturalization to blacks (“persons of African descent”). But the Chinese and other Asians continued to be denied access to citizenship. As perpetual aliens, they constituted a reserve army of transnational laborers that many saw as a threat to American labor.

In 1876, the Workingmen’s Party formed to fight for Chinese exclusion. Racial and cultural animosities stood at the heart of anti-Chinese agitation. Denis Kearney, the fiery San Francisco leader of the movement, made clear this racist bent when he urged legislation to “expel every one of the moon- eyed lepers.” Nor was California alone in its anti-immigrant nativism. As the country confronted growing ethnic and racial diversity with the rising tide of global immigration in the decades following the Civil War, many questioned the principle of racial equality at the same time they argued against the assimilation of “nonwhite” groups. In this climate, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, effectively barring Chinese immigration and setting a precedent for further immigration restrictions.

Surveying the West in the decades following the gold rush, a stark pattern emerges. Whether called genocide, ethnic cleansing, lynching, or simply murder, the actions of white vigilantes against people of color deemed undesirable reached shocking proportions, while those in the East in positions of authority largely turned their backs on the bloodshed.

��

What role did mining play in shaping the society and economy of the American West?

How did the fight for land and resources in the West unfold? In the three decades following 1870, more land was settled than in all the previous history of the country. Americans by the hundreds of thousands packed up and moved west, goaded if not by the hope of striking gold, then by the promise of owning land to farm or ranch. The agrarian West shared with the mining West a persistent restlessness, an equally pervasive addiction to speculation, and a penchant for exploiting natural resources and labor.

Two factors stimulated the land rush in the trans-Mississippi West. The Homestead Act of 1862 promised 160 acres free to any citizen or prospective citizen, male or female, who settled on the land for five years. Even more important, transcontinental railroads opened up new areas and actively recruited settlers. After the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869, homesteaders abandoned the covered wagon, and by the 1880s, rampant railroad overbuilding meant that settlers could choose from four competing rail lines and make the trip in a matter of days. Actually, “transcontinental” remained something of a misnomer; the railroads originated in St. Louis or Chicago.

Although the country was rich in land and resources wrested from the Indians, not all who wanted to own land achieved their goal. During the transition from the family farm to large commercial farming, small farms and ranches gave way to vast spreads worked by migrant labor or paid farmworkers and cowhands. Just as industry corporatized and consolidated

in the East, the period from 1870 to 1900 witnessed corporate consolidation in mining, ranching, and agriculture.

Moving West: Homesteaders and Speculators A Missouri homesteader remembered packing as her family pulled up stakes and headed west to Oklahoma in 1890. “We were going to God’s Country,” she wrote. “You had to work hard on that rocky country in Missouri. I was glad to be leaving it…. We were going to a new land and get rich.”

Settlers who headed west in search of “God’s Country” faced hardship, loneliness, and deprivation. To carve a farm from the raw prairie of Iowa, the plains of Nebraska, or the forests of the Pacific Northwest took more than fortitude and backbreaking toil. It took luck. Blizzards, tornadoes, grasshoppers, hailstorms, drought, prairie fires, accidental death, and disease were only a few of the catastrophes that could befall even the best farmer. Homesteaders on free land still needed as much as $1,000 for a house, a team of farm animals, a well, fencing, and seed. Poor farmers called “sodbusters” did without even these basics, living in houses made from sod (blocks of grass-covered earth) or dugouts carved into hillsides and using muscle instead of machinery.

Norwegian Immigrant and Sod House Norwegian immigrant Beret Olesdater sits in front of her sod house in Lac qui Parle, Minnesota, in 1896. On the plains, where trees were scarce, settlers carved dugouts into a hillside or built huts like the one here, carved from blocks of sod.

“Father made a dugout and covered it with willows and grass,” one Kansas girl recounted. When it rained, the dugout flooded, and “we carried the water out in buckets, then waded around in the mud until it dried.” Rain wasn’t the only problem. “Sometimes the bull snakes would get in the roof and now and then one would lose his hold and fall down on the bed…. Mother would grab the hoe … and after the fight was over Mr. Bull Snake was dragged outside.”

For women on the frontier, obtaining simple daily necessities such as water and fuel meant backbreaking labor. Out on the plains, where water was scarce, women often had to trudge to the nearest creek or spring. “A yoke

was made to place across [Mother’s] shoulders, so as to carry at each end a bucket of water,” one daughter recollected, “and then water was brought a half mile from spring to house.” Gathering fuel was another heavy chore. Without ready sources of coal or firewood, the most prevalent fuel was “chips” — chunks of dried cattle and buffalo dung, found in abundance on the plains.

Despite the hardships, some homesteaders succeeded in building comfortable lives. The dugout made way for the sod hut — a more substantial dwelling; the log cabin yielded to a white clapboard home with a porch and a rocking chair. For others, the promise of the West failed to materialize. Already by the 1870s, much of the best land had been taken. Too often, homesteaders found that only the least desirable tracts were left — poor land, far from markets, transportation, and society. “There is plenty of land for sale in California,” one migrant complained in 1870, but “the majority of the available lands are held by speculators, at prices far beyond the reach of a poor man.” The railroads, flush from land grants provided by the state and federal governments, owned huge swaths of land in the West and actively recruited buyers. Altogether, the land grants totaled approximately 180 million acres — an area as large as Texas. The vast majority of land sold at a profit.

As land grew scarce on the prairie in the 1870s, farmers began to push farther west, moving into western Kansas, Nebraska, and eastern Colorado — the region called the Great American Desert by settlers who had passed over it on their way to California and Oregon. Many agricultural experts warned that the semiarid land (where less than twenty inches of rain fell

annually) would not support a farm on the 160 acres allotted to homesteaders. But their words of caution were drowned out by the extravagant claims of western promoters, many employed by the railroads to sell off land grants. “Rain follows the plow” became the slogan of western boosters, who insisted that cultivation would alter the climate of the region and bring more rainfall.

Instead, drought followed the plow. Droughts were a cyclical fact of life on the Great Plains. Plowed up, the dry topsoil blew away in the wind. A period of relatively good rainfall in the early 1880s encouraged farming; then a protracted drought in the late 1880s and early 1890s forced thousands of starving farmers to leave, some in wagons carrying the slogan “In God we trusted, in Kansas we busted.”

Fever for fertile land set off a series of spectacular land runs in Oklahoma. When two million acres of land in former Indian Territory opened for settlement in 1889, thousands of homesteaders massed on the border. At the opening pistol shot, “with a shout and a yell the swift riders shot out, then followed the light buggies or wagons,” a reporter wrote. “Above all, a great cloud of dust hover[ed] like smoke over a battlefield.” By nightfall, Oklahoma boasted two tent cities with more than ten thousand residents. In the last frenzied land rush on Oklahoma’s Cherokee strip in 1893, several settlers were killed in the stampede, and nervous men guarded their claims with rifles. As public land grew scarce, the hunger for land grew fierce for both farmers and ranchers.

Barbed wire, invented in 1874, revolutionized the cattle business and sounded the death knell for the open range. As the largest ranches in Texas began to fence, nasty fights broke out between big ranchers and “fence cutters,” who resented the end of the open range. One old-timer observed, “Those persons, Mexicans and Americans, without land but who had cattle were put out of business by fencing.” Fencing forced small-time ranchers who owned land but could not afford to buy barbed wire or sink wells to sell out for the best price they could get. The displaced ranchers, many of them Mexicans, ended up as wageworkers on the huge spreads owned by Anglos or by European syndicates.

On the range, the cowboy gave way to the cattle king and, like the miner, became a wage laborer. Many cowboys were African Americans (as many as five thousand in Texas alone). Writers of western literature chose to ignore the presence of black cowboys like Deadwood Dick (Nat Love), who was portrayed as a white man in the dime novels of the era.

By the 1880s, cattle overcrowded the range. Severe blizzards during the winter of 1886–1887 decimated the herds. “A whole generation of cowmen,” wrote one chronicler, “went dead broke.” Fencing worsened the situation. During blizzards, cattle stayed alive by keeping on the move. But when they ran up against barbed wire fences, they froze to death. In the aftermath of the “Great Die Up,” new labor-intensive forms of cattle ranching replaced the open-range model.

Tenants, Sharecroppers, and Migrants

In the post–Civil War period, as agriculture became a big business tied by the railroads to national and global markets, an increasing number of laborers worked land that they would never own. In the southern United States, farmers labored under particularly heavy burdens. The Civil War wiped out much of the region’s capital, which had been invested in slaves, and crippled the plantation economy. “The colored folks stayed with the old boss man and farmed and worked on the plantations,” a black Alabama sharecropper observed bitterly. “They were still slaves, but they were free slaves.” Some freedpeople did manage to pull together enough resources to go west. In 1879, more than fifteen thousand Exodusters, as the black settlers were known, moved from Mississippi and Louisiana to take up land in Kansas.

California’s Mexican cowboys, or vaqueros, commanded decent wages throughout the Southwest. But by 1880, as the coming of the railroads ended the long cattle drives and as large feedlots began to replace the open range, the value of their skills declined. Many vaqueros ended up as migrant laborers, often on land their families had once owned. Similarly, in Texas, Tejanos found themselves displaced. After the heyday of cattle ranching ended in the late 1880s, cotton production rose in the southeastern regions of the state. Ranchers turned their pastures into sharecroppers’ plots and hired displaced cowboys, most of them Mexicans, as seasonal laborers for as little as seventy-five cents a day.

Land monopoly and large-scale farming fostered tenancy and migratory labor on the West Coast. By the 1870s, less than 1 percent of California’s population owned half the state’s available agricultural land. The rigid

economics of large-scale commercial agriculture and the seasonal nature of the crops spawned a ragged army of migratory agricultural laborers. Derisively labeled “blanket men” or “bindle stiffs,” these transients worked the fields in the growing season and wintered in the flophouses of San Francisco. After passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Mexicans, Filipinos, and Japanese immigrants filled the demand for migratory workers.

Commercial Farming and Industrial Cowboys In the late nineteenth century, the population of the United States remained overwhelmingly rural. The 1870 census showed that nearly 80 percent of the nation’s people lived on farms and in villages of fewer than 8,000 inhabitants. By 1900, the figure had dropped to 60 percent (Figure 17.1). At the same time, the number of farms rose. Rapid growth in the West increased the number of farms from 2 million in 1860 to more than 5.7 million in 1900.

FIGURE 17.1 Changes in Rural and Urban Populations, 1870–1900

Between 1870 and 1900, both the number of urban dwellers and the number of farms increased, even as the number of rural inhabitants fell. Mechanization made it possible to farm with fewer hands, fueling the exodus from farm to city throughout the second half of the nineteenth century.

Description The horizontal axis depicts the years and the vertical axis depicts the percentage of U. S. population. In 1870, 72 percent was rural population and 28 per cent was urban population. In 1880, 71 percent was rural population and 29 per cent was urban population. In 1890, 65 percent was rural population and 35 percent was urban population. In 1900, 60 percent was rural population and 40 percent was urban population. All percentages are approximate.

New technology and farming techniques revolutionized American farm life. Mechanized farm machinery halved the time and labor cost of production and made it possible to cultivate vast tracts of land. Meanwhile,

urbanization provided farmers with expanding markets for their produce, and railroads carried crops to markets thousands of miles away. Even before the start of the twentieth century, American agriculture had entered the era of what would come to be called agribusiness — farming as a big business — with the advent of huge commercial farms.

As farming moved onto the prairies and plains, mechanization took command. Steel plows, reapers, mowers, harrows, seed drills, combines, and threshers replaced human muscle. Horse-drawn implements gave way to steam-powered machinery. By 1880, a single combine could do the work of twenty men, vastly increasing the acreage a farmer could cultivate. Mechanization spurred the growth of bonanza wheat farms, some more than 100,000 acres, in California and the Red River Valley of North Dakota and Minnesota. This agricultural revolution meant that Americans raised more than four times the corn, five times the hay, and seven times the wheat and oats they had before the Civil War.

Like cotton farmers in the South, western grain and livestock farmers increasingly depended on foreign markets for their livelihood. A fall in global market prices meant that a farmer’s entire harvest went to pay off debts. In the depression that followed the panic of 1893, many heavily mortgaged farmers lost their land to creditors. As a Texas cotton farmer complained, “By the time the World Gets their Liveing out of the Farmer as we have to Feed the World, we the Farmer has nothing Left but a Bear Hard Liveing.” Commercial farming, along with mining, represented another way in which the West developed its own brand of industrialism. The far West’s industrial economy sprang initially from California gold and the vast

territory that came under American control following the Mexican- American War. In the ensuing rush on land and resources, environmental factors interacted with economic and social forces to produce enterprises as vast in scale and scope as anything found in the East.

Two German immigrants, Henry Miller and Charles Lux, pioneered the West’s mix of agriculture and industrialism. Beginning as meat wholesalers, Miller and Lux quickly expanded their business to encompass cattle, land, and land reclamation projects, such as dams and irrigation systems. With a labor force of migrant workers, a highly coordinated corporate system, and large sums of investment capital, the firm of Miller & Lux became one of America’s industrial behemoths. Eventually, these “industrial cowboys” grazed a herd of 100,000 cattle on 1.25 million acres of company land in California, Oregon, and Nevada and employed more than 1,200 migrant laborers on their corporate ranches.

Miller & Lux dealt with the labor problem by offering free meals to migratory workers, thus keeping wages low while winning goodwill among an army of unemployed who competed for the work. When the company’s Chinese cooks rebelled at washing all the dishes, the migrant laborers ate off dirty plates. By the 1890s, more than 800 migrants a year followed what came to be known as the “Dirty Plate Route” on Miller & Lux ranches throughout California.

Since the days of Thomas Jefferson, agrarian life had been linked with the highest ideals of a democratic society. Agrarianism had been transformed. The farmer was no longer a self-sufficient yeoman, but often a businessman

or a wage laborer tied to a global market. And even as farm production soared, industrialization outstripped it. More and more farmers left the fields for urban factories or found work in the “factories in the fields” of the new industrialized agribusinesses. Now that the future seemed to lie not with small farmers but with industrial enterprises, was democracy itself at risk? This question would ignite a farmers’ revolt in the 1880s and dominate political debate in the 1890s.

Territorial Government and the Political Economy of the West The federal government practiced a policy of benign neglect when it came to territorial government. A governor, a secretary, a few judges, an attorney, and a marshal held jurisdiction. In Nevada Territory, that meant a handful of officials governed an area the size of New England. Originally a part of the larger Utah Territory, Nevada, propelled by mining interests, moved on the fast track to statehood, entering the Union in 1864.

More typical were the territories extant in 1870 — New Mexico, Utah, Washington, Colorado, Dakota, Arizona, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. These areas remained territories for inordinately long periods, ranging from twenty-three to sixty-two years. While awaiting statehood, they were subject to territorial governors, who won their posts by party loyalty and who were largely underpaid, uninformed, often unqualified, and generally ignored by Washington. Wages rarely arrived on schedule, leading one cynic to observe, “Only the rich, or those having ‘no visible means of support,’ can afford to accept office.” John C. Frémont, governor of

Arizona Territory, complained he could not inspect the Grand Canyon because he was too poor to own a horse.

Underfunded and overlooked, victims of cronyism and prey to special interests, territorial governments mirrored the self-serving political and economic values of the era. Western governors with few scruples accepted money from local interests — mine owners, big ranchers, or lumber companies. Nearly all territorial appointees tried to maintain business connections in the East or take advantage of speculative opportunities in the West. Corruption ran rampant. Yet the distance from the nation’s capital meant that few charges of corrupt dealings were investigated. Gun-toting westerners served as another deterrent. One judge sent to New Mexico Territory in 1871 to investigate fraud “stayed three days, made up his mind that it would be dangerous to do any investigating, … and returned to his home without action.”

As eastern investment capital sought profits in western railroads, mines, and cattle ranches, the contestation of the West played out in the political economy of development. Eastern investors had different priorities from settlers on the ground. The territories saw the rise of a grassroots populism more willing to use the state as a positive force, more sympathetic to labor (their own if not that of eastern immigrants); and more concerned with the fair allocation of resources, especially water rights. State constitutional conventions became sites of conflict as western populism challenged eastern capital. Generally, the fear of driving off investors acted as a brake to reform. But Wyoming entered the Union with an eight-hour workday,

and Idaho outlawed the use of Pinkerton guards against strikers (see chapter 19), demonstrating western determination to support free labor.

��

Why did many homesteaders find it difficult to acquire good land in the West?

Conclusion: How did the West set the tone for the Gilded Age? In 1871, author Mark Twain published Roughing It, a chronicle of his days spent in mining towns in California and Nevada. There he found the same corrupt politics, vulgar display, and mania for speculation that he later skewered in The Gilded Age (1873), his biting satire of greed and corruption in the nation’s capital. Far from being an antidote to the tawdry values of the East — an innocent idyll out of place and time — the American West, with its get-rich-quick ethos, addiction to gambling and speculation, and virulent racism, set the tone for the Gilded Age.

Twain’s view countered that of Frederick Jackson Turner and perhaps better suited a West that witnessed the reckless overbuilding of railroads; the consolidation of business in mining and ranching; the rise of commercial farming; corruption and a penchant for government handouts; racial animosity; the exploitation of labor and natural resources, which led to the decimation of the great bison herds, the pollution of rivers with mining wastes, and the overgrazing of the plains; and the beginnings of an imperial policy that would provide a template for U.S. adventures abroad. Turner, intent on promoting what was unique about the frontier, failed to note that the same issues that came to dominate debate east of the Mississippi — the growing power of big business, the exploitation of land and labor, corruption in politics, and ethnic and racial tensions exacerbated by colonial expansion and unparalleled immigration — took center stage in the West at the end of the nineteenth century.

Chapter Review

��

reservations Comanchería Red Cloud’s War Black Hills Battle of the Little Big Horn Carlisle Indian School Dawes Allotment Act Ghost Dance Wounded Knee Comstock Lode Chinese Exclusion Act Homestead Act of 1862 first transcontinental railroad

�� Native Americans

How did American Indians respond to the flood of westward migration after the Civil War?

How did American Indians respond to changes in federal Indian policy between 1865 and 1900?

Natural Resources and Transportation in the West

Why was mining so important in the economy and society of the West and of the nation?

What role did the railroads play in the development of the West?

The West and Ethnic Diversity

What was the impetus for and impact of the Chinese Exclusion Act?

How did racial and ethnic prejudice affect relations among westerners?

�� , ��

How did western expansion before the Civil War differ from western expansion after the Civil War?

What new political and economic issues and tensions did American expansion raise?

How did American lives and livelihoods change as a result of migration to the West?

��

1851 First Treaty of Fort Laramie grants passage west to goldfields.

1862 Great Sioux Uprising (Santee Uprising) leads to mass Indian execution. Homestead Act passes.

1864 Sand Creek massacre kills several hundred Cheyenne and Arapaho. Navajo “Long Walk” to Bosque Redondo.

1866–1867 Red Cloud’s War. Treaty of Medicine Lodge negotiated.

1868 Second Treaty of Fort Laramie promises Black Hills to Sioux.

1869 Transcontinental railroad completed. First transcontinental railroad completed.

1870s Hide hunters begin to decimate bison herds.

1873 “Big Bonanza” discovered on Comstock Lode.

1874 Gold discovered in Black Hills.

1876

Indians defeat Custer’s Seventh Cavalry at Little Big Horn. 1877

Crazy Horse killed. Chief Joseph surrenders. Congress annexes Black Hills.

1879 Carlisle Indian School opens.

1882 Chinese Exclusion Act passes.

1886 Geronimo surrenders.

1886–1887 Severe blizzards decimate cattle.

1887 Dawes Allotment Act passes.

1890 Ghost Dance religion spreads through West. Sitting Bull killed. Massacre at Wounded Knee kills several hundred Indians.

1893 Frederick Jackson Turner presents “frontier thesis.” Last land rush occurs in Oklahoma Territory.

�� 18 �� 1865–1900

�� This chapter will explore the following questions:

How did the railroads stimulate big business? Why did the ideas of social Darwinism appeal to wealthy Americans? What factors influenced political life in the late nineteenth century? What issues shaped party politics in the late nineteenth century? What role did economic issues play in party realignment? Conclusion: How did business dominate the Gilded Age?

�� IN 1861, FOUR SACRAMENTO STORE OWNERS — COLLIS P. HUNTINGTON and his partner Mark Hopkins (hardware), Leland (groceries), and Charles Crocker (dry goods) — created the Central Pacific Railroad. A year later, Congress passed the Pacific Railroad Act, authorizing a transcontinental railroad and granting right-of-way to the Union Pacific to build west from Omaha and to the Central Pacific to build east from Sacramento. The government provided both companies with a lavish package of loans, bonds, cash payments, and massive grants of public land. Four obscure California storekeepers had managed to score one of the biggest government contracts in history. In time, they would take at least $200 million from the enterprise, billions in today’s dollars.

“None of us knew anything about railroad building,” the red-faced, 250-pound Crocker admitted, “but at the same time [we] were enterprising men.” The Big Four, as they became known, quickly settled into their respective roles. Stanford managed relationships with the state of California, Huntington took care of lobbying in Washington, Hopkins kept the books, and Charles Crocker supervised construction.

Crocker was born in Troy, New York, in 1822, and came west with the forty-niners. He failed at prospecting but excelled as a ruthless railroad manager. For a dollar a day Crocker hired Chinese emigrant workers to tunnel through the Sierra Nevada mountains. When the crews

reached the eastern slope, the cry became “a mile a day!” Construction subsidies depended on miles of track laid, and Crocker pushed his men hard. On May 10, 1869, after some six years, the Central and the Union Pacific railroads met at Promontory Summit, Utah.

Years later, Crocker declared, “We built that road for the profits we could make in building it.” Not much interested in moving people and goods, the Big Four were instead experts at lining their own pockets. They organized a sham construction company and paid construction costs from government funds to themselves. A suit against the Central Pacific charged that of the $240 million the company received in government subsidies, only $19 million actually went to railroad construction.

On the eve of a congressional investigation, Hopkins burned the Central Pacific’s books to hide the plunder. The Big Four forged maps and surveys, tricked inspectors, and laid miles of bad track. They bought newspapermen, created phony stockholders, and lied to banks when they borrowed. They bullied ranchers off their lands and may even have condoned murder. Huntington spent five years in Washington, D.C., carrying a leather satchel crammed with cash. “There are more hungry men in Congress this session than I have ever known before,” he complained.

Late in his career, Crocker mused: “One man works hard all his life and ends up a pauper. Another man, no smarter, makes twenty million dollars. Luck has a hell of a lot to do with it.” Luck no doubt played a

part, but ruthless disregard for the law, cruel exploitation of labor, and unremitting greed also figured in the success of the Big Four. One rival described Crocker as “a living, breathing, waddling monument of the triumph of vulgarity, viciousness and dishonesty.”

While working furiously to get rich, the Big Four also built a railroad. The Iron Horse — the transcontinental railroad — marked one of the great triumphs of the Gilded Age.

How did the railroads stimulate big business? In the years following the Civil War, the American economy underwent a transformation. Where once wealth had been measured in tangible assets — property, livestock, buildings — the economy now ran on money and the new devices of business — paper currency, securities, and anonymous corporate entities. Wall Street, the heart of the country’s financial system, increasingly affected Main Street. Driving the transition was the building of a transcontinental railroad system, which radically altered the scale and scope of American industry. Old industries like iron transformed into modern industries such as the behemoth U.S. Steel. Discovery and invention stimulated new industries, from oil refining to electric light and power. The overbuilding of the railroad in the decades after the Civil War played a key role in transforming the American economy as business came to rely on huge government subsidies, “friends” in Congress, and complicated financial transactions.

Jay Gould in railroads, Andrew Carnegie in steel, and John D. Rockefeller in oil pioneered new strategies to seize markets and consolidate power. With keen senses of self-interest, these tycoons set the tone in the get-rich- quick era of freewheeling capitalism that came to be called the Gilded Age.

Railroads: America’s First Big Business

The military conquest of America’s inland empire and the dispossession of Native Americans (see chapter 17) was fed by an elaborate new railroad system in the West built on speculation and government giveaways. Between 1870 and 1880, the amount of track in the country doubled, and it nearly doubled again in the following decade. By 1900, the nation boasted more than 193,000 miles of railroad track — more than in all of Europe and Russia combined (Map 18.1). The railroads had become America’s first big business. Credit fueled the railroad boom. Privately owned but publicly financed and subsidized by enormous land grants from the federal government and the states, the railroads epitomized the insidious nexus of business and politics in the Gilded Age.

MAP 18.1 Railroad Expansion, 1870–1890

Railroad mileage nearly quadrupled between 1870 and 1890, with the greatest growth occurring in the trans-Mississippi West. The western lines were completed in the 1880s. Fueled by

speculation and built ahead of demand, the western railroads made fortunes for individual speculators. But they rarely paid for themselves and speeded the demise of Native Americans.

Description “The data area as follows:

Major railroads in 1870: The railroad begins from San Francisco on the West through Omaha and branches on the East reaching Chicago, South reaching Kansas City, St. Louis, and North reaching Minneapolis St. Paul.

The railroad from Chicago spreads on the East through Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Washington, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C. and Richmond.

They also run in the South through Louisville, Nashville, Atlanta, Memphis, Jackson, and New Orleans spreading further south towards Mexico.

Major railroads built between 1870 and 1890:

The railroad begins from Seattle and Portland on the West, spreading on the South West along San Francisco, Los Angeles, Tucson, El Paso, Salt Lake City, Denver, and Dallas.

The railroad from Dallas spreads North through Kansas City, St. Louis along Missouri, Omaha along Nebraska, Chicago, Minneapolis St. Paul along Iowa, Minnesota, Tallahassee, Charleston, Atlanta, spreading north through Richmond, Washington D. C., Pittsburgh, and Buffalo.”

To understand how the railroads came to dominate American life, there is no better place to start than with the career of Jay Gould, the era’s most notorious speculator. Jason “Jay” Gould bought his first railroad before he turned twenty-five. It was only sixty-two miles long, in bad repair, and on the brink of failure, but within two years he sold it at a profit of $130,000.

The secretive Gould operated in the stock market like a shark, looking for vulnerable railroads, buying enough stock to take control, and threatening to undercut his competitors until they bought him out at a profit. The railroads that fell into his hands often went bankrupt. Gould’s genius lay not in providing transportation, but in cleverly buying and selling railroad stock on Wall Street. Gould soon realized that a corporate failure could still mean financial success. His strategy of expansion and consolidation encouraged overbuilding even as it stimulated a new national market.

The first transcontinental railway had been completed in 1869 at Promontory Point, Utah. In the 1880s, Gould moved to put together a second transcontinental railroad. To defend their interests, his competitors had little choice but to adopt his strategy of expansion. The railroads built ahead of demand, regardless of the social and environmental costs. Soon more railroads drove into the West — by 1893, Kansas alone had at least six competing lines.

The railroad barons put up little of their own money to build the roads and instead relied on the largesse of government and the sale of railroad bonds and stock. Bondholders were creditors who required repayment at a specific time. Stockholders bought a share in the company and received dividends if the company prospered. Thus, railroad investors received money from these sales of financial interests but did not need to pay out until later. If the railroad failed, a court-appointed receiver determined how many pennies on the dollar shareholders received. The owners, astutely using the market, always came out ahead. Novelist Charles Dudley Warner described how wrecking a railroad could yield profits:

[They fasten upon] some railway that is prosperous, … and has a surplus. They contrive to buy … a controlling interest in it…. Then they absorb its surplus; they let it run down so that it pays no dividends, and by-and-by cannot even pay its interest; then they squeeze the bondholders, who may be glad to accept anything that is offered out of the wreck, and perhaps they throw the property into the hands of a receiver or consolidate it with some other road at a value far greater than it cost them in stealing it. Having one way or another sucked it dry, they look around for another road.

With help from railroad growth and speculation, the New York Stock Exchange expanded. The volume of stock increased sixfold between 1869 and 1901. The line between investment and speculation blurred, causing many Americans to question whether speculators fueled the boom and bust cycles that led to panic and depression in 1873 and again twenty years later. The dramatic growth of the railroads created the country’s first big business. Before the Civil War, even the largest textile mill in New England employed no more than 800 workers. By contrast, the Pennsylvania Railroad by the 1870s boasted a payroll of more than 55,000 employees. Capitalized at more than $400 million, the Pennsylvania Railroad constituted the largest private enterprise in the world.

The big business of railroads bestowed enormous riches on a handful of tycoons. Both Gould and his competitor “Commodore” Cornelius Vanderbilt amassed fortunes estimated at $100 million. Such staggering wealth eclipsed the power and influence of upper-class Americans from previous generations and created an abyss between the nation’s rich and poor. In its wake, it left a legacy of lavish spending for an elite crop of ultrarich heirs.

The Republican Party, firmly entrenched in Washington after the Civil War, worked closely with business interests, subsidizing the transcontinental railroad system. Significant amounts of money changed hands to move bills through Congress. Along with “friends,” often on the railroads’ payrolls, lobbyists worked to craft legislation favorable to railroad interests. Friends of the railroads in state legislatures and Congress lavished the new western roads with land grants of a staggering 100 million acres (taken from Indian land) and $64 million in tax incentives and direct aid. States and local communities joined the railroad boom, betting that only those towns and villages along the tracks would grow and flourish.

A revolution in communication accompanied and supported the growth of the railroads. The telegraph, developed by Samuel F. B. Morse, marched across the continent alongside the railroad. By transmitting coded messages along electrical wire, the telegraph formed the nervous system of the new industrial order. Telegraph service quickly replaced Pony Express mail carriers in the West and transformed business by providing instantaneous communication. Once again Jay Gould took the lead. In 1879, through stock manipulation, he seized control of Western Union, the company that monopolized the telegraph industry.

The railroads soon fell on hard times. Already by the 1870s, lack of planning led to overbuilding. Across the nation, railroads competed fiercely for business. Manufacturers in areas served by competing railroads could get substantially reduced shipping rates in return for promises of steady business. Because railroad owners lost money through this kind of competition, they tried to set up agreements, or “pools,” to divide up

territory and set rates. But these informal gentlemen’s agreements invariably failed because men like Gould, intent on undercutting all competitors, refused to play by the rules.

Andrew Carnegie, Steel, and Vertical Integration If Jay Gould was the man Americans loved to hate, Andrew Carnegie became one of America’s heroes. Unlike Gould, Carnegie turned his back on speculation and worked to build something enduring — Carnegie Steel, the biggest steel business in the world during the Gilded Age.

The growth of the steel industry proceeded directly from railroad building. The first railroads ran on iron rails, which cracked and broke with alarming frequency. Steel, both stronger and more flexible than iron, remained too expensive for use in rails until Englishman Henry Bessemer developed a process to make steel more cheaply. Andrew Carnegie, among the first to champion the new “King Steel,” came to dominate the emerging industry.

Carnegie, a Scottish immigrant, landed in New York in 1848 at the age of twelve. He rose from a job cleaning bobbins in a textile factory to become one of the richest men in America. Before he died, he gave away more than $300 million, most notably to public libraries. His generosity, combined with his own rise from poverty, burnished his public image.

While Carnegie was a teenager, his skill as a telegraph operator caught the attention of Tom Scott, superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Scott

hired Carnegie, soon promoted him, and lent him the money for his first foray into Wall Street investment. As a result of this crony capitalism, Carnegie became a millionaire before his thirtieth birthday. At that point, Carnegie turned away from speculation. “My preference was always manufacturing,” he wrote. “I wished to make something tangible.” By applying the lessons of cost accounting and efficiency that he had learned with the Pennsylvania Railroad, Carnegie turned steel into the nation’s first manufacturing big business.

In 1872, Andrew Carnegie built the world’s largest, most up-to-date steel mill in Braddock, Pennsylvania. At that time, steelmakers produced about 70 tons a week. Within two decades, Carnegie’s blast furnaces poured out an incredible 10,000 tons a week. His formula for success was simple: “Cut the prices, scoop the market, run the mills full; watch the costs and profits will take care of themselves.” Carnegie pioneered a system of business organization called vertical integration in which all aspects of the business were under his control — from the mining of iron ore, to its transport on the Great Lakes, to the production of steel. As one observer noted, “there was never a price, profit, or royalty paid to any outsider.”

The great productivity Carnegie encouraged came at a high price. He deliberately pitted his managers against one another, firing the losers and rewarding the winners with a share in the company. Workers achieved the output Carnegie demanded by enduring low wages, dangerous working conditions, and twelve-hour days, six days a week. One worker, observing the contradiction between Carnegie’s generous endowment of public

libraries and his labor policy, observed, “After working twelve hours, how can a man go to a library?”

By 1900, Andrew Carnegie had become the best-known manufacturer in the nation, and the age of iron had yielded to an age of steel (Figure 18.1). Steel from Carnegie’s mills supported the elevated trains in New York and Chicago, formed the skeleton of the Washington Monument, supported the first steel bridge to span the Mississippi, and girded America’s first skyscrapers. As a captain of industry, Carnegie’s only rival was the titan of the oil industry, John D. Rockefeller.

FIGURE 18.1 Iron and Steel Production, 1870–1900

Iron and steel production in the United States grew from nearly none in 1870 to ten million tons a year by 1900. The secrets to such a great increase were the use of the Bessemer process and vertical integration, pioneered by Andrew Carnegie. By 1900, Carnegie’s mills alone produced

more steel than all of Great Britain. With corporate consolidation after 1900, the rate of growth in steel proved even more spectacular.

Description “The approximate data with year and amount are as follows:

1870, 100; 1875, 300; 1800, 1,000; 1885, 1,500; 1890, 4,000; 1895, 6,000; and 1900, 10,000.”

John D. Rockefeller, Standard Oil, and the Trust In the days before the automobile and gasoline, crude oil was refined into lubricating oil for machinery and kerosene for lamps, the major source of lighting in the nineteenth century. The amount of capital needed to buy or build an oil refinery in the 1860s and 1870s remained relatively low — roughly what it cost to lay one mile of railroad track. As a result, the new petroleum industry experienced riotous competition. Ultimately, John D. Rockefeller and his Standard Oil Company succeeded in controlling nine- tenths of the oil-refining business.

Rockefeller grew up the son of a shrewd Yankee who peddled quack cures for cancer. Under his father’s rough tutelage, Rockefeller learned how to drive a hard bargain. In 1865, at the age of twenty-five, he controlled the largest oil refinery in Cleveland. Like a growing number of business owners, Rockefeller abandoned partnership or single proprietorship to embrace the corporation as the business structure best suited to maximize

profit and minimize personal liability. In 1870, he incorporated his oil business, founding the Standard Oil Company.

As the largest refiner in Cleveland, Rockefeller demanded illegal rebates from the railroads in exchange for his steady business. The secret rebates enabled Rockefeller to drive out his competitors through predatory pricing. The railroads needed Rockefeller’s business so badly that they even gave him a share of the rates that his competitors paid. A Pennsylvania Railroad official later confessed that Rockefeller extracted such huge rebates that the railroad, which could not risk losing his business, sometimes ended up paying him to transport Standard’s oil. Rebates enabled Rockefeller to undercut his competitors and pressure competing refiners to sell out or face ruin.

To gain legal standing for Standard Oil’s secret deals, Rockefeller in 1882 pioneered a new form of corporate structure — the trust. The trust differed markedly from Carnegie’s vertical approach in steel. Rockefeller used horizontal integration to control not the entire process, but only an aspect of oil production — refining. Several trustees held stock in various refinery companies in trust for Standard’s stockholders. This elaborate stock swap allowed the trustees to coordinate policy among the refineries by gobbling up all the small, competing refineries. Often buyers did not know they were selling out to Standard. By the end of the century, Rockefeller enjoyed a virtual monopoly of the oil-refining business. The Standard Oil trust, valued at more than $70 million, paved the way for trusts in sugar, whiskey, matches, and many other products.

When the federal government responded to public pressure to outlaw the trust in 1890, Standard Oil changed tactics and reorganized as a holding company. Instead of stockholders in competing companies acting through trustees to set prices and determine territories, the holding company simply brought competing companies under one central administration. Now one business, not an assortment of individual refineries, Standard Oil controlled competition without violating antitrust laws that forbade competing companies from forming “combinations in restraint of trade.” By the 1890s, Standard Oil ruled more than 90 percent of the oil business, employed 100,000 people, and was the biggest, richest, most feared, and most admired business organization in the world.

John D. Rockefeller enjoyed enormous success in business, but he was not well liked by the public. Editor and journalist Ida M. Tarbell’s “History of the Standard Oil Company,” which ran in serial form in McClure’s Magazine (1902–1905), largely shaped the public’s harsh view of Rockefeller. Her father had owned a refinery squeezed out by Rockefeller, and Tarbell scrupulously chronicled the illegal methods Rockefeller used to take over the oil industry. By the time she finished her story, Rockefeller slept with a loaded revolver by his bed. Standard Oil and the man who created it had become the symbol of heartless monopoly.

New Inventions: The Telephone and Electricity The second half of the nineteenth century was an age of invention. Men like Thomas Alva Edison and Alexander Graham Bell became folk heroes. But

no matter how dramatic the inventors or the inventions, the new electric and telephone industries pioneered by Edison and Bell soon eclipsed their inventors and fell under the control of bankers and industrialists.

Alexander Graham Bell came to America from Scotland at the age of twenty-four with a passion to find a way to teach the deaf to speak (his wife and mother were deaf). Instead, he developed a way to transmit voice over wire — the telephone. Bell’s invention astounded the world when he demonstrated it at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876. In 1880, Bell’s company, American Bell, pioneered “long lines” (long-distance telephone service), creating American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) as a subsidiary.

In 1900, AT&T developed a complicated structure that enabled Americans to communicate not only locally but also across the country. And unlike a telegraph message, the telephone connected both parties immediately and privately. Bell’s invention proved a boon to business, contributing to speed and efficiency. The number of telephones soared, reaching 310,000 in 1895 and more than 1.5 million in 1900.

Even more than Alexander Graham Bell, inventor Thomas Alva Edison embodied the old-fashioned virtues of Yankee ingenuity and rugged individualism that Americans most admired. A self-educated dynamo, he worked twenty hours a day in his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, vowing to turn out “a minor invention every ten days and a big thing every six months or so.” He made good on his promise. At the height of his career, he averaged a patent every eleven days and invented such “big

things” as the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and the filament for the incandescent lightbulb.

Telephone Operator Less than ten years after Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated his new invention, the telephone, in 1876, this young man worked as a telephone operator for American Telephone and Telegraph in Marietta, Georgia. In coming years women would flood into the new field in search of office work, which they preferred to domestic service. By 1900, over 1.5 million homes and offices had telephones.

Edison, in competition with George W. Westinghouse, pioneered the use of electricity as an energy source. By the late nineteenth century, electricity had become a part of American urban life. It powered trolley cars and

lighted factories, homes, and office buildings. Indeed, electricity became so prevalent in urban life that it symbolized the city, whose bright lights contrasted with rural America, left largely in the dark.

The day of the inventor quietly yielded to the heyday of the corporation. In 1892, the electric industry consolidated. Reflecting a nationwide trend in business, Edison General Electric dropped the name of its inventor, becoming simply General Electric (GE). For years, an embittered Edison refused to set foot inside a GE building. GE, a prime example of the trend toward business consolidation, soon dominated the market.

��

What tactics and strategies did American business owners employ during the Gilded Age?

Why did the ideas of social Darwinism appeal to wealthy Americans? Even as Rockefeller and Carnegie built their empires, the era of the “robber barons,” as their detractors dubbed them was drawing to a close. Increasingly, businesses replaced partnerships and sole proprietorships with the anonymous corporate structure that would come to dominate the twentieth century. At the same time, mergers led to the creation of huge new corporations.

Banks and financiers played key roles in this consolidation, so much so that the decades at the turn of the twentieth century can be characterized as a period of finance capitalism — investment sponsored by banks and bankers. When the depression that followed the panic of 1893 bankrupted many businesses, bankers stepped in to bring order and to reorganize major industries. During these years, a new social philosophy developed that helped to justify consolidation and to inhibit state or federal regulation of business. A conservative Supreme Court further frustrated attempts to control business by consistently declaring unconstitutional legislation designed to regulate railroads or to outlaw trusts and monopolies.

J. P. Morgan and Finance Capitalism John Pierpont Morgan, the preeminent finance capitalist of the late nineteenth century, loathed competition and sought whenever possible to eliminate it by substituting consolidation and central control. Morgan’s

passion for order made him the architect of business mergers. At the turn of the twentieth century, he dominated American banking, exerting an influence so powerful that his critics charged he controlled a vast “money trust” even more insidious than Rockefeller’s Standard Oil.

Morgan acted as a power broker in the reorganization of the railroads and the creation of industrial giants such as General Electric. When the railroads collapsed, Morgan took over and eliminated competition by creating what he called “a community of interest.” By the time he finished “Morganizing” the railroads, a handful of directors controlled two-thirds of the nation’s track. His directors were bankers, not railroad men, and they saw the roads as little more than “a set of books.” Their conservative approach aimed at short-term profit and discouraged the technological and organizational innovation necessary to run the railroads effectively.

In 1898, Morgan moved into the steel industry, directly challenging Andrew Carnegie. The pugnacious Carnegie cabled his partners in the summer of 1900: “Action essential: crisis has arrived … have no fear as to the result; victory certain.” The press trumpeted news of the impending fight between the feisty Scot and the haughty Wall Street banker. But for all his belligerence, the sixty-six-year-old Carnegie yearned to retire to Scotland. Morgan, who disdained haggling, agreed to pay Carnegie’s asking price, $480 million (the equivalent of about $10 billion in today’s currency). According to legend, when Carnegie later teased Morgan, saying that he should have asked $100 million more, Morgan replied, “You would have got it if you had.”

Morgan’s acquisition of Carnegie Steel signaled the passing of the old entrepreneurial order personified by Andrew Carnegie and the arrival of a new anonymous corporate world. Morgan quickly moved to pull together Carnegie’s chief competitors to form a huge new corporation, United States Steel, known today as USX. Created in 1901 and capitalized at $1.4 billion, U.S. Steel was the largest corporation in the world. Morgan, observed one of his contemporaries, “is apparently trying to swallow the sun.”

Even more than Carnegie or Rockefeller, Morgan left his stamp on the twentieth century and formed the model for corporate consolidation that economists and social scientists justified with a new social theory later called social Darwinism.

Social Darwinism, Laissez-Faire, and the Supreme Court John D. Rockefeller Jr., the son of the founder of Standard Oil, once remarked to his Baptist Bible class that the Standard Oil Company, like the American Beauty rose, resulted from “pruning the early buds that grew up around it.” The elimination of competition, he declared, was “merely the working out of a law of nature and a law of God.”

The comparison of the business world to the natural world resembled the theory of evolution formulated by the British naturalist Charles Darwin. In his monumental work On the Origin of Species (1859), Darwin theorized that in the struggle for survival, adaptation to the environment triggered among species a natural selection process that led to evolution. Herbert

Spencer in Britain and William Graham Sumner in the United States developed the theory of social Darwinism. The social Darwinists insisted that societal progress came about as a result of relentless competition in which the strong survived and the weak died out.

In social terms, the idea of the “survival of the fittest,” a phrase coined by Spencer, had profound significance. Sumner, a professor of political economy at Yale University, stated the principle baldly in his book What Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1883). “The drunkard in the gutter is just where he ought to be, according to the fitness and tendency of things,” Sumner insisted. Conversely, “millionaires are the product of natural selection,” and although “they get high wages and live in luxury,” Sumner claimed, “the bargain is a good one for society.”

Social Darwinists equated wealth and power with “fitness” and believed that any efforts by the rich to aid the poor would tamper with the laws of nature and slow down evolution. Social Darwinism acted to curb social reform while glorifying great wealth. In an age when Rockefeller and Carnegie amassed hundreds of millions of dollars (billions in today’s currency) and the average worker earned $500 a year, social Darwinism justified economic inequality and stood as a solid barrier to reform.

Carnegie softened some of the harshness of social Darwinism in his essay “The Gospel of Wealth,” published in 1889. The millionaire, Carnegie wrote, acted as a “mere trustee and agent for his poorer brethren, bringing to their service his superior wisdom, experience, and ability to administer, doing for them better than they could or would do for themselves.”

Carnegie preached philanthropy and urged the rich to “live unostentatious lives” and “administer surplus wealth for the good of the people.” His gospel of wealth earned much praise but won few converts. Most millionaires followed the lead of Morgan, who contributed to charity but hoarded private treasures in his marble library.

With its emphasis on the free play of competition and the survival of the fittest, social Darwinism encouraged the economic theory of laissez-faire (French for “let it alone”). Business leaders argued that government should not meddle in economic affairs, except to protect private property (or support high tariffs and government subsidies). A conservative Supreme Court agreed. During the 1880s and 1890s, the Court increasingly reinterpreted the Constitution, judging corporations to be “persons” in order to protect business from taxation, regulation, labor organization, and antitrust legislation.

Only in the arena of politics did Americans tackle the social issues raised by corporate capitalism.

��

How did social Darwinism shape American society and business in the late nineteenth century?

What factors influenced political life in the late nineteenth century? For many Americans, politics provided a source of identity, a means of livelihood, and a ready form of entertainment. No wonder voter turnout averaged a hefty 77 percent (compared to roughly 58 percent in the 2016 presidential election). A variety of factors contributed to the complicated interplay of politics and culture. Patronage provided an economic incentive for voter participation, but ethnicity, religion, sectional loyalty, race, and gender all influenced the political life of the period.

Political Participation and Party Loyalty Political parties in power doled out federal, state, and local government jobs to their loyal supporters. With hundreds of thousands of jobs to be filled, the choice of party affiliation could mean the difference between a paycheck and an empty pocket. Money greased the wheels of this system of patronage, dubbed the spoils system from the adage “To the victor go the spoils.” With their livelihoods tied to their party identity, government employees had a powerful incentive to vote in great numbers.

Political affiliation provided a sense of group identity for many voters proud of their loyalty to the Democrats or the Republicans. Democrats, who traced the party’s roots back to Thomas Jefferson, called theirs “the party of the fathers.” The Republican Party, founded in the 1850s, still claimed strong loyalties in the North as a result of its alignment with the Union

during the Civil War. Republicans proved particularly adept at evoking Civil War loyalty, using a tactic called “waving the bloody shirt.”

Religion and ethnicity also played a significant role in politics. In the North, Protestants from the old-line denominations, particularly Presbyterians and Methodists, flocked to the Republican Party, which championed a series of moral reforms, including local laws requiring business to close on Sunday. In the cities, the Democratic Party courted immigrants and working-class Catholic and Jewish voters and charged, rightly, that Republican moral crusades often masked attacks on immigrant culture.

Sectionalism and the New South After the end of Reconstruction, most white voters in the former Confederate states remained loyal Democrats, creating the so-called solid South that lasted for the next seventy years. Labeling the Republican Party the agent of “Negro rule,” Democrats urged white southerners to “vote the way you shot.” Yet the South proved far from solid for the Democrats on the state and local levels, leading to shifting political alliances and to third- party movements that challenged Democratic attempts to define politics along race lines and maintain the Democrats as the white man’s party.

The South’s economy, devastated by the war, foundered at the same time the North experienced an unprecedented industrial boom. Soon an influential group of southerners called for a “New South” modeled on the industrial North. Henry Grady, the ebullient young editor of the Atlanta Constitution, used his paper’s influence to exhort the South to use its

natural advantages — cheap labor and abundant natural resources — to go head-to-head in competition with northern industry. And even as southern Democrats took back control of state governments, they embraced northern promoters who promised prosperity and profits.

The railroads came first, opening up the region for industrial development. Southern railroad mileage grew fourfold from 1865 to 1890. The number of cotton spindles also soared as textile mill owners abandoned New England in search of the cheap labor and proximity to raw materials promised in the South. By 1900, the South had become the nation’s leading producer of cloth, and more than 100,000 southerners, many of them women and children, worked in the region’s textile mills.

The New South prided itself most on its iron and steel industry, which grew up in the area surrounding Birmingham, Alabama. During this period, the smokestack replaced the white-pillared plantation as the symbol of the New South. Andrew Carnegie toured the region in 1889 and observed, “The South is Pennsylvania’s most formidable industrial enemy.” But southern industry remained controlled by northern investors, who had no intention of letting the South beat the North at its own game. Elaborate mechanisms rigged the price of southern steel, inflating it, as one northern insider confessed, “for the purpose of protecting the Pittsburgh mills and in turn the Pittsburgh steel users.” Similarly, in the lumber and mining industries, investors in the North and abroad, not southerners, reaped the lion’s share of the profits.

In only one industry did the South truly dominate — tobacco. Capitalizing on the invention of a machine for rolling cigarettes, the American Tobacco Company, founded by the Duke family of North Carolina, eventually dominated the industry. As cigarettes replaced chewing tobacco in popularity at the turn of the twentieth century, a booming market developed for Duke’s “ready mades.” Soon the company sold 400,000 cigarettes a day.

In practical terms, the industrialized New South proved an illusion. Much of the South remained agricultural, caught in the grip of the insidious crop lien system (see chapter 16). White southern farmers, desperate to get out of debt, sometimes joined African Americans to pursue mutual political goals. Between 1865 and 1900, voters in every southern state experimented with political alliances that crossed the color line and threatened the status quo.

Gender, Race, and Politics Gender — society’s notion of what constitutes acceptable masculine or feminine behavior — influenced politics throughout the nineteenth century. From the early days of the Republic, citizenship had been defined in male terms. Citizenship and its prerogatives (voting and officeholding) served as a badge of manliness and rested on its corollary, patriarchy — the power and authority men exerted over their wives and families. With the advent of universal (white) male suffrage in the early nineteenth century, gender eclipsed class as the defining feature of citizenship; men’s dominance over women provided the common thread that knit all white men together politically. The concept of separate spheres dictated political participation for men only. Once the public sphere of political participation became

equated with manhood, women found themselves increasingly restricted to the private sphere of the home.

Women were not alone in their limited access to the public sphere. Blacks continued to face discrimination well after Reconstruction, especially in the New South. Segregation, commonly practiced through Jim Crow laws (as discussed in chapter 21), prevented ex-slaves from riding in the same train cars as whites, from eating in the same restaurants, or from using the same toilet facilities.

Amid the turmoil of the post-Reconstruction South, some groups struck cross-racial alliances. In Virginia, the “Readjusters,” a coalition of blacks and whites determined to “readjust” (lower) the state debt and spend more money on public education, captured state offices from 1879 to 1883. Groups like the Readjusters believed universal political rights could be extended to black males while maintaining racial segregation in the private sphere. Democrats fought back by arguing that black voting would lead to racial mixing and urged whites to return to the Democratic fold to protect “white womanhood.”

The notion that black men threatened white southern women reached its most vicious form in the practice of lynching — the killing and mutilation of black men by white mobs. By 1892, the practice had become so prevalent that a courageous black editor, Ida B. Wells, launched an anti- lynching movement. That year, a white mob lynched a friend of Wells’s whose grocery store competed too successfully with a white-owned store. Wells shrewdly concluded that lynching served “as an excuse to get rid of

Negroes who were acquiring wealth and property and thus keep the race terrorized.”

She began to collect data on lynching and discovered that in the decade between 1882 and 1892, lynching rose in the South by an overwhelming 200 percent, with more than 241 black people killed. The vast increase in lynching testified to the retreat of the federal government following Reconstruction and to white southerners’ determination to maintain supremacy through terrorism and intimidation.

Wells articulated lynching as a problem of gender as well as race. She insisted that the myth of black attacks on white southern women masked the reality that mob violence had more to do with economics and the shifting social structure of the South than with rape. She demonstrated in a sophisticated way how the southern patriarchal system, having lost its control over blacks with the end of slavery, used its control over white women to circumscribe the liberty of black men.

Ida B. Wells Ida B. Wells began her anti-lynching campaign in 1892 after a friend’s murder led her to examine lynching in the South. Through lectures and pamphlets, she brought the horror of lynching to national and international audiences, and she became a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Wells’s outspoken stance immediately resulted in reprisal. While she was traveling in the North, vandals ransacked her office in Tennessee and destroyed her printing equipment. Yet the warning that she would be killed on sight if she ever returned to Memphis only stiffened her resolve. As she wrote in her autobiography, Crusade for Justice (1928), “Having lost my paper, had a price put on my life and been made an exile …, I felt that I owed it to myself and to my race to tell the whole truth now that I was where I could do so freely.”

Lynching did not end during Wells’s lifetime, but her forceful voice brought the issue to national and international prominence. Black leader W. E. B. Du Bois eulogized Wells as the woman who “began the awakening of the conscience of the nation” at her funeral in 1931. Wells’s determined campaign against lynching provided just one example of women’s political activism during the Gilded Age. The suffrage and temperance movements, along with the growing popularity of women’s clubs, dramatized how women refused to be relegated to a separate sphere that kept them out of politics.

Women’s Activism In 1869, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony formed the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA), the first independent women’s rights organization in the United States, to fight for the vote for women. Already women had found ways to act politically before they voted and cleverly used their moral authority as wives and mothers to move from the domestic sphere into the realm of politics.

The extraordinary activity of women’s clubs in the period following the Civil War provides just one example. Women’s clubs proliferated beginning in the 1860s. Newspaper reporter Jane Cunningham Croly (pen name Jennie June) founded the Sorosis Club in New York City in 1868, after the New York Press Club denied entry to women journalists wishing to attend a banquet honoring the British author Charles Dickens. In 1890, Croly brought state and local clubs together under the umbrella of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs (GFWC). Not wishing to alienate southern

women, the GFWC barred black women’s clubs from joining, despite vehement objections. Women’s clubs soon abandoned literary pursuits to devote themselves to “civic usefulness,” endorsing an end to child labor, supporting the eight-hour workday, and helping pass pure food and drug legislation.

The temperance movement (the movement to end drunkenness) attracted by far the largest number of organized women in the late nineteenth century. In the late 1860s and the 1870s, the liquor business flourished, with about one saloon for every fifty males over the age of fifteen. During the winter of 1873–74, temperance women adopted a radical new tactic. Armed with Bibles and singing hymns, they marched on taverns and saloons and refused to leave until the proprietors signed a pledge to quit selling liquor.

Known as the Woman’s Crusade, the movement spread through small towns in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois, and soon moved east into New York, New England, and Pennsylvania. Before it was over, more than 100,000 women had marched in more than 450 cities and towns.

The women’s tactics may have been new, but the temperance movement dated back to the 1820s. Originally, Protestant men led the movement, organizing clubs to pledge voluntary abstinence from liquor. By the 1850s, temperance advocates won significant victories when states, starting with Maine, passed laws to prohibit the sale of liquor. The Woman’s Crusade dramatically brought the issue of temperance back into the national spotlight and led to the formation of a new organization, the Woman’s

Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), in 1874. Composed entirely of women, the WCTU advocated total abstinence from alcohol.

Temperance provided women with a respectable outlet for their increasing resentment of women’s inferior status and their growing recognition of women’s capabilities. In its first five years, the WCTU relied on education and moral suasion, but when Frances Willard became president in 1879, she politicized the organization (see chapter 20).

When the women of the WCTU joined with the Prohibition Party (formed in 1869 by a group of evangelical clergymen), one wag observed, “Politics is a man’s game, an’ women, childhern, and prohyibitionists do well to keep out iv it.” By sharing power with women, the prohibitionist men violated the old political rules and risked attacks on their honor and manhood.

Even though women found ways to affect the political process, especially in third parties, it remained true that politics, particularly presidential politics, remained an exclusively male prerogative.

��

How did race and gender influence politics?

What issues shaped party politics in the late nineteenth century? The presidents of the Gilded Age, from Rutherford B. Hayes (1877–1881) to William McKinley (1897–1901), are largely forgotten men, primarily because so little was expected of them. The dominant creed of laissez-faire, coupled with the dictates of social Darwinism, warned the presidents and the government to leave business alone (except when government worked in business’s interests). Still, presidents in the Gilded Age grappled with corruption and party strife, and they struggled toward the creation of new political ethics designed to replace patronage with a civil service system that promised to award jobs on the basis of merit, not party loyalty.

Corruption and Party Strife The political corruption and party factionalism that characterized the administration of Ulysses S. Grant (1869–1877) (see chapter 16) continued to trouble the nation in the 1880s. The spoils system remained the driving force in party politics at all levels of government. Pro-business Republicans generally held a firm grip on the White House, while Democrats had better luck in Congress. Both parties relied on patronage to cement party loyalty.

A small but determined group of reformers championed a new ethics that would preclude politicians from getting rich from public office. The selection of U.S. senators particularly concerned them. Under the Constitution, senators were selected by state legislatures, not directly elected by the voters. Powerful business interests often contrived to control

state legislatures and, through them, U.S. senators. As journalist Henry Demarest Lloyd quipped, Standard Oil “had done everything to the Pennsylvania legislature except to refine it.” In this climate, a constitutional amendment calling for the direct election of senators faced stiff opposition from entrenched interests.

Republican president Rutherford B. Hayes tried to steer a middle course between spoilsmen and reformers. Hayes proved a hardworking, well- informed executive who wanted peace, prosperity, and an end to party strife. Yet the Republican Party remained divided into factions led by strong party bosses, who boasted that they could make or break any president.

Foremost among the Republican Senate bosses stood Roscoe Conkling of New York. An imposing six foot three with a luxurious blonde beard, Conkling led a faction called the “Stalwarts.” He and his followers fiercely supported the patronage system, dismissing reform as “snivel service.” Conkling’s rival Senator James G. Blaine of Maine led the “Half Breeds,” who were less openly corrupt yet still tainted by their involvement in the Crédit Mobilier scandal. A third group, called the “Mugwumps,” consisted of reformers from Massachusetts and New York who deplored the spoils system and advocated civil service reform.

President Hayes’s middle course pleased no one, and he soon managed to alienate all factions of his party. Few were surprised when he announced that he would not seek reelection in 1880. To avoid choosing among its factions, the Republican Party in 1880 nominated a dark-horse candidate, Representative James A. Garfield of Ohio. To foster party unity, they picked

Stalwart Chester A. Arthur as the vice-presidential candidate. The Democrats made an attempt to overcome sectionalism by selecting former Union general Winfield Scott Hancock, who garnered only lukewarm support, receiving just 155 electoral votes to Garfield’s 214, although the popular vote proved less lopsided.

Garfield’s Assassination and Civil Service Reform “My God,” Garfield swore after only a few months in office, “what is there in this place that a man should ever want to get into it?” Garfield, like Hayes, faced the difficult task of remaining independent while pacifying the party bosses and placating the reformers. On July 2, 1881, less than four months after taking office, Garfield was shot and died two months later. His assailant, Charles Julius Guiteau, though clearly insane, turned out to be a disappointed office seeker, motivated by political partisanship. He told the police officer who arrested him, “I did it; I will go to jail for it: Arthur is president, and I am a Stalwart.”

The press almost universally condemned Republican factionalism for creating the political climate that produced Guiteau. Attacks on the spoils system increased, and both parties claimed credit for passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883, which established a permanent Civil Service Commission consisting of three members appointed by the president. Some fourteen thousand jobs came under a merit system that required examinations for office and made it impossible to remove jobholders for political reasons. The new law also prohibited federal

employees from contributing to political campaigns, thus drying up the major source of the party bosses’ revenue. Businesses soon stepped in as the nation’s chief political contributors. Ironically, civil service reform gave business an even greater influence in political life.

Reform and Scandal: The Campaign of 1884 James G. Blaine assumed leadership of the Republican Party and at long last captured the presidential nomination in 1884. A magnetic Irish American, Blaine inspired such devotion that his supporters called themselves Blainiacs. But Mugwump reformers bolted the party and embraced the Democrats’ presidential nominee, Governor Grover Cleveland of New York. The burly, beer-drinking Cleveland distinguished himself from a generation of politicians by the simple motto “A public office is a public trust.”

First as mayor of Buffalo and later as governor of New York, he built a reputation for honesty, economy, and administrative efficiency. The Democrats, who had not won the presidency since 1856, had high hopes for his candidacy, especially after the Mugwumps threw their support to Cleveland, announcing, “The paramount issue this year is moral rather than political.”

They soon regretted their words. In July, Cleveland’s hometown paper, the Buffalo Telegraph, dropped the bombshell that the candidate a decade earlier had fathered an illegitimate child as the result of an alleged rape of a

local widow. Cleveland, a bachelor, stoically accepted responsibility for the child, a son he took from its mother and gave to a friend to raise. Crushed by the scandal, the Mugwumps lost much of their enthusiasm. At public rallies, Blaine’s partisans taunted Cleveland, chanting, “Ma, Ma, where’s my Pa?”

Blaine set a new campaign style by launching a whirlwind national tour. On a last-minute stop in New York City, the exhausted candidate committed a misstep that may have cost him the election. He overlooked a remark by a supporter, a local clergyman who cast a slur on Catholic voters by styling the Democrats as the party of “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion.” Linking drinking (rum) and Catholicism (Romanism) offended Irish Catholic voters, whom Blaine had counted on to desert the Democratic Party and support him because of his Irish background.

With less than a week to go until the election, Blaine had no chance to recover from the negative publicity. He lost New York State by fewer than 1,200 votes and with it the election. In the final tally, Cleveland defeated Blaine by a scant 23,005 votes nationwide but won with 219 electoral votes to Blaine’s 182, ending twenty-four years of Republican control of the presidency. Cleveland’s followers had the last word. To the chorus of “Ma, Ma, where’s my Pa?” they retorted, “Going to the White House, ha, ha, ha.”

Henry George and the Politics of Inequality

While Democrats and Republicans squabbled over spoils or worked to reform the corrupt process, disaffected working men and women looked to new leaders. With the ostentatious mansions of Fifth Avenue just blocks from the rancid tenements of lower Manhattan, New York City starkly mirrored the growing disparity of wealth that marked the Gilded Age. A yawning gap divided the haves and the have-nots. Fewer than 1 percent of Americans had scooped up 51 percent of the nation’s wealth.

Henry George pointed to the paradox of poverty amidst plenty in a surprise best seller; he titled Progress and Poverty. “It is as though an immense wedge were being forced through society,” he wrote in 1879. “Those who are above the point of separation are elevated but those who are below are crushed down.” Something was wrong, and he called on the government to fix it through taxation. His cause attracted the support of labor, who backed him in New York’s 1886 mayoral race. George waged a strenuous campaign, speaking six or seven times a day from the tailboard of a wagon.

The size and enthusiasm of his crowds frightened moneyed New Yorkers, who saw in any working-class alliance the potential for bloody revolution. No wonder they quaked in fear when 30,000 marchers braved a driving rain to march in a “Monster Parade” days before the election. A record number of voters turned out for the contest. Democrats managed to eke out a victory, largely thanks to the political dirty tricks of Tammany Hall. George captured 68,000 votes, however, significantly more than the Republican candidate, a political up-and-comer named Theodore Roosevelt.

Henry George Campaign Mayoral candidate Henry George mounted a tailboarding campaign in New York in 1886, giving speeches from the back of a wagon as he tore through the city. George lost to the Tammany Hall candidate but succeeded in spreading his reform message that the huge disparity in wealth evident in the Gilded Age posed a threat to democracy. His book, Progress and Poverty, was a runaway best-seller.

Description The candidates are standing on a cart surrounded by people holding signs. Text on the them read, No more rings, No more halls, George our next Mayor, An injury to one is the concern for all, Vote for George.

��

How did the question of civil service reform contribute to divisions within the Republican Party?

What role did economic issues play in party realignment? On the national level in the election of 1888, fickle voters turned Cleveland out, electing Republican Benjamin Harrison, the grandson of President William Henry Harrison. Then, in the only instance in American history when a president once defeated at the polls returned to office, the voters brought Cleveland back in the election of 1892. What factors account for such a surprising turnaround? The 1880s witnessed a remarkable political realignment as a set of economic concerns replaced appeals to Civil War sectional loyalties. The tariff, federal regulation of the railroads and trusts, and the campaign for free silver restructured American politics. In 1893 a Wall Street panic set off a major depression that further fed political unrest.

The Tariff and the Politics of Protection The tariff became a potent political issue in the 1880s. The concept of a protective tariff to raise the price of imported goods and stimulate American industry dated back to the founding days of the Republic. Republicans turned the tariff to political ends in 1861 by enacting a measure that both raised revenues for the Civil War and rewarded their industrial supporters, who wanted protection from foreign competition. After the war, the pro- business Republicans continued to raise the tariff. Manufactured goods, such as steel and textiles, and some agricultural products, including sugar and wool, benefited from protection. Most farm products, notably wheat and cotton, did not. By the 1880s, the tariff produced more than $2.1 billion

in revenue. Not only did the high tariff pay off the nation’s Civil War debt and fund pensions for Union soldiers, but it also created a huge surplus that sat idly in the Treasury’s vaults while the government argued about how (or even whether) to spend it.

To many Americans, particularly southern and midwestern farmers, who sold their crops in a world market but had to buy goods priced artificially high because of the protective tariff, the answer was simple: Reduce the tariff. But the Republican Party seized on the tariff question to forge a new national coalition. “Fold up the bloody shirt and lay it away,” Blaine advised a colleague in 1880. “It’s of no use to us. You want to shift the main issue to protection.” By encouraging an alliance among industrialists, labor, and western producers of raw materials — groups seen to benefit from the tariff — Blaine hoped to solidify the North, Midwest, and West against the solidly Democratic South. Although the tactic failed for Blaine in the presidential election of 1884, it worked for the Republicans four years later.

Cleveland, who had straddled the tariff issue in the election of 1884, startled the nation in 1887 by calling for tariff reform. The president attacked the tariff as a tax levied on American consumers by powerful industries. And he pointed out that high tariffs impeded the expansion of American markets abroad at a time when American industries needed to expand. The Republicans countered by arguing that “tariff tinkering” would only unsettle prosperous industries, drive down wages, and shrink the farmers’ home market. Republican Benjamin Harrison, who supported the high tariff, ousted Cleveland from the White House in 1888, carrying all the western and northern states except Connecticut and New Jersey.

Back in power, the Republicans brazenly passed the highest tariff in the nation’s history in 1890. The new tariff, sponsored by Republican representative William McKinley of Ohio, stirred up a hornet’s nest of protest across the United States. The American people had elected Harrison to preserve protection, not to enact a higher tariff. Democrats condemned the McKinley tariff and labeled the Republican Congress that passed it the “Billion Dollar Congress” for its carnival of spending, which depleted the nation’s surplus by enacting a series of pork barrel programs shamelessly designed to bring federal money to congressmen’s constituencies. In the congressional election of 1890, angry voters swept the hapless Republicans, including tariff sponsor McKinley, out of office. Two years later, Harrison himself was defeated, and Grover Cleveland returned to the White House. Such were the changes in the political winds whipped up by the tariff issue.

Controversy over the tariff masked deeper divisions in American society. Conflict between workers and farmers on the one side and bankers and corporate giants on the other erupted throughout the 1880s and came to a head in the 1890s. Both sides in the tariff debate spoke to concerns over class conflict when they insisted that their respective plans, whether McKinley’s high tariff or Cleveland’s tariff reform, would bring prosperity and harmony. For their part, many working people shared the sentiment voiced by one labor leader that the tariff was “only a scheme devised by the old parties to throw dust in the eyes of laboring men.”

Railroads, Trusts, and the Federal Government

American voters may have divided on the tariff, but increasingly they agreed on the need for federal regulation of the railroads and federal legislation to curb the power of the “trusts” (a term loosely applied to all large business combinations). As early as the 1870s, angry farmers in the Midwest who suffered from the unfair shipping practices of the railroads organized to fight for railroad regulation. The Patrons of Husbandry, or the Grange, founded in 1867 as a social and educational organization for farmers, soon became an independent political movement. By electing Grangers to state office, farmers made it possible for several midwestern states to pass laws in the 1870s and 1880s regulating the railroads.

At first, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of state regulation (Munn v. Illinois, 1877). But in 1886, the Court reversed itself, ruling that because railroads crossed state boundaries, they fell outside state jurisdiction (Wabash v. Illinois). With more than three-fourths of railroads crossing state lines, the Supreme Court’s decision effectively quashed the states’ attempts at railroad regulation.

Anger at the Wabash decision finally led to the first federal law regulating the railroads, the Interstate Commerce Act, passed in 1887 during Cleveland’s first administration. The act established the nation’s first federal regulatory agency, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), to oversee the railroad industry (see Map 18.2). Railroad lobbyists worked furiously behind the scenes to make the new agency palatable to business leaders, many of whom felt a federal agency would be more lenient than state regulators. In its early years, the ICC was never strong enough to pose a serious threat to the railroads. For example, it could not end rebates to big

shippers. In its early decades, the ICC proved more important as a precedent than effective as a watchdog.

MAP 18.2 Federal Land Grants to Railroads and the Development of the West, 1850–1900

Railroads received more than 180 million acres, an area as large as Texas. Built well ahead of demand, the western railroads courted settlers, often onto land not fit for farming.

Description Major railroads in 1980: Northern Pacific; Southern Pacific; Central Pacific; Union Pacific; Atlantic & Pacific; Southern Pacific; and Missouri Pacific.

Cattle trail route: San Antonio to Ogallala; Kansas Pacific; Ellsworth; Kansas; Abilene; Sedalia; Dallas; and Kansas City.

Areas of railroad land grant: Everett; Spokane; Butte; Helena; Bismarck; Fargo; St. Paul; Iowa; Omaha; Ogallala; Kansas; Atchison; Ellsworth; Albuquerque; Tucson; San Francisco; Sacramento; Promontory Point; Washington; Duluth; Memphis; Houston; New

Orleans; Mobile; Florida; Airline; Georgia; Mississippi, Alabama; Shreveport; Atlantic coast; Richmond; Philadelphia; Baltimore; Pittsburgh; New York; Albany; Boston; Delaware; New Jersey; and Chicago.

Mining center: Alder Gulch; Silver city; Virginia City; Sutter’s Fort; Pikes Peak; Deadwood Gulch; and Last chance Gulch.

Concern over the growing power of the trusts led Congress to pass the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890. The act outlawed pools and trusts, ruling that businesses could no longer enter into agreements to restrict competition. It did nothing to restrict huge holding companies such as Standard Oil, however, and proved to be a weak sword against the trusts. In the following decade, the government successfully struck down only six trusts but used the law four times against labor by outlawing unions as a “conspiracy in restraint of trade.”

In 1895, the conservative Supreme Court dealt the antitrust law a crippling blow in United States v. E. C. Knight Company. In its decision, the Court ruled that “manufacture” did not constitute “trade.” This semantic quibble drastically narrowed the law, in this case allowing the American Sugar Refining Company, which had bought out a number of other sugar companies (including E. C. Knight) and controlled 98 percent of the production of sugar, to continue its virtual monopoly. Yet the Court insisted the law could be used against labor unions.

Both the ICC and the Sherman Antitrust Act testified to the nation’s concern about corporate abuses of power and to a growing willingness to use federal measures to intervene on behalf of the public interest. As

corporate capitalism became more and more powerful, public pressure toward government intervention grew. Yet not until the twentieth century would more active presidents sharpen and use these weapons effectively against the large corporations.

The Fight for Free Silver While the tariff and regulation of the trusts gained many backers, the silver issue stirred passions like no other issue of the day. On one side stood those who believed that gold constituted the only honest money. Many who supported the gold standard were eastern creditors who did not wish to be paid in devalued dollars. On the opposite side stood a coalition of western silver barons and poor farmers from the West and South who called for free silver. Farmers hoped to increase the money supply by minting silver dollars to create inflation, which would give them some debt relief by enabling them to pay off their creditors with cheaper dollars. The mining interests, who had seen the silver bonanza in the West drive down the price of the precious metal, wanted the government to buy silver and mint silver dollars.

During the depression following the panic of 1873, critics of hard money organized the Greenback Labor Party, an alliance of farmers and urban wage laborers. The Greenbackers favored issuing paper currency not tied to the gold supply, citing the precedent of the greenbacks issued during the Civil War. The government had the right to define what constituted legal tender, the Greenbackers reasoned: “Paper is equally money, when … issued according to law.” They proposed that the nation’s currency

be based on its wealth — land, labor, and capital — and not simply on its reserves of gold. The Greenback Labor Party captured more than a million votes and elected fourteen members to Congress in 1878. Although conservatives considered the Greenbackers dangerous cranks, their views eventually prevailed in the 1930s, when the country abandoned the gold standard.

After the Greenback Labor Party collapsed, proponents of free silver came to dominate the monetary debate in the 1890s. Advocates of free silver pointed out that until 1873 the country had enjoyed a system of bimetallism — the minting of both silver and gold into coins. In that year, at the behest of those who favored gold, the Republican Congress had voted to stop buying and minting silver, an action silver supporters denounced as the “crime of ’73.” By sharply contracting the money supply at a time when the nation’s economy was burgeoning, the Republicans had enriched bankers and investors at the expense of cotton and wheat farmers and industrial wageworkers.

In 1878 and again in 1890, with the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, Congress took steps to ease the tight money policy and appease advocates of silver by passing legislation requiring the government to buy silver and issue silver certificates. Though good for the mining interests, the laws did little to promote the inflation desired by farmers. Soon monetary reformers began to call for “the free and unlimited coinage of silver,” a plan whereby nearly all the silver mined in the West would be minted into coins circulated at the rate of sixteen ounces of silver equal in value to one ounce of gold.

By the 1890s, the silver issue crossed party lines. The Democrats hoped to use it to achieve a union between western and southern voters. Unfortunately for them, Democratic president Grover Cleveland supported the gold standard as vehemently as any Republican. After a panic on Wall Street in the spring of 1893, Cleveland called a special session of Congress and bullied the legislature into repealing the Silver Purchase Act because he believed it threatened economic confidence. Repeal proved disastrous for Cleveland. It did nothing to bring prosperity and dangerously divided the country. Angry farmers warned Cleveland not to travel west of the Mississippi River if he valued his life.

Panic and Depression President Cleveland had scarcely begun his second term in 1893 when the country plunged into the worst depression it had yet seen. In the face of economic disaster, Cleveland clung to the economic orthodoxy of the gold standard. The subtreasury in lower Manhattan witnessed a dangerous drain on the gold reserves as cartloads of bullion were loaded on ships destined for nervous European investors. In the winter of 1894–95, the president walked the floor of the White House, sleepless over the prospect that the United States might go bankrupt. The Treasury’s gold reserves had dipped so low that unless they could be buttressed, the unthinkable might happen: The U.S. Treasury might not be able to meet its obligations.

At this juncture, J. P. Morgan stepped in. A syndicate of bankers pledged to purchase millions in U.S. government bonds, paying in gold. An obscure Reconstruction-era statute made such a deal possible without congressional

approval. Cleveland knew that the scheme would unleash a thunder of protest, yet to save the gold standard, the president had no choice. Morgan and Cleveland managed to stop the drain of gold, but their deal did little to save the country from hardship.

In the winter of 1894–95, people faced unemployment, cold, and hunger. Cleveland, a firm believer in limited government, insisted that nothing could be done: “I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit.” Nor did it occur to Cleveland that his great faith in the gold standard prolonged the depression, favored creditors over debtors, and caused immense hardship for millions of Americans.

��

What role did the gold standard play in the economic crisis of the 1890s?

Conclusion: How did business dominate the Gilded Age? “We are the rich,” boasted one of New York’s newly minted millionaires. “We own America; we got it God knows how, but we intend to keep it if we can.” To Mark Twain, who saw the era with his acerbic clarity, the new riches represented not a golden age but a gilded age. Twain, who himself had fallen prey to the get-rich-quick ethos of the era and ended up bankrupt, knew better than to trust the shiny surface. Underneath lay crasser stuff — greed, exploitation, waste, and corruption.

The gold deal between J. P. Morgan and Grover Cleveland in 1895 underscored a dangerous reality: The federal government had become so weak that its solvency depended on a private banker. This lopsided power relationship signaled the dominance of business in the era. Birthed by the railroads, the new economy spawned greed, corruption, and vulgarity on a grand scale. California’s Big Four built railroads but also wreaked havoc to turn paper profits; the get-rich-quick ethic of the gold rush infused the whole continent; and businessmen like Collis Huntington boasted openly of buying politicians, who in turn lined their pockets at the public’s expense.

Nevertheless, the Gilded Age was not without its share of solid achievements. Where dusty roads and cattle trails once sprawled across the continent, steel rails now bound the country together, creating a national market that enabled America to make the leap into the industrial age. Factories and refineries poured out American steel and oil at unprecedented rates. Businessmen like Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Morgan developed new

strategies to consolidate American industry. New inventions, including the telephone and electric light and power, transformed Americans’ everyday lives.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the United States had achieved industrial maturity. It boasted the largest, most innovative, most productive economy in the world. The rise of Gilded Age industry came at a cost, however. The rampant railway building changed the nature of politics in the United States, entwining the state and the corporations and making a mockery of a free market economy. As one historian speculated, had railroad magnates waited to build western railroads to meet demand, their restraint might have resulted in less waste, less environmental degradation, and less human suffering for Native Americans and whites alike.

The power of American industry worried many Americans and gave rise to the era’s political turmoil. Race and gender profoundly influenced American politics, leading to new political alliances. Fearless activist Ida B. Wells fought racism in its most brutal form — lynching. Women’s organizations championed causes, notably suffrage and temperance, and challenged prevailing views of woman’s proper sphere. Reformers fought corruption by instituting civil service. Henry George attracted a mass following in New York’s 1886 mayoral race by pointing to the inequity that allowed the top 1 percent of the country’s population to gobble up 51 percent of the nation’s riches. As the old parties, Democrat and Republican, faced the 1890s, new issues — the tariff, the regulation of the trusts, and currency reform — restructured the nation’s politics.

The Gilded Age witnessed a nation transformed. Fueled by railroad building and expanding industry, cities grew exponentially, bulging at the seams with new inhabitants from around the globe and bristling with new bridges, subways, and skyscrapers. The frenzied growth of urban America brought wealth and opportunity, but also the exploitation of labor, racism toward natives and newcomers, and social upheaval that lent a new urgency to calls for social reform.

Chapter Review

��

Gilded Age trust finance capitalism social Darwinism gospel of wealth spoils system Jim Crow Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) civil service reform Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) Sherman Antitrust Act free silver

�� The Rise of Big Business

What role did railroads and new technologies play in the rise of American big business?

How did the business pioneers of the late nineteenth century organize and grow their businesses?

Late-Nineteenth-Century Politics

How did ideas about gender and race shape late-nineteenth-century politics?

How did new social philosophical theories justify business and political practices in the late nineteenth century?

How did Henry George challenge ideas of inequality in New York City’s 1886 mayoral race?

Economic Issues and Political Conflict

How did each Gilded Age president react to economic issues? How did Supreme Court decisions affect economic issues?

What made free silver such a powerful and emotional issue in the late nineteenth century?

�� , ��

How did the role of business in politics in the late nineteenth century differ from its role in the first half of the century?

How did the rise of big business affect the economic and political landscape of early-twentieth- century America? In what ways did Americans try to deal with the excesses of big business?

��

1869 First transcontinental railroad completed. National Woman Suffrage Association founded.

1870 John D. Rockefeller incorporates Standard Oil Company.

1872 Andrew Carnegie builds world’s largest steel plant.

1873 Wall Street panic leads to major economic depression.

1874 Woman’s Christian Temperance Union founded.

1876 Alexander Graham Bell demonstrates telephone.

1880 James A. Garfield elected president.

1881 Garfield assassinated; Vice President Chester A. Arthur becomes president.

1882 John D. Rockefeller develops trust.

1883

William Graham Sumner articulates his philosophy of social Darwinism in What Social Classes Owe to Each Other. Pendleton Civil Service Act enacted.

1884 Grover Cleveland elected president.

1886 Henry George runs for mayor of New York City.

1887 Interstate Commerce Act enacted.

1889 Andrew Carnegie publishes “The Gospel of Wealth.”

1890 General Federation of Women’s Clubs founded. McKinley tariff passes. Sherman Antitrust Act enacted.

1892 Ida B. Wells launches anti-lynching campaign.

1893 Wall Street panic touches off national depression.

1895 J. P. Morgan bails out U.S. Treasury.

1901 U.S. Steel incorporated and capitalized at $1.4 billion.

�� 19 �� 1870–1900

�� This chapter will explore the following questions:

Why did American cities experience explosive growth in the late nineteenth century? What kinds of work did people do in industrial America? Why did the fortunes of the Knights of Labor rise in the late 1870s and decline in the 1890s? How did urban industrialism shape home life and the world of leisure? How did municipal governments respond to the challenges of urban expansion? Conclusion: Who built the cities?

�� “A TOWN THAT CRAWLED NOW STANDS ERECT, AND WE WHOSE BACKS were bent above the hearths know how it got its spine,” boasted a steelworker surveying New York City. Where once wooden buildings stood rooted in the mire of unpaved streets, cities of stone and steel sprang up in the last decades of the nineteenth century. The labor of millions of workers, many of them immigrants, laid the foundations for urban America.

No symbol better represented the new urban landscape than the Brooklyn Bridge, opened in May 1883. The great bridge soared over the East River in a single mile-long span. Building the Brooklyn Bridge took fourteen years and cost the lives of twenty-seven men. To sink the foundation in the riverbed, laborers tunneled through the mud and worked in boxes that were open at the bottom and pressurized to keep the water out. A scrawny sixteen-year-old from Ireland, Frank Harris, remembered the fearful experience of going to work on the bridge a few days after landing in America:

The six of us were working naked to the waist in the small iron chamber with the temperature of about 80 degrees Fahrenheit: In five minutes the sweat was pouring from us, and all the while we were standing in icy water that was only kept from rising by the terrific pressure. No wonder the headaches were blinding.

When workers came up from the riverbed too quickly they developed a deadly condition called “the bends.” The first worker died when the foundation reached seventy-one feet. Other deaths followed. Washington Roebling, the bridge’s chief engineer, fell victim to the

bends and directed the completion of the bridge through a telescope from his bedroom. Emily Roebling, his wife, acted as site superintendent and chief engineer on the project.

At the end of the nineteenth century, the Brooklyn Bridge stood as a symbol of many things: the industrial might of the United States; the labor of the nation’s immigrants; the ingenuity and genius of its engineers and inventors; the rise of iron and steel; and, most of all, the ascendancy of urban America. Poised on the brink of the twentieth century, the nation was shifting from a rural, agricultural society to an urban, industrial nation. The gap between the rich and the poor widened. In the burgeoning cities, tensions erupted into conflict as workers fought to organize into labor unions and to demand safer working conditions, shorter hours, and better pay, sometimes with violent and bloody results.

The explosive growth of the cities fostered political corruption as unscrupulous bosses and entrepreneurs cashed in on the building boom. Immigrants, political bosses, middle-class managers, manual laborers, and the very rich populated the nation’s cities, crowding the streets, working in the stores and factories, and taking their leisure at the new ballparks, amusement parks, dance halls, and municipal parks. As the new century dawned, the city and its workers moved to center stage in American life.

Why did American cities experience explosive growth in the late nineteenth century? “We cannot all live in cities, yet nearly all seem determined to do so,” New York editor Horace Greeley complained. The last three decades of the nineteenth century witnessed an urban explosion. Cities and towns grew more than twice as rapidly as the total population. By 1900, the United States boasted three cities with more than a million inhabitants — New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia.

Patterns of global migration contributed to the rise of the city. In the port cities on the East Coast, more than fourteen million people arrived, many from southern and eastern Europe, and huddled together in dense urban ghettos. The word slum entered the American vocabulary along with a growing concern over the rising tide of newcomers. In the city, the widening gap between the rich and the poor became not just financial but physical. Changes in the city landscape brought about by advances in transportation and technology accentuated the great divide in wealth at the same time they put physical distance between the rich and the poor.

The Urban Explosion: A Global Migration The United States grew up in the country and moved to the city, or so it seemed by the end of the nineteenth century. Between 1870 and 1900, eleven million people had moved into cities. Burgeoning industrial centers

such as Pittsburgh, Chicago, New York, and Cleveland acted as giant magnets, attracting workers from the countryside. But rural Americans were not the only ones migrating to cities. Millions of immigrants moved from their native countries to America. Worldwide in scope, the movement from rural areas to urban industrial centers attracted millions of immigrants to American shores.

By the 1870s, the world could be conceptualized as three interconnected geographic regions (Map 19.1). At the center stood an industrial core that encompassed the eastern United States and western Europe. Surrounding this industrial core lay a vast agricultural domain from the Canadian wheat fields to the hinterlands of northern China. Capitalist development in the late nineteenth century shattered traditional patterns of economic activity in this rural periphery. As old patterns broke down, these rural areas exported, along with other raw materials, new recruits for the industrial labor force.

MAP 19.1 Economic Regions of the World, 1890

The global nature of the world economy at the turn of the twentieth century is indicated by three interconnected geographic regions. At the center stands the industrial core — western Europe and the northeastern United States. The second region — the agricultural periphery — supplied immigrant laborers to the industries in the core. Beyond these two regions lay a vast area tied economically to the industrial core by colonialism.

Description “The areas marked in the map are as follows:

Industrial core: Mid-East to North East of United States including St Louis, Louisville, Chicago, Toronto, the Canadian West coast, and Richmond.

West of Europe including Glasgow, Berlin, Warsaw, Milan, and Barcelona.

Agricultural rural domain: Vast areas of Canada, United States, the northern border of Mexico, Russia, Germany, North of Asia including major areas of China, and the whole of Australia and Japan.

Third world: Northern areas of Canada, the majority of Mexico, whole of Central America, Caribbean, South America, Africa, South of China including Canton, and India.”

Beyond this second circle lay an even larger third world. Colonial ties between this part of the world and the industrial core strengthened in the late nineteenth century, but most of the people living there stayed put. They worked on plantations and railroads, and in mines and ports, as part of a huge export network managed by foreign powers that staked out spheres of influence and colonies in this vast region.

In the 1870s, railroad expansion and low steamship fares gave the world’s peoples a newfound mobility, enabling industrialists to draw on a global

population for cheap labor. When Andrew Carnegie opened his first steel mill in 1872, his superintendent hired workers he called “buckwheats” — young American boys just off the farm. By the 1890s, however, Carnegie’s workforce was liberally sprinkled with other rural boys, Hungarians and Slavs who had migrated to the United States, willing to work for low wages.

Altogether, more than twenty-five million immigrants came to the United States between 1850 and 1920. They came from all directions: east from Asia, south from Canada, north from Latin America, and west from Europe (Map 19.2). Part of a worldwide migration, emigrants traveled to South America and Australia as well as to the United States. Yet more than 70 percent of all European emigrants chose North America as their destination.

MAP 19.2 The Impact of Immigration, to 1910

Immigration flowed in all directions — south from Canada, north from Mexico and Latin America, east from Asia, and west from Europe.

Description “The areas marked in the map are as follows:

Less than 10 percent : Eastern parts of Utah, Arizona territory, New Mexico territory, North areas of Texas, Los Angeles, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee including Nashville, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Indiana, Delaware, Maryland, and Washington.

10 percent to 25 percent: Central parts of Oregon, Utah, East of Arizona territory, Colorado, West of New Mexico territory, scattered areas of Texas, Southeast coast of Florida, West Virginia, Ohio, New Hampshire, South of Iowa, West of Illinois, and Indiana, insignificant areas of Michigan, Vermont, Maine, and Pittsburgh.

25 percent to 50 percent : Major areas of Washington, Oregon including Portland, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, Colorado including Denver, California including Los Angeles, Arizona territory including Phoenix, South of New Mexico territory, South of Texas including San Antonio, New Orleans, small part of Florida, Nebraska, South Dakota, parts of Iowa, Illinois, Kansas including Kansas city, St. Louis. Michigan, New York, Maine, Vermont, and New Jersey.

50 percent to 75 percent: North of Maine, New Hampshire, Boston, Rhode Island, Boston, Connecticut, Newark, parts of Pennsylvania, East parts of Michigan, Wisconsin, Milwaukee, North of Minnesota, scattered parts of North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Seattle region, Salt lake city and surrounding areas, Central regions of Nevada, San Francisco, South of Arizona territory and Texas.

More than 75 percent: West and South West of Texas, South of Arizona territory, North Dakota, Minneapolis, Wisconsin, east of Michigan, and Southwest tip of Florida.”

Historically, the largest number of immigrants to the United States came from the British Isles and from German-speaking lands (Figure 19.1). The vast majority of immigrants were white; Asians accounted for fewer than one million immigrants, and other people of color numbered even fewer. Yet ingrained racial prejudices increasingly influenced the country’s perception of immigration patterns. One of the classic formulations of the history of European immigration divided immigrants into two distinct waves that have been called the “old” and the “new” immigration. According to this theory, before 1880, the majority of immigrants came from northern and western Europe, with Germans, Irish, English, and Scandinavians making up approximately 85 percent of the newcomers.

FIGURE 19.1 Global Comparison: European Emigration, 1870–1890

European emigration between 1870 and 1890 shows that people from Germany, Austria, and the British Isles formed the largest group of out-migrants. After 1890, the origin of European emigrants tilted south and east, with Italians and eastern Europeans growing in number. The

United States took in nearly two-thirds of the European emigrants. What factors account for the popularity of the United States?

Description “The first pie chart depicts immigration by country of origin as follows:

British Isles, 47 percent; Germany, 18 percent; Italy, 10 percent; Russia, 7 percent; Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark, 7 percent; France, Belgium, Netherlands, and Switzerland, 2 percent; Spain, 5 percent; Austria, 2 percent; and Portugal, 2 percent.

The second pie chart depicts immigration by destinations as follows:

United States, 63 percent; Argentina, 10 percent; Asiatic Russia, 6 percent; Brazil, 6 percent; Canada, 5 percent; Australia, 5 percent; Austria, 5 percent; Uruguay, 2 percent; and British West Indies, 1 percent.”

After 1880, the pattern shifted, with more and more ships carrying passengers from southern and eastern Europe. Italians, Hungarians, eastern European Jews, Turks, Armenians, Poles, Russians, and other Slavic peoples accounted for more than 80 percent of all immigrants by 1896 (Figure 19.2). Implicit in the distinction was an invidious comparison between “old” pioneer settlers and “new” unskilled laborers. Yet this sweeping generalization spoke more to perception than to reality. In fact, many of the earlier immigrants from Ireland, Germany, and Scandinavia came not as settlers or farmers but as wageworkers, and they were met with much the same disdain as the Italians and Slavs who followed them.

FIGURE 19.2 European Emigration, 1870–1910

Before 1880, more than 85 percent of U.S. immigrants came from northern and western Europe — Germany, Ireland, England, and the Scandinavian countries. After 1880, 80 percent of the “new” immigrants came from Italy, Turkey, Hungary, Armenia, Poland, Russia, and other Slavic countries.

Description “The graph notes years along the horizontal axis and the number of immigrants along the vertical axis.

The Central/ Eastern European immigration between 1870 and 1880 was below 200,000 and reached 300,100 by 1882 after which it declined for a few years until being restored in 1891. This was followed by a decline to 100,000 in 1895 and a slow and gradual ascent

with intermittent fluctuations until 1907 when it was the highest ever marking 690,000. However, it showed a steep decline soon and rose a bit until 1910.

The Northern/Western European immigration pattern almost replicated the central/ eastern European immigration until 1905 as it records not more than 200,000 until 1880 and picked up briefly to hit 300,000 in 1882 after which showed a series of fluctuations eventually making it to 300,100 again in 1887. The numbers dropped immediately along the subsequent years and continued along 100,000 immigrants until 1900 and climbed to 200,700 by 1905. Thereafter it dropped briefly and again rose a bit until 1910.

There was almost negligible Southern European immigration until almost 1883 during which the numbers stood at 50,000. With not much ascent, the trend continued in the following years with occasional, slow increment to 100,000. Though the numbers fell below 50,000 in 1895, it soared after two years to touch 200,800 and 300,100 in 1905 followed by quick steep descent to 200,000. This was followed by short steep ascent after which it continued.

Non-European immigration saw two long lulls, once between 1870 and 1880 during which there were less than 100,000 immigrants and later between 1885 and 1902 during which it was almost negligible. The period in between 1880 and 1885 thus showed a leap in the immigrant numbers as it stood at 100,000 and later in 1902 when it climbed to 85,000 from less than 20,000.

The graph shows that total immigration briefly heightened first during the 1880 where it reached about 800,000 and then during the early 1900s when it was 1,350,000.

All data are approximate.”

During good financial times, the need for cheap, unskilled labor for America’s industries stimulated demand for immigrant workers. In 1873 and again in 1893, when the United States experienced economic depressions, immigration slowed, only to pick up again when prosperity returned. Steamship companies courted immigrants — a highly profitable, self-loading cargo. By the 1880s, the price of a ticket from Liverpool to

New York City had dropped to less than $25. Would-be immigrants eager for information about the United States relied on letters from friends and relatives, advertisements, and word of mouth — sources that were not always dependable or truthful. As one Italian immigrant recalled, “News was colored, success magnified, comforts and advantages exaggerated beyond all proportions.”

Even photographs proved deceptive: Workers dressed in their Sunday best looked more prosperous than they actually were to relatives in the old country, where only the very wealthy wore white collars or silk dresses. No wonder people left for the United States believing, as one Italian immigrant joked, “that if they were ever fortunate enough to reach America, they would fall into a pile of manure and get up brushing the diamonds out of their hair.”

Most of the newcomers stayed in the nation’s cities. By 1900, almost two- thirds of the country’s immigrant population resided in cities. Many of the immigrants were too poor to move on. (The average laborer immigrating to the United States carried only about $21.50.) Although the foreign-born rarely outnumbered the native-born population, taken together immigrants and their American-born children did constitute a majority in some areas, particularly in the nation’s largest cities: Philadelphia, 55 percent; Boston, 66 percent; Chicago, 75 percent; and New York City, a whopping 80 percent in 1900.

Pushcart Peddlers Mulberry Street on New York’s Lower East Side at the turn of the twentieth century. The rich street life of pushcart peddlers and commerce demonstrates how the immigrant population took to the streets to escape the dark, dank tenements.

Not all the newcomers came to stay. Perhaps eight million European immigrants — most of them young men — worked for a year or a season and then returned to their homelands. Immigration officers called these immigrants, many of them Italians, “birds of passage” because they followed a regular pattern of migration to and from the United States. By 1900, almost 75 percent of the new immigrants were young, single men. Willing to accept conditions other workers regarded as intolerable, these young migrants showed little interest in labor unions. They organized only

when the dream of returning home faded, as it did for millions who ultimately remained in the United States.

Women generally had less access to funds for travel and faced tighter family control. Because the traditional sexual division of labor relied on women’s unpaid domestic work and care of the very young and the very old, women most often came to the United States as wives, mothers, or daughters, not as single wage laborers. Only among the Irish, where the great potato famine presented the grim choice of starve or leave, did women immigrants outnumber men by a small margin from 1871 to 1891.

Jews from eastern Europe and Russia most often came with their families and came to stay. Fear of conscription into the Russian army motivated many young men to leave Russia. In addition, beginning in the 1880s, a wave of violent pogroms, or persecutions, in Russia and Poland prompted the departure of more than a million Jews in the next two decades.

Anzia Yezierska, a Russian Jew, recalled her excitement: “Ach! America! From the other end of the earth from where I came, America was a land of living hope, woven of dreams, aflame with longing and desire.” Most of a Jewish immigrants settled in the port cities of the East, creating distinct ethnic enclaves. Hester Street, in the heart of New York City’s Lower East Side, rang with the calls of pushcart peddlers hawking their wares, from pickles to feather beds.

Racism and the Cry for Immigration Restriction Ethnic diversity and racism played a role in dividing skilled workers (those with a craft or specialized ability) from the globe-hopping proletariat of unskilled workers (those who supplied muscle or tended machines). Skilled workers, frequently members of older immigrant groups, criticized the newcomers. One Irish worker complained, “There should be a law … to keep all the Italians from comin’ in and takin’ the bread out of the mouths of honest people.”

The Irish worker’s resentment brings into focus the impact of racism on America’s immigrant laborers. Throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, members of the educated elite as well as the uneducated viewed ethnic and even religious differences as racial characteristics, referring to the Polish or the Jewish “race.” Americans judged immigrants from southern and eastern Europe as inferior to the established residents. The Irish who criticized the Italians so harshly had themselves been stigmatized as a lesser “race” a generation earlier.

Immigrants not only brought their own religious and racial prejudices to the United States but also absorbed the popular prejudices of American culture. Social Darwinism, with its strongly racist overtones, decreed that whites stood at the top of the evolutionary ladder. But who was “white”? Skin color supposedly served as a marker for the “new” immigrants — “swarthy” Italians; dark-haired, olive-skinned Jews. But even blond, blue- eyed Poles were not considered “white.” The social construction of race is

nowhere more apparent than in the testimony of an Irish dockworker, who boasted that he hired only “white men,” a category that he insisted excluded “Poles and Italians.” For the new immigrants, Americanization and assimilation would prove inextricably part of becoming “white.”

For African Americans, the cities of the North promised not just economic opportunity but an escape from institutionalized segregation and persecution. Throughout the South, Jim Crow laws — restrictions that segregated blacks — became common in the decades following reconstruction. Intimidation and lynching terrorized blacks. “To die from the bite of frost is far more glorious than at the hands of a mob,” proclaimed the Defender, Chicago’s largest African American newspaper. In the 1890s, many blacks moved north, settling for the most part in the growing cities. Racism relegated them to poor jobs and substandard living conditions, but by 1900 New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago had the largest black communities in the nation. Although the most significant African American migration out of the South would occur during and after World War I, the great exodus was already under way.

On the West Coast, Chinese immigrants once again became scapegoats of the changing economy. Hard times in the 1870s made them a target for disgruntled workers, who dismissed them as “coolie” labor. In the West, the issue spawned violence as angry mobs torched “Chinatowns.” Prohibited from owning land, the Chinese migrated to the cities. In 1870, San Francisco housed a Chinese population estimated at 12,022, and it continued to grow until passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 (see

chapter 17). For the first time in the nation’s history, U.S. law excluded an immigrant group on the basis of race.

Some Chinese managed to come to America using a loophole in the exclusion law that allowed relatives to join their families. Meanwhile the number of Japanese immigrants rapidly grew until pressure to keep out all Asians led in 1910 to the creation of an immigration station at Angel Island in San Francisco Bay, where immigrants were quarantined until judged fit to enter the United States.

On the East Coast, the volume of immigration from Europe in the last two decades of the century proved unprecedented. In 1888 alone, more than half a million Europeans landed in America, 75 percent of them in New York City. The Statue of Liberty, erected in 1886 as a gift from the people of France, stood sentinel in the harbor.

A young Jewish woman named Emma Lazarus penned the verse inscribed on Lady Liberty’s base:

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

The tide of immigrants to New York City soon swamped the immigration office in lower Manhattan. After the federal government took over

immigration in 1890, it built a facility on Ellis Island, in New York harbor, which opened in 1892. When fire gutted the wooden building, a new brick edifice replaced it in 1900. Able to process 5,000 immigrants a day, it was already inadequate by the time it opened. Its overcrowded halls became the gateway to the United States for millions of immigrants.

To many Americans the new southern and eastern European immigrants appeared backward, uneducated, and outlandish in appearance — impossible to assimilate. “These people are not Americans,” editorialized the popular journal Public Opinion, “they are the very scum and offal of Europe.” Terence V. Powderly, head of the broadly inclusive Knights of Labor, complained that the newcomers “herded together like animals and lived like beasts.” Blue-blooded Yankees led by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts formed an unlikely alliance with leaders of organized labor — who feared that immigrants would drive down wages — to press for immigration restrictions. In 1896, Congress approved a literacy test for immigrants, but President Grover Cleveland promptly vetoed it. “It is said,” the president reminded Congress, “that the quality of recent immigration is undesirable. The time is quite within recent memory when the same thing was said of immigrants who, with their descendants, are now numbered among our best citizens.”

The Social Geography of the City During the Gilded Age, the social geography of the city changed enormously. Cleveland, Ohio, provides a good example. In the 1870s, Cleveland was a small city in both population and area. Oil magnate John

D. Rockefeller could, and often did, walk from his large brick house on Euclid Avenue to his office downtown. On his way, he passed the small homes of his clerks and other middle-class families. Behind these homes ran miles of alleys crowded with the dwellings of Cleveland’s working class. Farther out, on the shores of Lake Erie, close to the factories and foundries, clustered the shanties of the city’s poorest laborers.

Within two decades, the Cleveland that Rockefeller knew no longer existed. The coming of mass transit transformed the walking city. In its place emerged a central business district surrounded by concentric rings of residences organized by ethnicity and income. First the horsecar in the 1870s and then the electric streetcar in the 1880s made it possible for those who could afford the five-cent fare to work downtown and flee after work to the “cool green rim” of the city. Social segregation — the separation of rich and poor, and of ethnic and old-stock Americans — became one of the major social changes engendered by the rise of the industrial metropolis.

Race and ethnicity affected the way cities evolved. Newcomers to the nation’s cities faced hostility and, not surprisingly, sought out their kin and countryfolk as they struggled to get ahead. Distinct ethnic neighborhoods often formed around a synagogue or church. African Americans typically experienced the greatest residential segregation, but every large city had its distinct ethnic neighborhoods — Little Italy, Chinatown, Bohemia Flats, Germantown — where English was rarely spoken.

Poverty, crowding, dirt, and disease constituted the daily reality of New York City’s immigrant poor — a plight documented by photojournalist

Jacob Riis in his best-selling book How the Other Half Lives (1890). By taking his camera into the hovels of the poor, Riis opened the nation’s eyes to the filthy, overcrowded conditions in the city’s slums.

Riis’s book, like his photographs, presented a world of black and white. However, there were many layers to the population Riis labeled “the other half” — distinctions deepened by ethnicity, religion, race, and gender. How the Other Half Lives must be read more as a reformer’s call to conscience than as an entirely accurate portrayal of the varied and complex lives of “the other half.” But by taking his camera into the hovels of the poor, Riis opened the nation’s eyes to the plight of the poor. Tenement reform and city playgrounds grew out of Riis’s exposé.

While Riis’s audience shivered at his revelations about the “other half,” many middle-class Americans worried equally about the excesses of the wealthy. The popular press fed the public’s seemingly insatiable appetite for stories on the comings and goings of America’s new millionaires — their mansions and parties, their European excursions and Newport holidays. No wonder thoughtful people feared the class antagonism fueled by the growing chasm between the rich and the poor and shared Riis’s view that “the real danger to society comes not only from the tenements, but from the ill-spent wealth which reared them.”

The excesses of the Gilded Age’s newly minted millionaires were nowhere more visible than in the lifestyle of the Vanderbilts. Cornelius “Commodore” Vanderbilt, the uncouth ferryman who built the New York Central Railroad, died in 1877. Today, he still holds first place among the

richest men in America (when wealth is adjusted for inflation). He left his son William $90 million. William doubled that sum, and his two sons proceeded to spend it on Fifth Avenue mansions and “cottages” in Newport, Rhode Island, that rivaled the palaces of Europe. Yet in spite of her millions, or perhaps because of them, Alva Vanderbilt, Willy Vanderbilt’s southern bride, found herself spurned socially by the old-money matrons of New York, notably the redoubtable Mrs. Caroline Astor.

In the aftermath of the Civil War, New York’s old merchant elite found itself increasingly displaced by new moneyed manufacturers. Try as they might, the old-money matrons could not keep out the group they scorned as nouveau riche. Alva Vanderbilt launched herself into society by building the most ostentatious mansion in the city — a veritable Versailles occupying a city block on Fifth Avenue at 52nd Street. In her palace with its gargoyles, gables, and marble (naked!) statuary, Alva lived large. Her opulent ballroom accommodated over a thousand guests, and she lost no time putting it to use. Her triumph came when Mrs. Astor accepted an invitation to attend Alva’s housewarming, a fancy dress ball for 750 partygoers. “We have no right to exclude those whom this great country has brought forward,” Astor conceded. “The time has come for the Vanderbilts.” A triumphant Alva greeted her guests dressed as a Venetian noble. But her sister-in-law Alice eclipsed her, appearing as that miraculous new invention, the electric light, resplendent in a white satin evening dress studded with diamonds. The New York World speculated that Alva’s party cost more than a quarter of a million dollars, more than $5 million in today’s dollars.

Such ostentatious displays of wealth became especially alarming when they were coupled with disdain for the well-being of ordinary people. When a reporter in 1882 asked William Vanderbilt whether he considered the public good when running his railroads, he shot back, “The public be damned.” The fear that America had become a plutocracy — a society ruled by the rich — gained credence from the fact that the wealthiest 1 percent of the population owned more than half the real and personal property in the country. The cost of one millionaire’s fancy dress ball costume could feed working-class families for over a year. As the new century dawned, reformers came together to form a progressive movement to address the problems of urban industrialism and the substandard living and working conditions it produced.

��

What global trends were reflected in the growth of America’s cities in the late nineteenth century?

What kinds of work did people do in industrial America? The number of industrial wageworkers in the United States exploded in the second half of the nineteenth century, more than tripling from 5.3 million in 1860 to 17.4 million in 1900. These workers toiled in a variety of settings. Many skilled workers and artisans still earned a living in small workshops. But with the rise of corporate capitalism, large factories, mills, and mines increasingly dotted the landscape. Sweatshops and the contracting out of piecework, including finishing garments by hand, provided work experiences different from those of factory operatives and industrial workers. Pick-and-shovel labor constituted the lowest-paid work, while managers, as well as women “typewriters” and salesclerks, formed a new white-collar segment of America’s labor force. Children also worked in growing numbers in mills and mines across the country.

America’s Diverse Workers Common laborers formed the backbone of the American workforce. They built the railroads and subways, tunneled under New York’s East River to anchor the Brooklyn Bridge, and helped lay the foundation of industrial America. These “human machines” generally came from the most recent immigrant groups. Initially, the Irish wielded the picks and shovels that built American railroads and cities, but by the turn of the century, as the Irish bettered their lot, Slavs and Italians took up their tools.

At the opposite end of labor’s hierarchy stood skilled craftsmen like iron puddler James J. Davis, a Welsh immigrant who worked in the Pennsylvania mills. Using brains along with brawn, puddlers earned good wages — Davis drew up to $7 a day at a time when streetcar fare was 3 cents — when there was work. But most industry and manufacturing work in the nineteenth century remained seasonal; few workers could count on year-round pay. In addition, two major depressions twenty years apart, beginning in 1873 and 1893, brought unemployment and hardship. With no social safety net, even the best worker could not guarantee security for his family. “The fear of ending in the poor-house is one of the terrors that dog a man through life,” Davis confessed.

Employers attempted to replace people with machines, breaking down skilled work into ever-smaller tasks that could be performed by unskilled factory operatives. New England’s textile mills provided a classic example. Mary, a weaver at the mills in Fall River, Massachusetts, went to work in the 1880s at the age of twelve. Mechanization of the looms had reduced the job of the weaver to watching for breaks in the thread. “At first the noise is fierce, and you have to breathe the cotton all the time, but you get used to it,” Mary told a reporter from the Independent magazine. “When the bobbin flies out and a girl gets hurt, you can’t hear her shout — not if she just screams, you can’t. She’s got to wait, ’till you see her…. Lots of us is deaf.”

During the 1880s, the number of foreign-born mill workers almost doubled. At Fall River, Mary and her Scots-Irish family resented the new immigrants. “The Polaks learn weavin’ quick,” she remarked, using a common derogatory term to identify a rival group. “They just as soon live

on nothin’ and work like that. But it won’t do ’em much good for all they’ll make out of it.” Employers encouraged racial and ethnic antagonism because it inhibited labor organization.

Mechanization transformed the garment industry as well. The introduction of the foot-pedaled sewing machine in the 1850s and the use of mechanical cloth-cutting knives drove out independent tailors, who were replaced by pieceworkers. Sadie Frowne, a sixteen-year-old Polish Jew, worked in a Brooklyn sweatshop in the 1890s. Frowne sewed for eleven hours a day in a 20-by-14-foot room containing fourteen machines. “The machines go like mad all day, because the faster you work the more money you get,” she recalled. She earned about $4.50 a week and, by rigid economy, tried to save $2. Young and single, Frowne typified the woman wage earner in the late nineteenth century. In 1890, the average workingwoman was twenty- two and had been working since the age of fifteen, laboring twelve hours a day, six days a week, and earning less than $6 a week.

Women at Work Women workers labor under bright lights in this tenement hat shop in New York City. Often sweatshop workers labored in dim tenements belonging to the contractor who hired them. Garment workers frequently worked with highly combustible fabric in unsafe buildings.

The Family Economy: Women and Children In 1900, the typical male worker in manufacturing earned $500 a year, about $12,000 in today’s dollars. Many working-class families, whether native-born or immigrant, lived near poverty, their economic survival dependent on the contributions of all family members, regardless of sex or

age. “Father,” asked one young immigrant girl, “does everybody in America live like this? Go to work early, come home late, eat and go to sleep? And the next day again work, eat, and sleep?” Most did. The family economy meant that everyone contributed to maintain even the most meager household.

In the cities, boys as young as six years old plied their trades as bootblacks and newsboys. Often working under an adult contractor, these children earned as little as fifty cents a day. Many of them were homeless — orphaned or cast off by their families. “We wuz six, and we ain’t got no father,” a child of twelve told reporter Jacob Riis. “Some of us had to go.”

Child labor increased each decade after 1870. The percentage of children under fifteen engaged in paid labor did not drop until after World War I. The 1900 census estimated that 1,750,178 children ages ten to fifteen were employed, an increase of more than a million over thirty years. Children in this age range constituted more than 18 percent of the industrial labor force.

Women working for wages in nonagricultural occupations more than doubled in number between 1870 and 1900 (Figure 19.3). Yet white married women, even among the working class, rarely worked for wages outside the home. In 1890, only 3 percent were employed. Black women, both married and unmarried, worked out of the home for wages in much greater numbers. The 1890 census showed that 25 percent of married African American women were employed, often as domestics in the houses of white families.

FIGURE 19.3 Women and Work, 1870–1890

In 1870, close to 1.5 million women worked in nonagricultural occupations. By 1890, that number had more than doubled to 3.7 million. More and more women sought work in manufacturing and mechanical industries, although domestic service still constituted the largest employment arena for women.

Description “The graph has years along the horizontal axis and number of women in thousands along the vertical axis. The approximate data listed for Domestic and personal service, Manufacturing and mechanical industries, and Trade and transportation respectively are as follows:

1870: 1,010; 480; 10.

1880: 1,600; 900; 100.

1890: 2,100; 1,300; 300.”

White-Collar Workers: Managers, “Typewriters,” and Salesclerks In the late nineteenth century, a managerial revolution created a new class of white-collar workers who worked in offices and stores. As skilled workers saw their crafts replaced by mechanization, some moved into management positions. “The middle class is becoming a salaried class,” a writer for the Independent magazine observed, “and is rapidly losing the economic and moral independence of former days.”

As large business organizations consolidated, corporate development separated management from ownership, and the job of directing the firm became the province of salaried executives and managers, the majority of whom were white men drawn from the 8 percent of Americans who held high school diplomas.

Until late in the century, when engineering schools began to supply recruits, many skilled workers moved from the shop floor to positions of considerable responsibility. Captain William “Billy” Jones, son of a Welsh immigrant, grew up in the heat of the blast furnaces, where he worked as an apprentice at the age of ten. Jones, by all accounts the best steelman in the business, took as his motto “Good wages and good workmen.” In 1872, Andrew Carnegie hired Jones as general superintendent of his new Braddock plant.

Although Carnegie constantly tried to force down workers’ pay, Jones resisted, and he succeeded in shortening the shift from twelve to eight hours by convincing Carnegie that shorter hours reduced absenteeism and accidents. Jones demanded and received “a hell of a big salary” — $25,000, the same as the president of the United States. He didn’t enjoy his high pay for long; he died in a fiery furnace explosion in 1889. After Jones’s death, Carnegie reinstituted the twelve-hour day.

The new white-collar workforce included women “typewriters” and salesclerks. In the decades after the Civil War, as businesses became larger and more far-flung, the need for more elaborate and exact records, as well as the greater volume of correspondence, led to the hiring of more office workers. The adding machine, the cash register, and the typewriter came into general use in the 1880s. Employers seeking literate workers soon turned to women. Educated men had many other career choices, but for middle-class white women, secretarial work constituted one of the very few areas where they could put their literacy to use for wages.

Sylvie Thygeson was typical of the young women who went to work as secretaries. Thygeson grew up in an Illinois prairie town and went to work as a country schoolteacher after graduating high school in 1884. Realizing that teaching school did not pay a living wage, she mastered typing and stenography and found work as a secretary to help support her family. According to her account, she made “a fabulous sum of money” (possibly $25 a month). Nevertheless, she gave up her job after a few years when she met and married her husband.

But by the 1890s, secretarial work was the overwhelming choice of native- born, single white women, who constituted more than 90 percent of the female clerical force. Not only considered more genteel than factory work or domestic labor, office work also meant more money for shorter hours. In 1883, Boston’s clerical workers on average made more than $6 a week, compared with less than $5 for women working in manufacturing.

As a new consumer culture came to dominate American urban life in the late nineteenth century, department stores offered another employment opportunity for women in the cities. Boasting ornate facades, large plate- glass display windows, and marble and brass fixtures, stores such as Macy’s in New York, Wanamaker’s in Philadelphia, and Marshall Field in Chicago stood as monuments to the material promise of the era.

Within these palaces of consumption, cash girls, stock clerks, and wrappers earned as little as $3 a week, while at the top of the scale, buyers like Belle Cushman of the fancy goods department at Macy’s earned $25 a week, an unusually high salary for a woman in the 1870s. Salesclerks counted themselves a cut above factory workers. Their work was neither dirty nor dangerous, and even when they earned less than factory workers, they felt a sense of superiority.

��

How did business expansion and consolidation change workers’ occupations in the late nineteenth century?

Why did the fortunes of the Knights of Labor rise in the late 1870s and decline in the 1890s? By the late nineteenth century, industrial workers were losing ground in the workplace. In the fierce competition to reduce prices and cut costs, industrialists invested heavily in new machinery that replaced skilled workers with unskilled labor. The erosion of skills and the redefinition of labor as mere “machine tending” left the worker with a growing sense of individual helplessness that served as a spur to collective action. The 1870s and 1880s witnessed the emergence of two labor unions — the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor. In 1877, in the midst of a depression, labor flexed its muscle in the Great Railroad Strike. But unionism would suffer a major setback after the Haymarket bombing in 1886.

The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 Economic depression following the panic of 1873 threw as many as three million people out of work. Those who were lucky enough to keep their jobs watched as pay cuts eroded wages until they could no longer feed their families. In the summer of 1877, the Baltimore and Ohio (B&O) Railroad announced a 10 percent wage cut at the same time it declared a 10 percent dividend to its stockholders.

Angry brakemen in West Virginia, whose wages had already fallen from $70 to $30 a month, walked out on strike. One B&O worker described the

hardship that drove him to take such desperate action: “We eat our hard bread and tainted meat two days old on the sooty cars up the road, and when we come home, find our wives complaining that they cannot even buy hominy and molasses for food.”

The West Virginia brakemen’s strike touched off the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, a nationwide uprising that spread rapidly to Pittsburgh and Chicago, St. Louis and San Francisco (Map 19.3). Within a few days, nearly 100,000 railroad workers had walked off the job. An estimated 500,000 sympathetic railway workers soon joined the strikers. In Reading, Pennsylvania, militiamen refused to fire on the strikers, saying, “We may be militiamen, but we are workmen first.” Rail traffic ground to a halt; the nation lay paralyzed.

MAP 19.3 The Great Railroad Strike of 1877

Starting in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, the strike spread as far north as Albany, New York, and as far west as San Francisco, bringing rail traffic to a standstill. Called the Great Uprising, the strike heralded the beginning of a new era of working-class protest and trade union organization.

Description The map shows that strike activity took place in Albany and Buffalo in New York; Erie, Altoona, Pittsburgh, Reading, Harrisburg, and Philadelphia in Pennsylvania; Newark and Trenton in New Jersey; Baltimore in Maryland; Martinsburg in West Virginia; Columbus and Cincinnati in Ohio; Fort Wayne and Terre Haute in Indiana; Peoria and Chicago in Illinois; St. Louis and Kansas City in Missouri; Omaha in Nebraska; and San Francisco in California.

Violence erupted as the strike spread. In Pittsburgh, militia brought in from Philadelphia fired on the crowds, killing more than twenty people. Angry workers retaliated by reducing an area two miles long beside the tracks to rubble. Before the day ended, the militia shot twenty workers and the railroad sustained more than $2 million in property damage.

Within eight days, the governors of nine states, acting at the prompting of the railroad owners and managers, defined the strike as an “insurrection” and called for federal troops. President Rutherford B. Hayes, after hesitating briefly, called out the army. By the time the troops arrived, the violence had run its course. Federal troops did not shoot a single striker in 1877. But they struck a blow against labor by acting as strikebreakers. The troops opened rail traffic and protected non-striking (derogatorily called “scab”) train crews, maintaining peace along the line. In three weeks, the strike was put

down. The use of state militia and federal troops in the Great Railroad Strike signaled a militarization of class conflict that would lead historians to call the strikes at the end of the century “labor wars.”

Middle-class Americans initially sympathized with the conditions that led to the strikes. But they quickly condemned the strikers for the violence and property damage that occurred. The New York Times editorialized about the “dangerous classes,” and the Independent magazine offered the following advice on how to deal with “rioters”: “If the club of a policeman, knocking out the brains of the rioter, will answer then well and good; but if it does not promptly meet the exigency, then bullets and bayonets … constitutes the one remedy and one duty of the hour.”

The hostility of the middle class toward labor only intensified in the 1880s and 1890s. The partisan press, often controlled by business interests, lost no opportunity to label crowds of workers “rioters,” and to invoke bloody images of the French Revolution. That many of the workers were immigrants racialized labor issues at the same time that fears of European anarchism and radicalism made it difficult for even the most American of workmen to escape the onus. Albert Parsons, who traced his lineage back to the American Revolution, came to personify the conflation of homegrown radicals with foreign insurrectionaries.

“The strikes have been put down by force,” President Hayes noted in his diary. “But now for the real remedy. Can’t something be done by education of the strikers, by judicious control of the capitalists, by wise general policy to end or diminish the evil? The railroad strikers, as a rule, are good men,

sober, intelligent, and industrious.” While Hayes acknowledged the workers’ grievances, most businessmen condemned the idea of labor unions as agents of class warfare. For their part, workers quickly recognized that they held little power individually and flocked to join unions. As labor leader Samuel Gompers noted, the nation’s first national strike dramatized the frustration and unity of the workers and served as an alarm bell to labor “that sounded a ringing message of hope to us all.”

The Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor The Knights of Labor, the first mass organization of America’s working class, proved the chief beneficiary of labor’s newfound consciousness. The Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor had been founded in 1869 as a secret society of workers who envisioned a “universal brotherhood” of all workers, from common laborers to master craftsmen. Secrecy and ritual served to bind Knights together at the same time that they discouraged company spies and protected members from reprisals.

Although the Knights played no active role in the 1877 railroad strike, membership swelled as a result of the growing interest in labor organizing that followed the strike. In 1878, the Knights abandoned secrecy and launched an ambitious campaign to organize workers.

The Knights attempted to bridge the boundaries of ethnicity, gender, ideology, race, and occupation. Leonora Barry served as general investigator for women’s work from 1886 to 1890, helping the Knights

recruit teachers, waitresses, housewives, and domestics along with factory and sweatshop workers. Women composed perhaps 20 percent of the membership. The Knights also recruited more than 95,000 black workers. That the Knights of Labor often fell short of its goals to unify the working class proved less surprising than the scope of its efforts.

Under the direction of Grand Master Workman Terence V. Powderly, the Knights became the dominant force in labor during the 1880s. The organization advocated a kind of workers’ democracy that embraced reforms including public ownership of the railroads, an income tax, equal pay for women workers, and the abolition of child labor. The Knights called for one big union to create a cooperative commonwealth that would supplant the wage system and remove class distinctions. Only the “parasitic” members of society — gamblers, stockbrokers, lawyers, bankers, and liquor dealers — were barred from membership.

The Knights of Labor was not without rivals. Many skilled workers belonged to craft unions organized by trade. Among the largest and richest of these unions stood the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, founded in 1876 and counting twenty thousand skilled workers as members. Trade unionists spurned the broad reform goals of the Knights of Labor and focused on workplace issues. Samuel Gompers founded the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions in 1881 and reorganized it in 1886 into the American Federation of Labor (AFL), which coordinated the activities of craft unions throughout the United States. His plan was simple: Organize skilled workers such as machinists and locomotive engineers — those with the most bargaining power — and use

strikes to gain immediate objectives such as higher pay and better working conditions. Gompers at first drew few converts. The AFL had only 138,000 members in 1886, compared with 730,000 for the Knights of Labor. But events soon brought down the Knights, and Gompers’s brand of unionism came to prevail.

Haymarket and the Specter of Labor Radicalism While the AFL and the Knights of Labor competed for members, more radical labor groups, including socialists and anarchists, believed that reform was futile and called instead for social revolution. Both the socialists and the anarchists, sensitive to criticism that they preferred revolution in theory to improvements here and now, rallied around the popular issue of the eight-hour day.

Since the 1840s, labor had sought to end the ten-hour workday, which was standard in industry and manufacturing. By the mid-1880s, it seemed clear to many workers that labor shared too little in the new prosperity of the decade, and pressure mounted for the eight-hour day. Labor championed the popular issue and launched major rallies in cities across the nation. Supporters of the movement set May 1, 1886, as the date for a nationwide general strike in support of the eight-hour workday.

All factions of the labor movement came together in Chicago on May Day. A group of labor radicals led by Albert Parsons, an avowed anarchist, and August Spies, a German socialist, spearheaded the eight-hour movement in

Chicago. Chicago’s Knights of Labor rallied to the cause even though Powderly and the union’s national leadership, worried about the increasing activism of the rank and file, refused to endorse the movement for shorter hours. Gompers went to Chicago to lead the city’s trade unionists, although privately he urged the AFL assemblies not to participate in the general strike.

The cautious labor leaders in their frock coats and starched shirts stood in sharp contrast to the dispossessed workers out on strike across town at Chicago’s huge McCormick reaper works. There strikers watched helplessly as the company brought in strikebreakers to take their jobs and marched the “scabs” to work under the protection of the Chicago police and security guards supplied by the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Cyrus McCormick Jr., son of the inventor of the mechanical reaper, viewed labor organization as a threat to his power as well as to his profits; he was determined to smash the union.

During the May Day rally, 80,000 workers paraded peacefully down Michigan Avenue in support of the eight-hour day. The marchers sang the song that had become the workers’ anthem:

We want to feel the sunshine; We want to smell the flowers, We’re sure that God has willed it, And we mean to have eight hours. Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, Eight hours for what we will!

Trouble came two days later, when desperate strikers attacked strikebreakers outside the McCormick works and police opened fire, killing or wounding six men. Angry radicals urged workers to “arm yourselves and appear in full force” at a rally in Haymarket Square.

On the evening of May 4, the turnout at Haymarket proved disappointing. No more than two or three thousand gathered under threatening skies to hear Spies, Parsons, and the other speakers. Mayor Carter Harrison, known as a friend of labor, mingled conspicuously in the crowd, pronounced the meeting peaceable, and went home to bed. Albert Parsons and his wife, Lucy, ducked out early to avoid the rain. Only a few hundred stood in the drizzle when police inspector John “Blackjack” Bonfield marched a phalanx of men into Haymarket and ordered the crowd to disperse.

Suddenly, someone threw a bomb into the police ranks. After a moment of stunned silence, the police drew their revolvers and fired wildly. August Spies, who had jumped off the speakers’ haywagon when he heard the blast, recounted, “Everybody was running, and people fell, struck by bullets, right and left.” When the melee ended, one policemen lay dead from the explosion, and scores were wounded by gunfire, probably their own. An additional six policemen later died; the coroner reported three civilian deaths, although likely many more killed or wounded in the hail of police gunfire were dragged off to avoid arrest.

“NOW IT’S BLOOD,” screamed the next day’s headline. News of the “Haymarket riot” provoked a nationwide convulsion of fear, followed by blind rage directed at anarchists, labor unions, strikers, immigrants, and the

working class in general. Eight men, including Parsons and Spies, went on trial in Chicago. “Convict these men,” thundered the state’s attorney, Julius S. Grinnell, “make examples of them, hang them, and you save our institutions.” Although the state could not link any of the defendants to the Haymarket bombing (some like Parsons had not even been present), the jury nevertheless found them all guilty. Albert Parsons pronounced the verdict “judicial murder.” In the end four men hanged, including Parsons and Spies; one committed suicide by swallowing dynamite; and three received prison sentences. On the gallows, Spies had the last word: “The time will come,” he said, “when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.”

The bomb blast at Haymarket set off lasting repercussions. To commemorate the death of the Haymarket martyrs, labor made May 1 an annual international celebration of the worker. But the Haymarket bomb, in the eyes of one observer, proved “a godsend to all enemies of the labor movement.” It scotched the eight-hour day movement and dealt a fatal blow to the Knights of Labor. With the labor movement everywhere under attack, many skilled workers turned to the AFL. Gompers’s narrow economic strategy made sense at the time and enabled one segment of the workforce — the skilled — to organize effectively and achieve tangible gains. The sunny promise of the nonviolent parade for workers’ rights in Chicago on May Day 1886 might have marked the start of a new era. Instead the bomb exploded any hope of peace in the labor wars. Chicago would see worse violence in the Pullman strike in 1894, and it would take another fifty years before the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 guaranteed workers an eight- hour day.

��

What were the long-term effects of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 and the Haymarket bombing of 1886?

How did urban industrialism shape home life and the world of leisure? The growth of urban industrialism not only dramatically altered the workplace but also transformed home and family life, and gave rise to new forms of commercialized leisure. Industrialization redefined the very concepts of work and home. Increasingly, men went out to work for wages, while most white married women stayed home, either working in the home without pay — cleaning, cooking, and rearing children — or supervising paid domestic servants who did the housework.

Domesticity and “Domestics” The separation of the workplace and the home that marked the shift to industrial society led to a new ideology, one that sentimentalized the home and women’s role in it. The cultural idea that dictated a woman’s place was in the home, where she would create a haven for her family, began to develop in the early 1800s. Called the cult of domesticity, it prescribed an ideal of middle-class, white womanhood that predominated in the period from 1820 to the end of the nineteenth century.

The cult of domesticity and the elaboration of the middle-class home led to a major change in patterns of hiring household help. The live-in servant, or domestic, became a fixture in the North, replacing the hired girl of the previous century. In American cities by 1870, 15 to 30 percent of all households included live-in domestic servants, more than 90 percent of them women. Earlier in the mid-nineteenth century, native-born women

increasingly took up other work and left domestic service to immigrants. In the East, the maid was so often Irish that “Bridget” became a generic term for female domestics. The South continued to rely on poorly paid black female help. And in the far West, Chinese labor competed with Irish women for domestic work.

Servants by all accounts resented the long hours and lack of privacy. “She is liable to be rung up at all hours,” one study of domestics reported. “Her very meals are not secure from interruption, and even her sleep is not sacred.” Domestic service became the occupation of last resort, a “hard and lonely life” in the words of one female servant.

For women of the white middle class, domestics were a boon, freeing them from household drudgery and giving them more time to spend with their children, to pursue club work, or to work for reforms. Thus, while domestic service supported the cult of domesticity, it created for those women who could afford it opportunities that expanded their horizons outside the home. They became involved in women’s clubs as well as the temperance and suffrage movements.

Cheap Amusements Growing class divisions manifested themselves in patterns of leisure as well as in work and home life. The poor and working class took their leisure, when they had any, not in the crowded tenements that housed their families but increasingly in the cities’ new dance halls, music houses, ballparks, and

amusement arcades, which by the 1890s formed a familiar part of the urban landscape

Young workingwomen no longer met prospective husbands only through their families. Fleeing crowded tenements, the young sought each other’s company in dance halls and other commercial retreats. Young workingwomen counted on being “treated” by men, a transaction that often implied sexual payback. Their behavior sometimes blurred the line between respectability and promiscuity. The dance halls became a favorite target of reformers who feared they lured teenage girls into prostitution.

For men, baseball became a national pastime in the 1870s — then, as now, one force in urban life capable of uniting a city across class lines. Cincinnati mounted the first entirely paid team, the Red Stockings, in 1869. Soon professional teams proliferated in cities across the nation, and Mark Twain hailed baseball as “the very symbol, the outward and visible expression, of the drive and push and rush and struggle of the raging, tearing, booming nineteenth century.”

The increasing commercialization of entertainment in the late-nineteenth- century city was best seen at Coney Island. A two-mile stretch of sand nine miles from Manhattan by trolley or steamship, Coney Island in the 1890s was transformed into the site of some of the largest and most elaborate amusement parks in the country. Promoter George Tilyou built Steeplechase Park in 1897, advertising “10 hours of fun for 10 cents.” With its mechanical thrills and fun-house laughs, the amusement park encouraged behavior that one schoolteacher aptly described as “everyone with the

brakes off.” By 1900, as many as a million New Yorkers flocked to Coney Island on any given weekend, making the amusement park the unofficial capital of a new mass culture.

��

How and why did recreation and leisure change in the last decades of the nineteenth century?

How did municipal governments respond to the challenges of urban expansion? Private enterprise, not city planners, built the cities of the United States. With a few notable exceptions, cities simply mushroomed, formed by the dictates of profit and the exigencies of local politics. With the rise of the city came the need for public facilities, transportation, and services that would tax the imaginations of America’s architects and engineers and set the scene for the rough-and-tumble of big-city government, politics, and bossism.

Building Cities of Stone and Steel Skyscrapers and mighty bridges dominated the imagination and the urban landscape. Less imposing but no less significant were the paved streets, the parks and public libraries, and the subways and sewers. In the late nineteenth century, Americans rushed to embrace new technology of all kinds, making their cities the most modern in the world.

Structural steel made enormous advances in building possible. A decade after the completion of the Brooklyn Bridge, engineers used the new technology to construct the Williamsburg Bridge. More prosaic and utilitarian than its neighbor, the new bridge was never as acclaimed, but it was longer by four feet and completed in half the time. It became the model for future building as the age of steel supplanted the age of stone and iron.

Chicago, not New York, gave birth to the modern skyscraper. Rising from the ashes of the Great Fire of 1871, which destroyed three square miles and left eighteen thousand people homeless, Chicago offered a generation of skilled architects and engineers the chance to experiment. Commercial architecture became an art form at the hands of a skilled group of architects who together constituted the “Chicago school.” Employing the dictum “Form follows function,” they built startlingly modern structures.

Across the United States, municipal governments undertook public works on a scale never before seen. They paved streets, built sewers and water mains, replaced gas lamps with electric lights, ran trolley tracks on the old horsecar lines, and dug underground to build subways, tearing down the unsightly elevated tracks that had clogged city streets. Boston completed the nation’s first subway system in 1897, and New York and Philadelphia soon followed.

Cities became more beautiful with the creation of urban public parks to complement the new buildings that quickly filled city lots. Much of the credit for America’s greatest parks goes to one man — landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. New York City’s Central Park, completed in 1873, became the first landscaped public park in the United States. Olmsted and his partner, Calvert Vaux, directed the planting of more than five million trees, shrubs, and vines to transform the eight hundred acres between 59th and 110th Streets into an oasis for urban dwellers. “We want a place,” he wrote, where people “may stroll for an hour, seeing, hearing, and feeling nothing of the bustle and jar of the streets.”

American cities did not overlook the mind in their efforts at improvement. They created a comprehensive free public school system that educated everyone from the children of the middle class to the sons and daughters of immigrant workers. Yet the exploding urban population strained the system and led to crowded and inadequate facilities. In 1899, more than 544,000 pupils attended public school in New York’s five boroughs. Although municipalities across the United States provided free secondary school education for all who wished to attend, only 8 percent of Americans completed high school.

To educate those who couldn’t go to school, American cities created the most extensive free public library system in the world. In 1895, the Boston Public Library opened its bronze doors in its new Copley Square location under the inscription “Free to All.” Designed in the style of a Renaissance palazzo, with more than 700,000 books on the shelves ready to be checked out, the library earned the description “a palace of the people.”

Despite the Boston Public Library’s legend “Free to All,” the poor did not share equally in the advantages of city life. The parks, the libraries, and even the subways and sewers benefited some city dwellers more than others. Few library cards were held by Boston’s laborers, who worked six days a week and found the library closed on Sunday. And in the 1890s, there was nothing central about New York’s Central Park. It was a four-mile walk from the tenements of Hester Street to the park’s entrance at 59th Street and Fifth Avenue. Then, as now, the comfortable, not the indigent, reaped a disproportionate share of the benefits in the nation’s big cities.

Any story of the American city, it seems, must be a tale of two cities — or given the cities’ great diversity, a tale of many cities within each metropolis. At the turn of the twentieth century, a central paradox emerged: The enduring monuments of America’s cities — the bridges, skyscrapers, parks, and libraries — stood as the undeniable achievements of the same system of municipal government that reformers dismissed as boss-ridden, criminal, and corrupt.

City Government and the “Bosses” The physical growth of the cities required the expansion of public services and the creation of entirely new facilities: streets, subways, elevated trains, bridges, docks, sewers, and public utilities. There was work to be done and money to be made. The professional politician — the colorful big-city boss — became a phenomenon of urban growth and bossism a national phenomenon. Though corrupt and often criminal, the boss saw to the building of the city and provided needed social services for the new residents in return for their political support. Yet not even the big-city boss could be said to rule the unruly city. The governing of America’s cities resembled more a tug-of-war than boss rule.

The most notorious of all the city bosses was William Marcy “Boss” Tweed of New York. At midcentury, Boss Tweed’s Democratic Party “machine” held sway. A machine was really no more than a political party organized at the grassroots level. Its purpose was to win elections and reward its followers, often with jobs on the city’s payroll. New York’s citywide Democratic machine, Tammany Hall, commanded an army of party

functionaries. They formed a shadow government more powerful than the city’s elected officials.

As chairman of the Tammany general committee, Tweed kept the Democratic Party together and ran the city through the use of bribery and graft. “As long as I count the votes,” he shamelessly boasted, “what are you going to do about it?” The excesses of the Tweed ring soon led to a clamor for reform and cries of “Throw the rascals out.” Tweed’s rule ended in 1871. Eventually, he was tried and convicted, and later died in jail.

New York was not the only city to experience bossism and corruption. The British visitor James Bryce concluded in 1888, “There is no denying that the government of cities is the one conspicuous failure of the United States.” More than 80 percent of the nation’s thirty largest cities experienced some form of boss rule in the decades around the turn of the twentieth century. However, infighting among powerful ward bosses often meant that no single boss enjoyed exclusive power in the big cities.

Urban reformers and proponents of good government (derisively called “goo goos” by their rivals) challenged machine rule and sometimes succeeded in electing reform mayors. But the reformers rarely managed to stay in office for long. Their detractors called them “mornin’ glories,” observing that they “looked lovely in the mornin’ and withered up in a short time.” The bosses enjoyed continued success largely because the urban political machine helped the cities’ immigrants and poor, who remained the bosses’ staunchest allies. “What tells in holding your district,” a Tammany ward boss observed, “is to go right down among the poor and help them in

the different ways they need help. It’s philanthropy, but it’s politics, too — mighty good politics.”

The big-city boss, through the skillful orchestration of rewards, exerted powerful leverage and lined up support for his party from a broad range of constituents, from the urban poor to wealthy industrialists. In 1902, when journalist Lincoln Steffens began “The Shame of the Cities,” a series of articles exposing city corruption, he found that business leaders who fastidiously refused to mingle socially with the bosses nevertheless struck deals with them. “He is a self-righteous fraud, this big businessman,” Steffens concluded. “I found him buying boodlers [bribers] in St. Louis, defending grafters in Minneapolis, originating corruption in Pittsburgh, sharing with bosses in Philadelphia, deploring reform in Chicago, and beating good government with corruption funds in New York.”

For all the color and flamboyance of the big-city boss, he was simply one of many actors in the drama of municipal government. Old-stock aristocrats, new manufacturers, professionals, saloonkeepers, pushcart peddlers, and politicians all fought for their interests in the hurly-burly of city government. They didn’t much like each other, and they sometimes fought savagely. But they learned to live with one another. Compromise and accommodation — not boss rule — best characterized big-city government by the turn of the twentieth century, although the cities’ reputation for corruption left an indelible mark on the consciousness of the American public.

New York and the Consolidation of the Capitalist Class New York City is neither the capital of the state nor the capital of the nation. But as the capital of capital, it holds a special place in American economic and social history. Its transition from a city run by merchants, largely rich through cotton, to an industrial and financial powerhouse demonstrates the workings of the consolidation of class. The Civil War struck the first blow by cutting the cotton threads that bound the Union economically and putting money in the pockets of a new group of manufacturers who financed and supplied the Union army. Their rise took place against the backdrop of class, race, and ethnic tensions that erupted spectacularly in the draft riots of 1863.

After Appomattox, as labor struggled to gain a portion of the prosperity that minted new railroad and industrial millionaires, New York’s capitalist elite used fears of class war to solidify its power and to employ the state as an agent of its will. Wealthy New Yorkers formed local militia and built armories to protect private property from those they labeled “the dangerous classes.” Through city ordinances they severely restricted urban workers’ use of public space for organizing and protest. Most importantly, the capitalist elite utilized the power of the state — its militia and federal troops — to put down strikes.

New York City acted as a magnet for the rich. Those who had made their fortunes elsewhere, like Carnegie in Pittsburgh and Rockefeller in Cleveland, sooner or later moved to the city. By 1892, an amazing 27

percent of the country’s millionaires lived in Manhattan. Once they wielded economic power, the new capitalist elite set out to legitimize itself through cultural hegemony — building libraries, endowing museums, funding the arts — acquiring all the trappings of civilized society.

White City or City of Sin? Americans have always been of two minds about the city. They like to boast of its skyscrapers and bridges, its culture and sophistication, and they pride themselves on its bigness and bustle. At the same time, they fear it as the city of sin, the home of immigrant slums, the center of vice and crime. Nowhere did the divided view of the American city take form more graphically than in Chicago in 1893. In that year, Chicago hosted the World’s Columbian Exposition, the grandest world’s fair in the nation’s history. The fairground, only five miles down the shore of Lake Michigan from downtown Chicago, offered a lesson in what Americans on the eve of the twentieth century imagined a city might be. Christened the “White City,” it seemed light-years away from Chicago, with its stockyards, slums, and bustling terminals. Frederick Law Olmsted and architect Daniel Burnham supervised the transformation of a swampy wasteland into a pristine paradise of lagoons, fountains, wooded islands, gardens, and imposing white buildings.

Chicago’s White City This painting by H. D. Nichols captures the monumental architecture of the White City built for the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893. In the foreground, the central Court of Honor features a Frederick MacMonnies fountain, with Christopher Columbus at the prow of his ship. In the distance is Daniel Chester French’s sixty-foot gilded statue Republic. The awe-inspiring exposition drew millions of visitors from America and abroad.

Description A large number of people have gathered to witness Chicago’s White City lined with palatial Neo-Classical buildings on three sides of the Grand Basin, the statue Republic, and the fountain designed to honor Christopher Columbus’ ship.

“Sell the cookstove if necessary and come,” novelist Hamlin Garland wrote to his parents on the farm. And come they did, in spite of the panic and depression that broke out only weeks after the fair opened in May 1893. In

six months, fairgoers purchased more than twenty-seven million tickets, turning a profit of nearly a half million dollars for promoters. Visitors from home and abroad strolled the elaborate grounds and visited the exhibits — everything from a model of the Brooklyn Bridge carved in soap to the latest goods and inventions. Half carnival, half culture, the great fair offered something for everyone. On the Midway Plaisance, crowds thrilled to the massive wheel built by Mr. Ferris and watched agog as Little Egypt danced the hootchy-kootchy.

In October, the fair closed its doors in the midst of the worst depression the country had yet seen. During that winter, Chicago’s unemployed and homeless took over the grounds, vandalized the buildings, and frightened the city’s comfortable citizens out of their wits. When reporters asked Daniel Burnham, its chief architect, what should be done with the moldering remains of the White City, he responded, “It should be torched.” It was. In July 1894, in a clash between federal troops and striking railway workers, incendiaries set fires that leveled the fairgrounds.

In the end, the White City remained what it had always been, a dreamscape. Buildings that looked like marble were actually constructed of staff, a plaster substance that began to crumble even before fire destroyed the fairgrounds. Perhaps it was not so strange, after all, that the legacy of the White City could be found on Coney Island, where two new amusement parks, Luna and Dreamland, sought to combine, albeit in a more tawdry form, the beauty of the White City and the thrill of the Midway Plaisance. More enduring than the White City itself was what it represented: the

emergent industrial might of the United States, at home and abroad, with its inventions, manufactured goods, and growing consumer culture.

��

How did city life change in the late nineteenth century?

Conclusion: Who built the cities? As great a role as industrialists, financiers, and engineers played in building the nation’s cities, common workers — most of them immigrants — provided the muscle. The unprecedented growth of urban, industrial America resulted from the labor of millions of men, women, and children who toiled in workshops and factories, in sweatshops and mines, and on railroads and construction sites across America.

America’s cities in the late nineteenth century teemed with life. Townhouses and tenements jostled for space with skyscrapers and great department stores, while parks, ball fields, amusement arcades, and public libraries provided the city masses with recreation and entertainment. Municipal governments, straining to build the new cities, experienced the rough-and-tumble of machine politics as bosses and their constituents looked to profit from city growth.

For America’s workers, urban industrialism, along with the rise of big business and corporate consolidation, drastically changed the workplace. Industrialists replaced skilled workers with new machines that could be operated by cheaper unskilled labor. During hard times, employers did not hesitate to cut workers’ already meager wages. As the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 demonstrated, when labor united, it could bring the nation to attention. Organization held out the best hope for the workers; first the Knights of Labor and later the AFL won converts among the nation’s working class.

The rise of urban industrialism challenged the American promise, which for decades had been dominated by Jeffersonian agrarian ideals. Could such a promise exist in the changing world of cities, tenements, immigrants, and huge corporations? In the great depression that came in the 1890s, mounting anger and frustration would lead farmers and workers to join forces and create a grassroots movement to fight for change under the banner of a new People’s Party.

Chapter Review

��

global migration Ellis Island plutocracy sweatshop family economy “typewriters” Great Railroad Strike Knights of Labor American Federation of Labor (AFL) Haymarket bombing cult of domesticity bossism World’s Columbian Exposition

�� Urbanization

What factors led immigrants to American cities in the late nineteenth century? How did their arrival change the cities in which they settled?

How and why did the social geography of the American city change in the late nineteenth century?

Industry and Labor

What new social divisions accompanied business expansion and industrialization?

What kinds of organizations did workers form in the late nineteenth century, and what was their purpose? How successful were they?

City Life

How did urban industrialism transform home and family life?

What led to the rise of the big-city boss? Whose interests did late-nineteenth-century city governments serve?

�� , ��

How did early-twentieth-century American cities differ from their early-nineteenth-century counterparts?

How did the rise of urban industrialism change Americans’ sense of themselves as a people?

��

1869 Knights of Labor founded.

1873 Panic on Wall Street touches off depression.

1877 Great Railroad Strike paralyzes nation.

1880s Immigration from southern and eastern Europe rises.

1883 Alva Vanderbilt throw costume ball. Brooklyn Bridge opens.

1886 Statue of Liberty dedicated. Haymarket bombing occurs in Chicago. American Federation of Labor (AFL) founded.

1890 Jacob Riis publishes How the Other Half Lives.

1890s African American migration from the South begins.

1892 Ellis Island opens.

1893

World’s Columbian Exposition opens. Panic on Wall Street touches off major economic depression.

1895 Boston Public Library opens in Copley Square.

1896 President Grover Cleveland vetoes immigrant literacy test. Boss Tweed’s rule in New York City ends. Chicago’s Great Fire breaks out.

1897 Nation’s first subway system opens in Boston.

�� 20 ��, ��, �� 1890–1900

�� This chapter will explore the following questions:

Why did American farmers organize alliances in the late nineteenth century? What led to the labor wars of the 1890s? How were women involved in late-nineteenth-century politics? How did economic depression affect American politics in the 1890s? Why did the United States largely abandon its isolationist foreign policy in the 1890s? Conclusion: What was the connection between domestic strife and foreign policy?

�� FRANCES WILLARD TRAVELED TO ST. LOUIS IN FEBRUARY 1892 WITH high hopes. Political change was in the air, and Willard had helped to fashion a new reform party. As head of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), an organization with dues- paying members in every state and territory in the nation, Willard wielded considerable clout. At her invitation, twenty-eight of the country’s leading reformers had met in Chicago to draft a set of principles to bring to St. Louis. No American woman before her had played such a central role in a political movement. At the height of her power, Willard took her place among the leaders onstage in St. Louis.

Exposition Music Hall presented a colorful spectacle. “The banners of the different states rose above the delegates throughout the hall, fluttering like the flags over an army encamped,” wrote one reporter. The fiery orator Ignatius Donnelly attacked the money kings of Wall Street. Terence V. Powderly, head of the Knights of Labor, called on workers to join hands with farmers against the “nonproducing classes.” And Frances Willard took the podium, urging the crowd to outlaw liquor and give women the vote.

Delegates hammered out a series of demands, breathtaking in their scope. They tackled the tough questions of the day — the regulation of business, the need for banking and currency reform, the right of labor to organize and bargain collectively, and the role of the federal government in regulating business, curbing monopoly, and giving the

people greater voice. But the new party, determined to stick to economic issues, resisted endorsing either temperance or woman suffrage. Disappointed, Willard complained of the “crooked methods … employed to scuttle these planks.”

The convention ended its work amid a chorus of cheers. According to one eyewitness, “Hats, paper, handkerchiefs, etc., were thrown into the air; … cheer after cheer thundered and reverberated through the vast hall reaching the outside of the building where thousands who had been waiting the outcome joined in the applause till for blocks in every direction the exultation made the din indescribable.”

What was all the shouting about? The crowd, fed up with the Democrats and the Republicans, celebrated the birth of a new People’s Party. The St. Louis gathering marked an early milestone in one of the most turbulent decades in U.S. history. An agrarian revolt, labor strikes, a severe depression, and a war shook the 1890s. As the decade opened, Americans flocked to organizations including the Farmers’ Alliance, the American Federation of Labor, and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. Their political alliance gave birth to the People’s (or Populist) Party. In a decade of unrest and uncertainty, the Populists insisted that the federal government play a more active role to ensure economic fairness in industrial America.

This challenge to the status quo culminated in 1896 in one of the most hotly contested presidential elections in the nation’s history. At the close of the tumultuous decade, the Spanish-American War brought the

country together, with Americans rallying to support the troops. American imperialism and overseas expansion raised questions about the nation’s role on the world stage as the United States stood poised to enter the twentieth century.

Why did American farmers organize alliances in the late nineteenth century? Hard times in the 1880s and 1890s created a groundswell of agrarian revolt. A bitter farmer wrote from Minnesota, “I settled on this Land in good Faith Built House and Barn. Broken up Part of the Land. Spent years of hard Labor in grubbing fencing and Improving.” About to lose his farm to foreclosure, he lamented, “Are they going to drive us out like trespassers … and give us away to the Corporations?”

Farm prices fell decade after decade, even as American farmers’ share of the world market grew. In parts of Kansas, corn sold for as little as ten cents a bushel, and angry farmers burned their crops for fuel rather than sell them on the market. At the same time, consumer prices soared (Figure 20.1). In Kansas alone, almost half the farms had fallen into the hands of the banks through foreclosure by 1894. Farmers soon banded together into Farmers’ Alliances that gave birth to a broad political movement.

FIGURE 20.1 Consumer Prices and Farm Income, 1865–1910

Around 1870, consumer prices and farm income were about equal. During the 1880s and 1890s, however, farmers suffered great hardships as prices for their crops steadily declined and the cost of consumer goods continued to rise.

Description “In the graph, the horizontal axis shows the years and the vertical axis shows index. All values are approximate.

A: Price index for farm products (1913 equals 100)

B: Consumer Price Index (1913 equals 100)

C: Farmers in the black: Farmers’ income is greater than their expenditures on consumer goods

D: Farmers in the red: Farmers’ income is less than their expenditures on consumer goods

C is the difference between A and B when A is greater than B. D is the difference between A and B when B is greater than A.

The information given is: 1865; A, 150; B, 130; C, 20; D, Nil.

1870; A, 105; B, 103; C, 2; D, Nil.

1875; A, 100; B, 90; C, 10; D, Nil.

1880; A, 80; B, 80; C, 0; D, Nil.

1885; A, 80; B, 80; C, 0; D, Nil.

1890; A, 67; B, 77; C, Nil; D, 10.

1895; A, 63; B, 75; C, Nil; D, 12.

1900; A, 65; B, 80; C, Nil; D, 15.

1905; A, 84; B, 88; C, Nil; D, 4.

1910; A, 105; B, 100; C, 5; D, Nil.”

The Farmers’ Alliance At the heart of the farmers’ problems stood a banking system dominated by eastern commercial banks committed to the gold standard, a railroad rate system both capricious and unfair, and rampant speculation that drove up the price of land. Absentee owners in the East and abroad controlled the lion’s share of land and resources in the West. Western farmers rankled under a system over which they had little control. Railroads charged them

exorbitant freight rates while granting rebates to large shippers (see chapter 18).

The practice of charging higher rates for short hauls than for long hauls meant that grain elevators could ship their wheat from Chicago to New York and across the Atlantic for less than a Dakota farmer paid to send his crop to mills in Minneapolis. The government’s tight money policy meant that all together the southern states had less money in circulation than the state of Massachusetts. The lack of currency and credit drove southern farmers to the stopgap credit system of the crop lien. To pay for seed and supplies, farmers pledged their crops as collateral to local creditors (furnishing merchants) in a hopeless spiral of debt and tenancy. Determined to do something, farmers banded together to fight for change.

Farm protest was not new. In the 1870s, farmers had supported the Grange and the Greenback Labor Party. As the farmers’ situation grew more desperate, they organized, forming regional alliances. The first Farmers’ Alliance came together in Lampasas County, Texas, to fight “landsharks and horse thieves.” In frontier farmhouses in Texas, in log cabins in the backwoods of Arkansas, and in the rural parishes of Louisiana, separate groups of farmers formed similar alliances for self-help.

Traveling lecturers spread throughout the South and West preaching the Alliance gospel of political education, social criticism, and economic collective action. Education was the hallmark of the Alliance. The sunburned men and careworn women who turned out by the tens of thousands did not need to be convinced that something was wrong. What

they needed was a plan of action, and the Farmers’ Alliance soon supplied it.

As the movement grew in the 1880s, farmers’ groups consolidated into two regional alliances: the Northwestern Farmers’ Alliance, active in Kansas, Nebraska, and other midwestern Granger states; and the more radical Southern Farmers’ Alliance. By 1890, the Southern Farmers’ Alliance alone counted more than three million members, with women as well as men rallying to the Alliance banner. “I am going to work for prohibition, the Alliance, and for Jesus as long as I live,” swore one woman.

Radical in its inclusiveness, the Southern Alliance reached out to African Americans. Through cooperation with the Colored Farmers’ Alliance, an African American group founded in Texas in the 1880s, blacks and whites attempted to make common cause. As Georgia’s Tom Watson, a Southern Alliance stalwart, pointed out, “The colored tenant is in the same boat as the white tenant, … and … the accident of color can make no difference in the interests of farmers, croppers, and laborers.” But at the same time Watson stressed economic justice, he made it clear that it was still a “white man’s country” and would remain so.

The Alliance recruited industrial workers as well as farmers. During a major strike against Jay Gould’s Texas and Pacific Railroad in 1886, the Alliance vocally sided with the workers and rushed food and supplies to the strikers. Labor support proved especially strong among miners and railroad workers — two of the most dynamic contingents of the labor movement.

At the heart of the Alliance stood a series of farmers’ cooperatives. By “bulking” their cotton — that is, selling it together — farmers could negotiate a better price. And by setting up trade stores and exchanges, they sought to escape the grasp of the merchant/creditor. Through the cooperatives, the Farmers’ Alliance promised to change the way farmers lived. “We are going to get out of debt and be free and independent people once more,” exulted one Georgia farmer. But the Alliance faced insurmountable difficulties in running successful cooperatives. Opposition by merchants, bankers, wholesalers, and manufacturers made it impossible for the cooperatives to get credit. As the cooperative movement died, the Farmers’ Alliance moved into politics.

The Populist Movement In the earliest days of the Alliance movement, a leader of the Southern Farmers’ Alliance insisted, “The Alliance is a strictly white man’s nonpolitical, secret business association.” But by 1892, it was none of those things. Advocates of a third party carried the day at the convention of laborers, farmers, and common folk in 1892 in St. Louis, where the Farmers’ Alliance gave birth to the People’s Party (Populist Party) and launched the Populist movement.

The same spirit of religious revival that animated the Farmers’ Alliance infused the People’s Party. Convinced that the money and banking systems worked to the advantage of the wealthy few, Populists demanded economic democracy. To help farmers get the credit they needed at reasonable rates, southern farmers hit on the ingenious idea of a subtreasury — a plan that

would allow farmers to store their nonperishable crops until prices rose and to receive commodity credit from the federal government to obtain needed supplies. To the western farmer, the Populists promised land reform, championing a plan to reclaim excessive land granted to railroads or sold to foreign investors. The Populists’ boldest proposal called for government ownership of the railroads and the telegraph system to put an end to discriminatory rates.

The Farmers’ Alliance Isaac Ware, from southwest Custer County, Nebraska, proudly holds a copy of the Alliance Independent, a newspaper published in Lincoln, Nebraska. In 1892, before this picture was taken, Farmers’ Alliance members came together in St. Louis to form the People’s or Populist Party. Small local newspapers sprouted up all across the West and South to carry the message.

The Populists solidly supported free silver, in the hope of increasing the nation’s tight money supply. To empower the common people, the Populist platform called for the direct election of senators and for other electoral reforms, including the secret ballot and the right to initiate legislation, to recall elected officials, and to submit issues to the people by means of a referendum. In support of labor, the Populists supported the eight-hour day.

The sweeping array of reforms enacted in the Populist platform changed the agenda of politics for decades to come. More than just a response to hard times, Populism presented an alternative vision of American economic democracy.

��

Why did the Farmers’ Alliance decide to form a political party?

What led to the labor wars of the 1890s? While farmers united to fight for change, industrial laborers fought their own battles in a series of bloody strikes historians have called the “labor wars.” Industrial workers took a stand in the 1890s. At issue was the right of workers to organize and to speak through unions, to bargain collectively, and to fight for better working conditions, higher wages, shorter hours, and greater worker control in the face of increased mechanization. Three major conflicts — the lockout of steelworkers in Homestead, Pennsylvania, in 1892; the miners’ strike in Cripple Creek, Colorado, in 1894; and the Pullman boycott that same year — raised fundamental questions about the rights of labor and the sanctity of private property.

The Homestead Lockout In 1892, steelworkers in Pennsylvania squared off against Andrew Carnegie in a decisive struggle over the right to organize in the Homestead steel mills. Carnegie resolved to crush the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, one of the largest and richest craft unions in the American Federation of Labor (AFL). When the Amalgamated attempted to renew its contract at Carnegie’s Homestead mill, its leaders were told that since “the vast majority of our employees are Non union, the Firm has decided that the minority must give place to the majority.” While it was true that only eight hundred skilled workers belonged to the elite Amalgamated, the union had long enjoyed the support of the plant’s three thousand non-union workers.

Slavs, who did much of the unskilled work, made common cause with the Welsh, Scottish, and Irish skilled workers who belonged to the union.

Carnegie, who in the past had supported labor unions, preferred not to be directly involved in the union busting, so that spring he sailed to Scotland and left Henry Clay Frick, the toughest antilabor man in the industry, in charge. By summer, a strike looked inevitable. Frick prepared by erecting a fifteen-foot fence around the Homestead plant and topping it with barbed wire. Workers aptly dubbed it “Fort Frick.” Frick then hired 316 mercenaries from the Pinkerton National Detective Agency at the rate of $5 per day, more than double the wage of the average Homestead worker. The Pinkertons served as the advance agents and protectors of the strikebreakers Frick planned to import.

On June 28, the Homestead lockout began when Frick locked the doors of the mills and prepared to bring in strikebreakers. Hugh O’Donnell, the young Irishman who led the union, vowed to prevent “scabs” from entering the plant. On July 6 at 4 a.m., a lookout spotted two barges moving up the Monongahela River in the fog. Frick was attempting to smuggle his Pinkertons into Homestead.

Workers sounded the alarm, and within minutes a crowd of more than a thousand, hastily armed with rifles, hoes, and fence posts, rushed to the riverbank. When the men on the barges attempted to come ashore, gunfire broke out, and more than a dozen Pinkertons and some thirty strikers fell, killed or wounded. Hastily abandoned by the tugboat that brought them, the barges wallowed helplessly at the dock. Inside the hapless Pinkertons

hunkered down for a siege. For twelve hours, the workers, joined by their family members, threw everything they had at the barges, from dynamite to fireworks left over from the Fourth of July. Finally, the Pinkertons hoisted a white flag and arranged with O’Donnell to surrender. With three workers dead and scores wounded, the crowd, numbering perhaps ten thousand, was in no mood for conciliation. As the hated “Pinks” came up the hill, they were forced to run a gauntlet of screaming, cursing men, women, and children.

When a young guard dropped to his knees, crying for mercy, a woman used her umbrella to poke out his eye. One Pinkerton had been killed in the siege on the barges. In the grim rout that followed their surrender, not one avoided injury. The workers took control of the plant and elected a council to run the community. At first, public opinion favored their cause. A congressman castigated Carnegie for “skulking in his castle in Scotland.” Populists, meeting in St. Louis, condemned the Pinkertons as “hireling armies.”

The action of the Homestead workers struck at the heart of the capitalist system, pitting the workers’ right to their jobs against the rights of private property. The workers’ insistence that “we are not destroying the property of the company — merely protecting our rights” did not prove as compelling to the courts and the state as the property rights of the owners. Four days after the confrontation, Pennsylvania’s governor, who sympathized with the workers, nonetheless yielded to pressure from Frick and ordered eight thousand National Guard troops into Homestead to protect Carnegie’s property. The workers, thinking they had nothing to fear

from the militia, welcomed the troops with a brass band. But the troops’ occupation not only protected Carnegie’s property but also enabled Frick to reopen the mills and bring in strikebreakers. “We have been deceived,” one worker complained bitterly. “We have stood idly by and let the town be occupied by soldiers who come here, not as our protectors, but as the protectors of non-union men…. If we undertake to resist the seizure of our jobs, we will be shot down like dogs.”

Then, in a misguided effort to ignite a general uprising, Alexander Berkman, a Russian immigrant and anarchist, attempted to assassinate Frick. Berkman bungled his attempt. Shot twice and stabbed with a dagger, Frick allowed a doctor to remove the bullets but refused to leave his desk until the day’s work was completed. “I do not think that I shall die,” Frick remarked coolly, “but whether I do or not, the Company will pursue the same policy and it will win.”

After the assassination attempt, public opinion turned against the workers. Berkman was quickly tried and sentenced to prison. Although the Amalgamated and the AFL denounced his action, the incident linked anarchism and unionism. O’Donnell later wrote, “The bullet from Berkman’s pistol, failing in its foul intent, went straight through the heart of the Homestead strike.” The Homestead mill reopened in November, and the men returned to work, except for the union leaders, now blacklisted in every steel mill in the country. With the owners firmly in control, the company slashed wages, reinstated the twelve-hour day, and eliminated five hundred jobs.

The workers at Homestead had been taught a lesson. They would never again, in the words of the National Guard commander, “believe the works are theirs quite as much as Carnegie’s.” Another forty-five years would pass before steelworkers, unskilled as well as skilled, successfully unionized. In the meantime, Carnegie’s production tripled, even in the midst of a depression. “Ashamed to tell you profits these days,” Carnegie wrote a friend in 1899. And no wonder: Carnegie’s profits had grown from $4 million in 1892 to $40 million in 1900.

The Cripple Creek Miners’ Strike of 1894 Less than a year after the Homestead lockout, a panic on Wall Street in the spring of 1893 touched off a bitter economic depression. In the West, silver mines fell on hard times, leading to the Cripple Creek miners’ strike of 1894. When mine owners moved to lengthen the workday from eight to ten hours, the newly formed Western Federation of Miners (WFM) vowed to hold the line in Cripple Creek, Colorado. In February 1894, the WFM threatened to strike all mines running more than eight-hour shifts. The mine owners divided: Some quickly settled with the WFM; others continued to demand ten hours, provoking a strike.

The striking miners received help from many quarters. Working miners paid $15 a month to a strike fund, and miners in neighboring districts sent substantial contributions. The miners enjoyed the support and assistance of local businesses and grocers, who provided credit to the strikers. With these

advantages, the Cripple Creek strikers could afford to hold out for their demands.

Even more significant, Governor Davis H. Waite, a Populist elected in 1892, had strong ties to the miners and refused to use the power of the state against the strikers. Governor Waite asked the strikers to lay down their arms and demanded that the mine owners disperse their hired deputies. The miners agreed to arbitration and selected Waite as their sole arbitrator. By May, the recalcitrant mine owners capitulated, and the union won an eight- hour day.

Governor Waite’s intervention demonstrated the pivotal power of the state in the nation’s labor wars. Having a Populist in power made a difference. A decade later, in 1904, with Waite out of office, mine owners relied on state troops to take back control of the mines, defeating the WFM and blacklisting all of its members. In retrospect, the Cripple Creek miners’ victory in 1894 proved the exception to the rule of state intervention on the side of private property.

Eugene V. Debs and the Pullman Strike The economic depression that began in 1893 swelled the ranks of the unemployed to three million, almost half of the working population. “A fearful crisis is upon us,” wrote a labor publication. Nowhere were workers more demoralized than in the model town of Pullman, on the outskirts of Chicago.

In the wake of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, George M. Pullman, the builder of Pullman railroad cars, moved his plant and workers nine miles south of Chicago and built a model town. The town of Pullman boasted parks, fountains, playgrounds, an auditorium, a library, a hotel, shops, and markets, along with 1,800 units of housing. Noticeably absent was a saloon.

The housing in Pullman was clearly superior to that in neighboring areas, but workers paid a high price to live there. Pullman’s rents ran 10 to 20 percent higher than housing costs in nearby communities. In addition, George Pullman refused to “sell an acre under any circumstances.” As long as he controlled the town absolutely, he held the powerful whip of eviction over his employees and could quickly get rid of “troublemakers.” Although observers at first praised the beauty and orderliness of the town, critics by the 1890s compared Pullman’s model town to a “gilded cage” for workers.

The depression brought hard times to Pullman. Workers saw their wages slashed five times between May and December 1893, with cuts totaling at least 28 percent. At the same time, Pullman refused to lower the rents in his model town, insisting that “the renting of the dwellings and the employment of workmen at Pullman are in no way tied together.” When workers went to the bank to cash their paychecks, they found that the rent had been taken out. One worker discovered only forty-seven cents in his pay envelope for two weeks’ work. When the bank teller asked him whether he wanted to apply it to his back rent, he retorted, “If Mr. Pullman needs that forty-seven cents worse than I do, let him have it.” At the same time, Pullman continued to pay his stockholders an 8 percent dividend, and the company accumulated a $25 million surplus.

At the heart of the labor problems at Pullman lay not only economic inequity but also the company’s attempt to control the work process, substituting piecework for day wages and undermining skilled craftsworkers. During the spring of 1894, Pullman’s desperate workers, seeking help, flocked to the ranks of the American Railway Union (ARU), led by the charismatic Eugene V. Debs. The ARU, unlike the skilled craft unions of the AFL, pledged to organize all railway workers — from engineers to engine wipers.

George Pullman responded to union organization at his plant by firing three of the union’s leaders the day after they protested wage cuts. Angry men and women walked off the job in disgust. What began as a spontaneous protest in May 1894 quickly blossomed into a strike that involved more than 90 percent of Pullman’s 3,300 workers. Pullman countered by shutting down the plant. In June, the Pullman strikers appealed to the ARU to come to their aid. Debs pleaded with the workers to find another solution. But when George Pullman refused arbitration, the ARU membership voted to boycott all Pullman cars. Beginning on June 29, switchmen across the United States refused to handle any train that carried Pullman cars.

The conflict escalated quickly. The General Managers Association (GMA), an organization of managers from twenty-four different railroads, acted in concert to quash the Pullman boycott. They recruited strikebreakers and fired all the protesting switchmen. Their tactics set off a chain reaction. Entire train crews walked off the job in a show of solidarity with the Pullman workers. By July 2, rail lines from New York to California lay

paralyzed. Even the GMA was forced to concede that the railroads had been “fought to a standstill.”

The boycott remained surprisingly peaceful. In contrast to the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, no major riots broke out, and no serious property damage occurred. Debs fired off telegrams to all parts of the country advising his followers to avoid violence and respect law and order. But the nation’s newspapers, fed press releases by the GMA, distorted the issues and misrepresented the strike. Across the country, papers ran headlines like “Wild Riot in Chicago” and “Mob Is in Control.”

In Washington, Attorney General Richard B. Olney, a lawyer with strong ties to the railroads, determined to put down the strike. In his way stood the governor of Illinois, John Peter Altgeld, who, pointing out that the boycott remained peaceful, refused to call out troops. To get around Altgeld, Olney convinced President Grover Cleveland that federal troops had to intervene in order to “protect the mails.” Two conservative Chicago judges further crippled the boycott by issuing an injunction so sweeping that it prohibited Debs from speaking in public. The injunction made the boycott a crime punishable by a jail sentence for contempt of court, a civil process that did not require a jury trial. Even the conservative Chicago Tribune judged the injunction “a menace to liberty … a weapon ever ready for the capitalist.” Furious, Debs risked jail by refusing to honor it.

Olney’s strategy worked. President Grover Cleveland called out the army. On July 5, nearly eight thousand troops marched into Chicago. Violence immediately erupted. In one day, troops killed twenty-five workers and

wounded more than sixty. In the face of bullets and bayonets, the strikers held firm. “Troops cannot move trains,” Debs reminded his followers, a fact that was borne out as the railroads remained paralyzed despite the military intervention. But if the army could not put down the boycott, the injunction did.

Debs was arrested and imprisoned for contempt of court. With its leader in jail, its headquarters raided and ransacked, and its members demoralized, the ARU collapsed along with the boycott. Pullman reopened his factory, hiring new workers to replace many of the blacklisted strikers and leaving sixteen hundred workers without jobs.

In the aftermath of the strike, a special commission investigated the events at Pullman, taking testimony from 107 witnesses, from the lowliest workers to George M. Pullman himself. Stubborn and self-righteous, Pullman spoke for the business orthodoxy of his era, steadfastly affirming the right of business to safeguard its interests through confederacies such as the GMA and at the same time denying labor’s right to organize. “If we were to receive these men as representatives of the union,” he stated, “they could probably force us to pay any wages which they saw fit.”

From his jail cell, Eugene Debs reviewed the events of the Pullman strike. With the courts and the government ready to side with industrialists in defense of private property, strikes seemed futile, and unions remained helpless. Workers would have to take control of the state itself. Debs went into jail a trade unionist and came out six months later a socialist. At first,

he turned to the Populist Party, but after its demise he formed the Socialist Party in 1900 and ran for president five times.

��

Why were the labor conflicts of the 1890s so often marked by violence?

How were women involved in late- nineteenth-century politics? Do everything,” Frances Willard urged her followers in 1881. The new president of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) meant what she said. The WCTU followed a trajectory that was common for women in the late nineteenth century. As women organized to deal with issues that touched their homes and families, they moved into politics, lending new urgency to the cause of woman suffrage. Urban industrialism dislocated women’s lives no less than men’s. Like men, women sought political change and organized to promote issues central to their lives, campaigning for temperance and woman suffrage.

Frances Willard and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union A visionary leader, Frances Willard spoke for a group left almost entirely out of the U.S. electoral process. By 1890, only one state, Wyoming, allowed women to vote in national elections. But lack of the franchise did not mean that women were apolitical. The WCTU demonstrated the breadth of women’s political activity in the late nineteenth century.

Women supported the temperance movement because they felt particularly vulnerable to the effects of drunkenness. Dependent on men’s wages, married women and their children suffered when money went for drink. The drunken, abusive husband epitomized the evils of a nation in which women remained second-class citizens. The WCTU, composed entirely of women,

viewed all women’s interests as essentially the same, and therefore did not hesitate to use the singular woman to emphasize gender solidarity. Although mostly white and middle-class, WCTU members resolved to speak for their entire sex.

When Willard became president in 1879, she radically changed the direction of the organization. Social action replaced prayer as women’s answer to the threat of drunkenness. Viewing alcoholism as a disease rather than a sin, and poverty as a cause rather than a result of drink, the WCTU became involved in labor issues, joining with the Knights of Labor to press for better working conditions for women workers. Describing workers in a textile mill, a WCTU member wrote in the organization’s Union Signal magazine, “It is dreadful to see these girls, stripped almost to the skin … and running like racehorses from the beginning to the end of the day.” She concluded, “The hard slavish work is drawing the girls into the saloon.”

Willard capitalized on the cult of domesticity as a shrewd political tactic. Using “home protection” as her watchword, she argued as early as 1884 that women needed the vote to protect home and family. By the 1890s, the WCTU’s grassroots network of local unions included 200,000 dues-paying members and had spread to all but the most isolated rural areas of the country.

Willard worked to create a broad reform coalition in the 1890s, embracing the Knights of Labor, the People’s Party, and the Prohibition Party. Until her death in 1898, she led, if not a women’s rights movement, then the first

organized mass movement of women united around a women’s issue. By 1900, thanks largely to the WCTU, women could claim a generation of experience in political action — speaking, lobbying, organizing, drafting legislation, and running private charitable institutions. As Willard observed, “All this work has tended more toward the liberation of women than it has toward the extinction of the saloon.”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and the Movement for Woman Suffrage Unlike the WCTU, the organized movement for woman suffrage remained small and relatively weak in the late nineteenth century. In 1869, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her ally Susan B. Anthony launched the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) demanding the vote for women (see chapter 18). A more conservative group, the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), formed the same year. Composed of men as well as women, the AWSA believed that women should stick with the Republican Party and make suffrage the Sixteenth Amendment. Their optimism proved misplaced.

Woman’s Suffrage Campaigners Two respectably attired middle-class suffragists from Long Island, New York, drove this cart to Boston to campaign for woman’s suffrage. The boys standing behind the cart suggest the ridicule suffragists often encountered. One suffragist said driving the cart allowed them to stop frequently to explain their cause “to farmers and people in small towns.”

By 1890, the split had healed, and the newly united National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) launched campaigns on the state level to gain the vote for women. Twenty years had made a great change. Woman suffrage, though not yet generally supported, was no longer considered a crackpot idea, thanks in part to the WCTU’s support of the “home protection” ballot. The NAWSA honored Elizabeth Cady Stanton by

electing her its first president, but Susan B. Anthony, who took the helm in 1892, emerged as the leading figure in the new united organization.

Stanton and Anthony, both in their seventies, were coming to the end of their public careers. Since the days of the Seneca Falls woman’s rights convention, they had worked for reforms for their sex, including property rights, custody rights, and the right to education and gainful employment. But the prize of woman suffrage still eluded them. Suffragists won victories in Colorado in 1893 and Idaho in 1896. One more state joined the suffrage column in 1896 when Utah entered the Union. But women suffered a bitter defeat in a California referendum on woman suffrage that same year. Never losing faith, Anthony remarked in her last public appearance in 1906, “Failure is impossible.”

��

How did women’s temperance activism contribute to the cause of woman suffrage?

How did economic depression affect American politics in the 1890s? The depression that began in the spring of 1893 and lasted for more than four years put nearly half of the labor force out of work, a higher percentage than during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The human cost of the depression was staggering. “I Take my pen in hand to let you know that we are Starving to death,” a Kansas farm woman wrote to the governor in 1894. “Last cent gone,” wrote a young widow in her diary. “Children went to work without their breakfasts.” Following the harsh dictates of social Darwinism and laissez-faire, the majority of America’s elected officials believed that it was inappropriate for the government to intervene.

But the scope of the depression made it impossible for churches and local agencies to supply sufficient relief, and increasingly Americans called on the federal government to take action. Armies of the unemployed marched on Washington to demand relief, and the Populist Party experienced a surge of support as the election of 1896 approached.

Coxey’s Army Masses of unemployed Americans marched to Washington, D.C., in the spring of 1894 to call attention to their plight and to urge Congress to enact a public works program to end unemployment. Jacob S. Coxey of Massilon, Ohio, led the most publicized contingent. Convinced that men could be put to work building badly needed roads for the nation, Coxey proposed a

scheme to finance public works through non-interest-bearing bonds. “What I am after,” he maintained, “is to try to put this country in a condition so that no man who wants work shall be obliged to remain idle.” His plan won support from the AFL and the Populists.

Coxey’s Army A contingent of Coxey’s army stops to rest on its way to Washington, D.C. A “petition in boots,” Coxey’s followers were well dressed. Music was an important component of the march, including the anthem “Marching with Coxey.” Band members are pictured on the right with their instruments. Despite their peaceful pose, the marchers stirred the fears of many Americans, who predicted an uprising of the unemployed.

Description Some of the men sitting and lying on the grass hold musical instruments. Two American flags are fluttering in the background, among them.

Starting out from Ohio with one hundred men, Coxey’s army, as it was dubbed, swelled as it marched east through the spring snows of the Alleghenies. In Pennsylvania, Coxey recruited several hundred from the ranks of those left unemployed by the Homestead lockout. On May 1, Coxey arrived in Washington, D.C. When he defiantly marched his men onto the Capitol grounds, police set upon the demonstrators with nightsticks, cracking skulls and arresting Coxey and his lieutenants. Coxey went to jail for twenty days and was fined $5 for “walking on the grass.”

But other armies of the unemployed, totaling possibly as many as five thousand people, were still on their way. In the West, the more daring contingents hijacked freight trains, stirring fears of revolution. Journalists who covered the march did little to quiet the nation’s fears. They delighted in military terminology, describing themselves as “war correspondents.” To boost newspaper sales, they gave to the episode a tone of urgency and heightened the sense of a nation imperiled.

By August, the leaderless, tattered armies dissolved. Although the “On to Washington” movement proved ineffective in forcing federal relief legislation, Coxey’s army dramatized the plight of the unemployed and acted, in the words of one participant, as a “living, moving object lesson.” Like the Populists, Coxey’s army called into question the underlying values of the new industrial order and demonstrated how ordinary citizens turned to means outside the regular party system to influence politics in the 1890s.

The People’s Party and the Election of 1896 Even before the depression of 1893, the Populists had railed against the status quo. “We meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political, and material ruin,” Ignatius Donnelly thundered in his keynote address at the creation of the People’s Party in St. Louis in 1892. “The fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few…. From the same prolific womb of governmental injustice we breed the two great classes — tramps and millionaires.”

The fiery rhetoric frightened many who saw in the People’s Party a call not to reform but to revolution. Throughout the country, the press denounced the Populists as “cranks, lunatics, and idiots.” When one self-righteous editor dismissed them as “calamity howlers,” Populist governor Lorenzo Lewelling of Kansas shot back, “If that is so I want to continue to howl until those conditions are improved.”

The People’s Party captured more than a million votes in the presidential election of 1892, a respectable showing for a new party (Map 20.1). As the presidential election of 1896 approached, the depression intensified cries for reform not only from the Populists but also throughout the electorate. Depression worsened the tight money problem caused by the deflationary pressure of the gold standard. Once again, proponents of free silver stirred rebellion in the ranks of the Democratic and Republican parties. When the Republicans nominated Ohio governor William McKinley on a platform pledging the preservation of the gold standard, western advocates of free

silver representing miners and farmers walked out of the convention. Open rebellion also split the Democratic Party, as vast segments in the West and South repudiated President Grover Cleveland because of his support for gold. In South Carolina, Benjamin Tillman won his race for Congress by promising, “Send me to Washington and I’ll stick my pitchfork into [Cleveland’s] old ribs!”

MAP 20.1 The Election of 1892

Description “The results of the presidential election of 1896 are as follows:

Grover Cleveland (Democrat): Of the total 277 electoral votes he won 36 votes were in New York; 6 votes in Connecticut; 10 votes in New Jersey; 3 votes in Delaware; 8 votes in Maryland; 12 votes in Virginia; 6 votes in West Virginia; 11 votes in North Carolina; 9 votes in South Carolina; 13 votes in Georgia; 4 votes in Florida; 11 votes in Alabama; 9

votes in Mississippi; 8 votes in Louisiana; 15 votes in Texas; 8 votes in Arkansas; 12 votes in Tennessee; 13 votes in Kentucky; 17 votes in Missouri; 24 votes in Illinois; 15 votes in Indiana; 12 votes in Wisconsin; 5 votes in Michigan; 1 vote in Ohio; 1 vote in North Dakota and 8 votes in California. He got 5,555,426 popular votes with 46.1 percent popular votes.

Benjamin Harrison (Republican): He won 145 electoral votes in total. Of these, 4 were in Washington; 3 each were in Oregon, Montana, and Wyoming; 1 was in North Dakota; 4 were in South Dakota; 8 were in Nebraska; 9 were in Minnesota; 13 were in Iowa; 9 were in Michigan; 22 were in Ohio; 32 were in Pennsylvania; 4 each in Vermont and New Hampshire; 6 were in Maine; 15 were in Massachusetts; 4 were in Rhode Island; and 1 in California. He received 5,182,690 popular votes with 43 percent popular votes.

James B. Weaver (People’s): He won 22 electoral votes of which he gained 1 vote in Oregon; 3 votes each in Idaho and Nevada; 4 votes in Colorado; 10 votes in Kansas; and 1 vote in North Dakota. He totaled 1,029,846 popular votes with the percentage of popular votes being 8.5 percent.”

The spirit of revolt animated the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in the summer of 1896. William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska, the thirty-six-year-old “boy orator from the Platte,” whipped the convention into a frenzy, calling passionately for free silver with a ringing exhortation: “Do not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.” Pandemonium broke loose as delegates stampeded to nominate Bryan, the youngest candidate ever to run for the presidency.

The juggernaut of free silver rolled out of Chicago and on to St. Louis, where the People’s Party met a week after the Democrats adjourned. Many western Populists urged the party to ally with the Democrats and endorse Bryan. A major obstacle in the path of fusion, however, was Bryan’s running mate, Arthur M. Sewall. A Maine railway director and bank

president, Sewall, who had been placed on the ticket to appease conservative Democrats, embodied everything the Populists detested. Moreover, die-hard southern Populists wanted no part of fusion. Southern Democrats had resorted to fraud and violence to steal elections from the Populists in 1894, and support for a Democratic ticket proved hard to swallow.

Populists struggled to work out a compromise. To show that they remained true to their principles, delegates first voted to support all the planks of the 1892 platform, added to it a call for public works projects for the unemployed, and only narrowly defeated a plank for woman suffrage. To deal with the problem of fusion, the convention selected the vice- presidential candidate first. The nomination of Tom Watson undercut opposition to Bryan’s candidacy. And although Bryan quickly sent a telegram to protest that he would not drop Sewall as his running mate, mysteriously his message never reached the convention floor. Fusion triumphed. Bryan won the nomination by a lopsided vote. The Populists did not know it, but their cheers for Bryan signaled the death knell for the People’s Party.

Few contests in the nation’s history have been as fiercely fought as the presidential election of 1896. On one side stood Republican William McKinley, backed by the wealthy industrialist and party boss Mark Hanna. Hanna played on the business community’s fears of Populism to raise a Republican war chest more than double the amount of any previous campaign. An estimated four to sixteen million dollars went to selling McKinley as “the advance agent of prosperity.” William Jennings Bryan,

with few assets beyond his silver tongue, struggled to make up in energy and eloquence what his party lacked in campaign funds. Bryan crisscrossed the country in a whirlwind tour, by his own reckoning visiting twenty-seven states and speaking to more than six million Americans, often giving a dozen speeches a day.

As befitted a candidate whose platform called for public ownership of the railroads, he got no help from the railroad barons. He bought his own tickets, carried his own bags, and rode in coach. McKinley stayed home in Canton, Ohio, waging a front-porch campaign. The Pennsylvania Railroad supplied cut-rate transport to contingents of up to 50,000 people, who showed up on Saturdays to hear McKinley declare himself in favor of “the full dinner pail.”

In the battle of the standards, as the campaign came to be called, gold and silver became iconic. Gold stood for Wall Street, probity, and the status quo, while silver represented the common people and common sense. The most popular silver pamphlet, Coin’s Financial School, sold five thousand copies a day at its peak in 1895, not counting tens of thousands of copies distributed by silver supporters. The pamphlet’s point was simple: The gold standard did not work. Lack of credit and an inflexible currency meant depression and deflation. On the other side, the goldbugs declared gold the only honest currency and decried silver supporters as no better than scofflaws seeking to shirk their debts. Big city newspapers kept up a drumbeat of alarmist rhetoric, predicting panic and depression if the Democrats won. Republicans denounced their rivals as “hayseed cranks,” but their own partisanship verged on hysteria. In the heat of the race,

Theodore Roosevelt proposed putting twelve Populist leaders against the wall and “shooting them dead.”

On election day, four out of five voters went to the polls in an unprecedented turnout. The silver states of the Rocky Mountains lined up solidly for Bryan. The Northeast went for McKinley. The Midwest tipped the balance. In the end, the election hinged on between 100 and 1,000 votes in several key states, including Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota. Although McKinley won twenty-three states to Bryan’s twenty-two, the electoral vote showed a lopsided 271 to 176 in McKinley’s favor (Map 20.2). The powerful economic warnings and charges that Bryan would bring ruin to the northern industrial economy scared away the labor vote. Democrats failed to carry a single big city, losing New York, Boston, Baltimore, Newark, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.

MAP 20.2 The Election of 1896

Description “The map gives out the results of the presidential election of 1896 as:

William McKinley (Republican): Of the total 271 electoral votes he won, 36 votes were in New York; 6 votes in Maine; 4 each in New Hampshire and Vermont; 15 in Massachusetts; 4 in Rhode Island; 6 in Connecticut; 10 in New Jersey; 32 in Pennsylvania; 3 in Delaware; 8 in Maryland; 6 in West Virginia; 12 in Kentucky; 23 in Ohio; 15 in Indiana; 24 in Illinois; 14 in Michigan; 12 in Wisconsin; 13 in Iowa; 9 in Minnesota; 3 in North Dakota; 4 in Oregon; 8 in California. He received 7,104,779 popular votes with 51.1 percent popular votes.

William J. Bryan (Democrat-People’s): He won 176 electoral votes in total. Of these, 4 were in Washington; 3 each in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, Nevada, and Utah; 1 was in California; 4 each in South Dakota and Colorado; 8 were in Nebraska; 10 in Kansas; 15 in Texas; 17 in Missouri; 8 each in Arkansas and Louisiana; 12 in Tennessee; 9 in Mississippi; 11 in Alabama; 13 in Georgia; 4 in Florida; 9 in South Carolina; 11 in North Carolina; and 12 in Virginia. He got 6,502,925 popular votes with 47.7 percent popular votes.”

The biggest losers in 1896 turned out to be the Populists. On the national level, they polled fewer than 300,000 votes, a million less than in 1894. In the clamor to support Bryan, Populists in the South swallowed their differences and drifted back to the Democratic Party. Republicans successfully fought off the political alliance of the West and the South. The resulting Republican realignment claimed the North, Midwest, and West. Increasingly, the Democrats could count only on the white solid South.

Yet the Populist movement signaled something momentous. It marked the attempt of ordinary men and women, farmers and laborers, to educate

themselves and organize in an effort to seize the levers of power and make the capitalist state more equitable and just. The true significance of the movement lay not in the success or failure of the People’s Party, but simply in the act of trying.

��

Why was the People’s Party unable to translate national support into victory in the 1896 election?

Why did the United States largely abandon its isolationist foreign policy in the 1890s? Throughout much of the second half of the nineteenth century, U.S. interest in foreign policy took a backseat to territorial expansion in the American West. The United States fought the Indian wars while European nations carved empires in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Pacific.

At the turn of the twentieth century, the United States pursued a foreign policy consisting of two currents — isolationism and expansionism. Although the determination to remain detached from European politics had been a hallmark of U.S. foreign policy since the nation’s founding, Americans simultaneously believed in manifest destiny — the “obvious” right to expand the nation from ocean to ocean. By the 1890s, with its own inland empire secured, the United States looked outward. Determined to protect its sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere and to expand its trading in Asia, the nation turned away from isolationism and toward a more active role on the world stage that led to intervention in China’s Boxer uprising and war with Spain.

Markets and Missionaries The depression of the 1890s provided a powerful impetus to American commercial expansion. As markets weakened at home, American businesses looked abroad for profits. As the depression deepened, one

diplomat warned that Americans “must turn [their] eyes abroad, or they will soon look inward upon discontent.”

Exports constituted a small but significant percentage of the profits of American business in the 1890s (Figure 20.2). And where American interests led, businessmen expected the government’s power and influence to follow to protect their investments. Companies like Standard Oil actively sought to use the U.S. government as their agent, often putting foreign service employees on the payroll. “Our ambassadors and ministers and consuls,” wrote John D. Rockefeller appreciatively, “have aided to push our way into new markets and to the utmost corners of the world.”

FIGURE 20.2 Expansion in U.S. Trade, 1870–1910

Between 1870 and 1910, American exports more than tripled. Imports generally rose, but they were held in check by the high protective tariffs championed by Republican presidents from Ulysses S. Grant to William Howard Taft. A decline in imports is particularly noticeable after the passage of the prohibitive McKinley tariff in 1890.

Description The horizontal axis shows the year and the vertical axis shows the value of exports or imports in millions of dollars. The approximate data for each year as per the graph are as follows: 1870, Exports, 550, Imports, 450; 1875, Exports, 700, Imports, 600; 1880, Exports, 850, Imports, 700; 1885, Exports, 750, Imports, 600; 1890, Exports, 850, Imports, 830; 1895, Exports, 900, Imports, 800; 1900, Exports, 1,500, Imports, 900; 1905, Exports, 1,550, Imports, 1,300; 1910, Exports, 1,750, Imports, 1,550.

America’s foreign policy often appeared little more than a sidelight to business development. In Hawai’i (first called the Sandwich Islands), American sugar interests fomented a rebellion in 1893, toppling the increasingly independent Queen Lili’uokalani. They pushed Congress to annex the islands to avoid the high McKinley tariff on sugar. When President Cleveland learned that Hawai’ians opposed annexation, he withdrew the proposal from Congress. Yet expansionists still coveted the islands and looked for an opportunity to push through annexation.

Business interests alone did not account for the new expansionism that seized the nation during the 1890s. As Alfred Thayer Mahan, leader of a growing group of American expansionists, confessed, “Even when material interests are the original exciting cause, it is the sentiment to which they give rise, the moral tone which emotion takes that constitutes the greater force.” Much of that moral tone was set by American missionaries intent on

spreading the gospel of Christianity to the “heathen.” No area on the globe constituted a greater challenge than China.

An 1858 agreement, the Tianjin (Tientsin) treaty, admitted foreign missionaries to China. Although Christians converted only 100,000 in a population of 400 million, the Chinese nevertheless resented the interference of missionaries in village life. Opposition to foreign missionaries took the form of antiforeign secret societies, most notably the Boxers, whose Chinese name translated to “Righteous Harmonious Fist.” In 1899, the Boxers hunted down and killed Chinese Christians and missionaries in northwestern Shandong Province. With the tacit support of China’s Dowager Empress, the Boxers shouted, “Uphold the Ch’ing Dynasty, Exterminate the Foreigners,” and marched on the cities. Their rampage eventually led to the massacre of some 30,000 Chinese converts and 250 foreign nuns, priests, and missionaries.

As the Boxers spread terror throughout northern China, some 800 Americans and Europeans sought refuge in the foreign diplomatic buildings in Peking (today’s Beijing). Along with missionaries from the countryside came thousands of their Chinese converts. Unable to escape and cut off from outside aid and communication, the Americans and Europeans in Beijing mounted a defense to face the Boxer onslaught. One American described the scene as 20,000 Boxers stormed the walls in June 1900:

Their yells were deafening, while the roar of gongs, drums, and horns sounded like thunder…. They waved their swords and stamped on the ground with their feet. They wore red turbans, sashes, and garters over blue cloth…. They were now only twenty yards from our gate. Three or four volleys from the Lebel rifles of our marines left more than fifty dead on the ground.

For two months the little group held out under siege, eating mule and horse meat and losing 76 men in battle. Sarah Conger, wife of the U.S. ambassador, wrote wearily, “[The siege] was exciting at first, but night after night of this firing, horn-blowing, and yelling, and the whizzing of bullets has hardened us to it.”

In August 1900, 2,500 U.S. troops joined an international force sent to rescue the foreigners and put down the uprising in the Chinese capital. The European powers imposed the humiliating Boxer Protocol in 1901, granting themselves the right to maintain military forces in Beijing and requiring the Chinese government to pay an exorbitant indemnity of $333 million.

In the aftermath of the Boxer uprising, missionaries voiced no concern at the paradox of bringing Christianity to China at gunpoint. “It is worth any cost in money, worth any cost in bloodshed,” argued one bishop, “if we can make millions of Chinese true and intelligent Christians.” Merchants and missionaries alike shared such moralistic reasoning. Indeed, they worked hand in hand; trade and Christianity marched into Asia together. “Missionaries,” admitted the American clergyman Charles Denby, “are the pioneers of trade and commerce…. The missionary, inspired by holy zeal, goes everywhere and by degrees foreign commerce and trade follow.”

The Monroe Doctrine and the Open Door Policy The emergence of the United States as a world power pitted the nation against other colonial powers, particularly Germany and Japan, which

posed a threat to the twin pillars of America’s expansionist foreign policy. The first, the Monroe Doctrine, came to be interpreted as establishing the Western Hemisphere as an American “sphere of influence” and warned European powers to stay out or risk war. The second, the Open Door policy, dealt with maintaining market access to China.

American diplomacy actively worked to buttress the Monroe Doctrine with its assertion of American hegemony (domination) in the Western Hemisphere. In the 1880s, Republican secretary of state James G. Blaine promoted hemispheric peace and trade through Pan-American cooperation but at the same time used American troops to intervene in Latin American border disputes. In 1895, President Cleveland risked war with Great Britain to enforce the Monroe Doctrine when a conflict developed between Venezuela and British Guiana. After American sabers rattled, the British backed down and accepted U.S. mediation in the area despite their territorial claims in Guiana.

In Central America, American business triumphed in a bloodless takeover that saw French and British interests routed. The United Fruit Company of Boston virtually dominated the Central American nations of Costa Rica and Guatemala, while an importer from New Orleans turned Honduras into a “banana republic” (a country run by U.S. business interests). Thus, by 1895, the United States, through business as well as diplomacy, had successfully achieved hegemony in Latin America and the Caribbean, forcing even the British to concur that “the infinite resources [of the United States] combined with its isolated position render it master of the situation and practically invulnerable as against any or all other powers.”

At the same time that American foreign policy warned European powers to stay out of the Western Hemisphere, the United States competed for trade in the Eastern Hemisphere. As American interests in China grew, the United States became more aggressive in defending its presence in Asia and the Pacific. In 1889, it risked war with Germany to guarantee the U.S. Navy access to Pago Pago in the Samoan Islands, a port for refueling on the way to Asia. Germany, seeking dominance over the islands, sent warships to the region. But before fighting broke out, a typhoon destroyed the German and American ships. The potential combatants later divided the islands amicably in the 1899 Treaty of Berlin.

In the 1890s, weakened by years of internal warfare, China was partitioned into spheres of influence by Britain, Japan, Germany, France, and Russia. Concerned about the integrity of China and no less about American trade, Secretary of State John Hay in 1899–1900 wrote a series of notes calling for an “open door” policy that would ensure trade access to all and maintain Chinese sovereignty. The notes were greeted by the major powers with polite evasion. Nevertheless, Hay skillfully managed to maneuver them into doing his bidding, and in 1900, he boldly announced the Open Door as international policy. The United States, by insisting on the Open Door policy, managed to secure access to Chinese markets, expanding its economic power while avoiding the problems of maintaining a far-flung colonial empire on the Asian mainland. But as the Spanish-American War soon demonstrated, Americans found it hard to resist the temptations of overseas empire.

“A Splendid Little War” The Spanish-American War began as a humanitarian effort to free Cuba from Spain’s colonial grasp and ended with the United States itself acquiring territory overseas and fighting a dirty guerrilla war with Filipino nationalists who, like the Cubans, sought independence. Behind the contradiction stood the twin pillars of American foreign policy: The Monroe Doctrine made Spain’s presence in Cuba unacceptable, and U.S. determination to keep open the door to Asia made control of the Philippines attractive. Precedent for the nation’s imperial adventures also came from the recent Indian wars in the American West, which provided a template for the subjugation of native peoples in the name of civilization.

Looking back on the Spanish-American War of 1898, Secretary of State John Hay judged it “a splendid little war; begun with the highest motives, carried on with magnificent intelligence and spirit, favored by that fortune which loves the brave.” At the close of a decade marred by bitter depression, social unrest, and political upheaval, the war offered Americans a chance to wave the flag and march in unison. War fever proved as infectious as the tune of a John Philip Sousa march. Few argued the merits of the conflict until it was over and the time came to divide the spoils.

The war began with moral outrage over the treatment of Cuban revolutionaries, who had launched a fight for independence against the Spanish colonial regime in 1895. In an attempt to isolate the guerrillas, the Spanish general Valeriano Weyler herded Cubans into crowded and unsanitary concentration camps, where thousands died of hunger, disease,

and exposure. Starvation soon spread to the cities. By 1898, fully a quarter of the island’s population had perished in the Cuban revolution.

As the Cuban rebellion dragged on, pressure for American intervention mounted. American newspapers fueled public outrage at Spain. A fierce circulation war raged in New York City between William Randolph Hearst’s Journal and Joseph Pulitzer’s World. Their competition provoked what came to be called yellow journalism, named for the colored ink used in a popular comic strip. The Cuban war provided a wealth of dramatic copy. Newspapers fed the American people a daily diet of “Butcher” Weyler and Spanish atrocities. Hearst sent artist Frederic Remington to document the horror, and when Remington wired home, “There is no trouble here. There will be no war,” Hearst shot back, “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.”

American interests in Cuba were, in the words of the U.S. minister to Spain, more than “merely theoretical or sentimental.” American business had more than $50 million invested in Cuban sugar, and American trade with Cuba, a brisk $100 million a year before the rebellion, had dropped to near zero. Nevertheless, the business community balked, wary of a war with Spain. When industrialist Mark Hanna, the Republican kingmaker and senator from Ohio, urged restraint, a hotheaded Theodore Roosevelt exploded, “We will have this war for the freedom of Cuba, Senator Hanna, in spite of the timidity of commercial interests.”

To expansionists like Roosevelt, more than Cuban independence was at stake. As assistant secretary of the navy, Roosevelt took the helm while his

boss was on summer vacation, and in the summer of 1897, he audaciously ordered the U.S. fleet to be ready to steam to Manila. In the event of conflict with Spain, Roosevelt put the navy in a position to capture the islands and gain a stepping-stone to China.

President McKinley moved slowly toward intervention. In a show of American force, he dispatched the battleship Maine to Cuba. On the night of February 15, 1898, a mysterious explosion destroyed the Maine, killing 267 crew members. The source of the explosion remained unclear, but inflammatory stories in the press enraged Americans. Rallying to the cry “Remember the Maine,” Congress declared war on Spain. In a surge of patriotism, more than a million men rushed to enlist. War brought with it a unity of purpose and national harmony that ended a decade of political dissent and strife. “In April, everywhere over this good fair land, flags were flying,” wrote Kansas editor William Allen White. “At the stations, crowds gathered to hurrah for the soldiers, and to throw hats into the air, and to unfurl flags.”

Five days after McKinley signed the war resolution, a U.S. Navy squadron destroyed the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay (Map 20.3). The stunning victory caught most Americans by surprise. Few had ever heard of the Philippines. Even McKinley confessed that he could not locate the archipelago on the map. Nevertheless he dispatched U.S. troops to secure the islands.

MAP 20.3 The Spanish-American War, 1898

The Spanish-American War was fought in two theaters, the Philippine Islands and Cuba. Five days after President William McKinley called for a declaration of war, Admiral George Dewey captured Manila. The war lasted only eight months. Troops landed in Cuba in mid-June and by mid-July the American navy had destroyed the Spanish fleet.

Description “The two maps focus on the Philippine Islands and Cuba.

U.S. forces: In the Philippine arena, led by Dewey, the U. S. forces sailed from Hong Kong in China to the western coast of the Philippine Islands (south of Luzon). From here, making a semi-circular sail on the western side, the army reached Manila. In the Cuban arena, the U. S. army sailed from Tampa in the U. S. to Santiago in Cuba, following two routes that encircled the island from both sides.

Spanish forces: In the Cuban arena, the Spanish forces reached Santiago after sailing northward via the Caribbean Sea.

U. S. victory: Manila (Manila surrendered August 13, 1898 while the Spanish fleet was destroyed on May 1, 1898); San Juan Hill (July 1, 1898); Kettle Hill (July 1, 1898); El Caney (July 1, 1898). The U. S. army destroyed the Spanish fleet (on the southwest of Santiago) on July 3, 1898.

U. S. naval blockade: To the southwest coast of Santiago (on the Caribbean Sea).

Spanish possessions: the Philippine islands, Cuba, and Puerto Rico.”

The war in Cuba ended almost as quickly as it began. The first troops landed on June 22, and after a handful of battles, the Spanish forces surrendered on July 17. The war lasted just long enough to elevate Theodore Roosevelt to the status of bona fide war hero. Roosevelt had resigned his navy post and formed the Rough Riders, a regiment composed of a sprinkling of Ivy League polo players and a number of western cowboys Roosevelt befriended during his stint as a cattle rancher in the Dakotas. The Rough Riders’ charge up Kettle Hill and Roosevelt’s role in the decisive battle of San Juan Hill made front-page news. Overnight, Roosevelt became the most famous man in America. By the time he sailed home from Cuba, a coalition of independent Republicans was already plotting his political future.

The Debate over American Imperialism After a few brief campaigns in Cuba and Puerto Rico brought the Spanish- American War to an end, the American people woke up in possession of an empire that stretched halfway around the globe. As part of the spoils of war,

the United States acquired Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. And Republicans quickly moved to annex Hawai’i in July 1898.

Contemptuous of the Cubans, whom General William Shafter declared “no more fit for self-government than gun-powder is for hell,” the U.S. government imposed a Cuban constitution and refused to give up military control of the island until the Cubans accepted the so-called Platt Amendment — a series of provisions that granted the United States the right to intervene to protect Cuba’s “independence,” as well as the power to oversee Cuban debt so that European creditors would not find an excuse for intervention. For good measure, the United States gave itself a ninety-nine- year lease on a naval base at Guantánamo. In return, McKinley promised to implement an extensive sanitation program to clean up the island, making it more attractive to American investors.

In the formal Treaty of Paris (1898), Spain ceded the Philippines to the United States along with the former Spanish colonies of Puerto Rico and Guam (Map 20.4). Empire did not come cheap. When Spain initially balked at these terms, the United States agreed to pay an indemnity of $20 million for the islands. Nor was the cost measured in money alone. Filipino revolutionaries under Emilio Aguinaldo, who had greeted U.S. troops as liberators, bitterly fought the new masters. It would take seven years and 4,000 American dead — almost ten times the number killed in Cuba — not to mention an estimated 20,000 Filipino casualties, to defeat Aguinaldo and secure American control of the Philippines.

MAP 20.4 U.S. Overseas Expansion through 1900

The United States extended its interests abroad with a series of territorial acquisitions. Although Cuba was granted independence, the Platt Amendment kept the new nation firmly under U.S. control. In the wake of the Spanish-American War, the United States woke up to find that it held an empire extending halfway around the globe.

Description “The areas marked on the map are as follows:

Acquired by purchase: Alaska 1867.

Acquired by war, occupation, or unilateral decision: Aleutian Islands 1867, Midway Island 1867, Hawaiian Islands 1898, Wake Island 1899, Palmyra Island 1898, Johnston Island 1858, Jarvis Island 1857, Baker Island 1857, Philippine Islands 1898, Guam 1898, Howland Island 1857, American Samoa 1899, Kingman Reef 1858, and Puerto Rico 1898.”

At home, a vocal minority, mostly Democrats and former Populists, resisted the country’s foray into overseas empire, judging it unwise, immoral, and unconstitutional. William Jennings Bryan, who enlisted in the army but never saw action, concluded that American expansionism only distracted the nation from problems at home. Pointing to the central paradox of the war, Representative Bourke Cockran of New York admonished, “We who have been the destroyers of oppression are asked now to become its agents.” But the expansionists won the day.

As Senator Knute Nelson of Minnesota assured his colleagues, “We come as ministering angels, not as despots.” Fresh from its conquest of Native Americans in the West, the nation largely embraced the heady mixture of racism and missionary zeal that fueled American adventurism abroad. The Washington Post trumpeted, “The taste of empire is in the mouth of the people,” thrilled at the prospect of “an imperial policy, the Republic renascent, taking her place with the armed nations.”

��

How did Americans respond to U.S. overseas expansion?

Conclusion: What was the connection between domestic strife and foreign policy? A decade of domestic strife ended amid the blare of martial music and the waving of flags. The Spanish-American War drowned out the calls for social reform that had fueled the Populist politics of the 1890s. During that decade, angry farmers facing hard times looked to Farmers’ Alliances to fight for their vision of economic democracy, workers staged bloody battles across the country to assert their rights, and women like Frances Willard preached temperance and suffrage. Together they formed a new People’s Party to fight for change.

The bitter depression that began in 1893 led to increased labor strife. The Pullman boycott brutally dramatized the power of property and the conservatism of the state. But workers’ willingness to confront capitalism on the streets of Chicago, Homestead, Cripple Creek, and a host of other sites across America eloquently testified to labor’s growing determination, unity, and strength.

As the depression deepened, the sight of Coxey’s army of unemployed marching on Washington to demand federal intervention in the economy signaled a growing shift in the public mind against the politics of laissez- faire. The call for the government to take action to better the lives of workers, farmers, and the dispossessed manifested itself in the fiercely fought presidential campaign of William Jennings Bryan in 1896. With the

outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898, the decade ended on a harmonious note with patriotic Americans rallying around the flag. But even though Americans basked in patriotism and contemplated empire, old grievances had not been laid to rest. The People’s Party had been beaten, but the Populist spirit lived on in the demands for greater government involvement in the economy, expanded opportunities for direct democracy, and a more equitable balance of profits and power between the people and the big corporations. A new generation of progressive reformers would champion the unfinished reform agenda in the first decades of the twentieth century.

Chapter Review

��

Farmers’ Alliance People’s Party (Populist Party) Homestead lockout Cripple Creek miners’ strike of 1894 Pullman boycott National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) Coxey’s army Boxer uprising Monroe Doctrine Open Door policy Spanish-American War yellow journalism

�� Economics

What key issues fueled farm protest in the late nineteenth century? How did the Farmers’ Alliance attempt to address these issues?

What strategies and tactics did unions employ in the late nineteenth century? How did companies fight back?

Politics

How did reform movements provide a vehicle for women’s involvement in public political life?

How did the depression of the mid-1890s shape the politics of the decade?

Empire

How did U.S. foreign policy reflect the tension between American tendencies toward isolationism and expansionism?

How did the Spanish-American War change the place of the United States in global politics?

�� , ��

What were the United States’ most important strengths and weaknesses in 1900? How had the nation’s place in the world changed since 1800?

Defend or refute the following statement: “With its victory in the Spanish-American War in 1898, the United States became an imperial power.”

��

1876 First Farmers’ Alliance forms in Lampasas County, Texas.

1879 Frances Willard becomes president of Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.

1884 Frances Willard calls for home protection ballot.

1890 National American Woman Suffrage Association formed. Wyoming only state allowing women to vote in national elections.

1892 Farmers’ Alliance forms People’s Party and launches Populist movement. Homestead lockout ends in violence. People’s Party meets in St. Louis.

1893 Stock market crash touches off economic depression. President Grover Cleveland nixes attempt to annex Hawai’i.

1894 Miners strike in Cripple Creek, Colorado. Pullman boycott crushed. Coxey’s army marches to Washington, D.C.

1895 Cleveland enforces Monroe Doctrine in border dispute between British Guiana and Venezuela.

1896 Democrats and Populists support William Jennings Bryan for president. William McKinley elected president.

1898 USS Maine explodes in Havana harbor. Congress declares war on Spain. Admiral George Dewey destroys Spanish fleet in Manila Bay. U.S. troops defeat Spanish forces in Cuba. Treaty of Paris ends war with Spain. United States annexes Hawai’i.

1899–1900 Secretary of State John Hay enunciates Open Door policy. Boxer uprising takes place in China.

1901 Boxer Protocol on Chinese government imposed.

�� 21 �� 1890–1916

�� This chapter will explore the following questions:

How did grassroots progressives attack the problems of urban industrial America? What were the key tenets of progressive theory? How did Theodore Roosevelt advance the progressive agenda? How did progressivism evolve during Woodrow Wilson’s first term? What were the limits of progressive reform? Conclusion: How did the Progressive Era give rise to the liberal state?

�� IN THE SUMMER OF 1889, JANE ADDAMS LEASED TWO FLOORS OF A dilapidated mansion on Chicago’s West Side. Her immigrant neighbors must have wondered why this well-dressed young woman chose to live on South Halsted Street between a saloon and a funeral parlor. Yet the house, built by Charles Hull, precisely suited Addams’s needs.

For Addams, personal action marked the first step in a search for solutions to the social problems created by urban industrialism. She wanted to help her immigrant neighbors, and she wanted to offer meaningful work to educated women like herself. Addams’s emphasis on the reciprocal relationship between the social classes made Hull House different from other philanthropic enterprises. She wished to do things with, not just for, Chicago’s poor.

In the next decade, Hull House expanded from two rented floors in the old brick mansion to some thirteen buildings housing a remarkable variety of activities. Addams provided public baths, opened a restaurant for working women too tired to cook after their long shifts, and sponsored a nursery and kindergarten. Hull House offered classes, lectures, art exhibits, musical instruction, and college extension courses. It boasted a gymnasium, a theater, a manual training workshop, a labor museum, and the first public playground in Chicago.

From the first, Hull House attracted an extraordinary set of reformers who pioneered the scientific investigation of urban ills. Armed with statistics, they launched campaigns to improve housing, end child labor, fund playgrounds, and lobby for laws to protect workers.

Addams quickly learned that it was impossible to deal with urban problems without becoming involved in politics. Piles of decaying garbage overflowed South Halsted Street’s wooden trash bins, breeding flies and disease. To fix the problem, Addams got the local ward boss to appoint her garbage inspector. Out on the streets at six in the morning, she rode atop the garbage wagon to make sure it picked up the trash. In her desire to aid the urban poor, Addams took on city hall and eventually carried her fight to the state capitol and to Washington, D.C. The transition from personal action to political activism that she personified became one of the hallmarks of the progressive period, which lasted from the 1890s to World War I.

A sense of Christian mission inspired some reformers. Others feared social upheaval and wanted to improve conditions for the urban poor. A belief in science and technical expertise infused the movement. But whatever their motives, progressives shared a willingness to use the power of the government to counterbalance special interests and big business. Their activism redefined liberalism in the twentieth century. That progressives shared the racism and prejudices of their time speaks clearly in their attempts to restrict the rights of African Americans, Asians, and other immigrants in the name of reform.

Although progressives in the cities had rarely voted Populist in the 1890s, the People’s Party platform with the exception of its free silver plank became the template for future reform, and populism’s agrarian base continued to pursue reform into the 1920s. Taken together, uplift and efficiency, social justice and social control, direct democracy and discrimination, urban professionals and agrarian rebels all played a part in the progressive movement. Theodore Roosevelt became the movement’s standard bearer, and Woodrow Wilson presided over the high tide of progressive legislation.

How did grassroots progressives attack the problems of urban industrial America? Much of progressive reform began at the grassroots level and percolated upward into local, state, and eventually national politics as reformers attacked the social problems fostered by urban industrialism. Although progressivism flourished in many different settings across the country, urban problems inspired the progressives’ greatest efforts. In their zeal to “civilize the city,” reformers founded settlement houses, professed a new Christian social gospel, and campaigned against vice and crime in the name of “social purity.” Allying with the working class, women progressives sought to better the lot of sweatshop garment workers and to end child labor. These local reform efforts often ended up being debated in state legislatures and in the U.S. Congress.

Civilizing the City Progressives attacked the problems of the city on many fronts. Settlement houses, which began in England, spread in the United States. By 1893, the needs of poor urban neighborhoods that had motivated reformer Jane Addams to open Hull House in Chicago in 1889 led Lillian Wald to recruit several other nurses to move to New York City’s Lower East Side “to live in the neighborhood as nurses, identify ourselves with it socially, and … contribute to it our citizenship.” Wald’s Henry Street settlement pioneered public health nursing.

Women, particularly college-educated women like Addams and Wald, formed the backbone of the settlement house movement. Settlement houses gave college-educated women eager to use their knowledge a place to put their skills to work in the service of society and to champion progressive reform. Such reformers believed that only by living among the poor could they help bridge the growing class divide. Settlements like Hull House grew in number from six in 1891 to more than four hundred in 1911. In the process, settlement house women created a new profession — social work.

For their part, churches confronted urban social problems by enunciating a new social gospel, one that saw its mission as not simply to save individuals but to reform society. The social gospel offered a powerful corrective to social Darwinism and Andrew Carnegie’s gospel of wealth, which fostered the belief that riches somehow signaled divine favor. The social gospel produced a stream of popular books. Willliam Stead asked what might happen If Christ Came to Chicago (1893), and Charles M. Sheldon’s In His Steps (1898) called on men and women to Christianize capitalism by asking, “What would Jesus do?”

Ministers also played an active role in the social purity movement, the campaign to attack vice. To end the “social evil,” as reformers delicately referred to prostitution, social purity brought together ministers who wished to stamp out sin, doctors concerned about the spread of venereal disease, and women reformers. Together, they waged a campaign to close red-light districts in cities across the country and lobbied to raise the age of consent for girls.

Attacks on alcohol went hand in hand with the push for social purity. The Anti-Saloon League, formed in 1895 under the leadership of Protestant clergy, added to the efforts of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in campaigning to end the sale of liquor. Reformers pointed to links between drinking, prostitution, wife and child abuse, unemployment, and industrial accidents. The powerful liquor lobby fought back, spending liberally in election campaigns, fueling the charge that liquor corrupted the political process.

An element of nativism (dislike of foreigners) ran through the movement for prohibition, as it did in a number of progressive reforms. The Irish, the Italians, and the Germans were among the groups stigmatized by temperance reformers for their drinking. Progressives often failed to see that the tavern played an important role in many ethnic communities. Unlike the American saloon, an almost exclusively male space, the German beer garden was a family retreat, where workers socialized on Sunday after church. Nevertheless, progressives campaigned to enforce the Sunday closing of taverns, stores, and other commercial establishments and pushed for state legislation to outlaw the sale of liquor. By 1912, seven states were “dry.”

Progressives’ efforts to civilize the city demonstrated their willingness to take action; their belief that environment, not heredity alone, determined human behavior; and their optimism that conditions could be corrected through government action without radically altering America’s economy or institutions. All of these attitudes characterized the progressive movement.

Progressives and the Working Class Day-to-day contact with their neighbors made settlement house workers particularly sympathetic to labor. When Mary Kenney O’Sullivan complained that her bookbinders’ union met in a dirty, noisy saloon, Jane Addams invited them to meet at Hull House. And during the Pullman strike in 1894, Hull House residents organized strike relief. “Hull-House has been so unionized,” grumbled one Chicago businessman, “that it has lost its usefulness and become a detriment and harm to the community.” But to the working class, the support of middle-class reformers marked a significant gain.

Attempts to forge a cross-class alliance became institutionalized in 1903 with the creation of the Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL). The WTUL brought together women workers and middle-class “allies.” Its goal was to organize working women into unions under the auspices of the American Federation of Labor (AFL). However, the AFL provided little more than lip service to women workers. Given the union’s attitude, it was not surprising that the money and leadership to organize women came largely from the wealthy allies in the WTUL. Although the alliance between working women, primarily immigrants and daughters of immigrants, and their middle-class allies was not without tension, the WTUL helped working women achieve significant gains.

The WTUL’s most notable success came in 1909 in the “uprising of the twenty thousand,” when hundreds of women employees of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in New York City went on strike to protest low wages,

dangerous working conditions, and management’s refusal to recognize their union, the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union. In support, an estimated twenty thousand garment workers, most of them teenaged girls and many of them Jewish and Italian immigrants, stayed out on strike through the winter, picketing in the bitter cold. Police and hired thugs harassed the picketing strikers, beating them up and arresting more than six hundred of them for “street walking” (prostitution). When WTUL allies, including J. P. Morgan’s daughter Anne, joined the picket line, the harassment quickly stopped.

By the time the strike ended in February 1910, the workers had won important demands in many shops. The solidarity shown by the women workers proved to be the strike’s greatest achievement. As Clara Lemlich, one of the strike’s leaders, exclaimed, “They used to say that you couldn’t even organize women. They wouldn’t come to union meetings. They were ‘temporary’ workers. Well we showed them!”

Garment Workers on Strike These two young women, both probably immigrants, walked the picket line during the successful “uprising of the twenty thousand” garment workers in 1909. The women’s hats and dresses display their needlework skills and their respectability. The glowering men in the background suggest the conventional middle-class opposition to the working women’s strike.

The WTUL made enormous contributions to the strike. The league provided volunteers for the picket lines, posted more than $29,000 in bail, protested and publicized police brutality, organized a parade of 10,000 strikers, took part in the arbitration conference, arranged mass meetings, appealed for funds, and generated publicity for the strike. Under the leadership of the

WTUL women from every class of society, from Madison Avenue socialites to socialists on New York’s Lower East Side, found common cause in supporting the striking garment workers.

But for all its success, the uprising of the twenty thousand failed fundamentally to change conditions for women workers, as the tragic Triangle fire dramatized in 1911. A little over a year after the shirtwaist makers’ strike ended, fire alarms sounded at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory. The ramshackle building, full of lint and combustible cloth, burned to rubble in half an hour. A WTUL member described the scene on the street: “Two young girls whom I knew to be working in the vicinity came rushing toward me, tears were running from their eyes and they were white and shaking as they caught me by the arm. ‘Oh,’ shrieked one of them, ‘they are jumping. Jumping from ten stories up! They are going through the air like bundles of clothes.’ ”

The terrified Triangle workers had little choice but to jump. Flames blocked one exit, and the other door had been locked to prevent workers from pilfering. The flimsy, rusted fire escape collapsed under the weight of fleeing workers, killing dozens. The lucky ones made it out on the elevator or by climbing to the roof where they escaped to a neighboring building. For the rest, the building became a deathtrap. Fifty-four workers jumped from the ninth-floor windows only to crash to their deaths on the sidewalks. Of 500 workers, 146 died and scores of others were injured. The owners of the Triangle, who had managed to escape the fire, went to trial for negligence, but they avoided conviction when authorities determined that a

careless smoker had started the blaze. The Triangle Shirtwaist Company reopened in another firetrap within a matter of weeks.

Outrage and a sense of futility overwhelmed Rose Schneiderman, a leading WTUL organizer, who made a bitter speech at the memorial service for the dead Triangle workers. “I would be a traitor to those poor burned bodies if I came here to talk good fellowship,” she told her audience. “We have tried you good people of the public and we have found you wanting…. I know from my experience it is up to the working people to save themselves … by a strong working class movement.” The Triangle fire severely tested the bonds of the cross-class alliance. Schneiderman and other WTUL leaders determined that organizing and striking were no longer enough. Increasingly, the WTUL turned its efforts to lobbying for protective legislation — laws that would limit hours and regulate women’s working conditions.

The National Consumers League (NCL) also fostered cross-class alliance and advocated for protective legislation. When Hull House’s Florence Kelley took over the leadership of the NCL in 1899, she urged middle-class women to boycott stores and exert pressure for decent wages and working conditions for women employees. Frustrated by the reluctance of the private sector to reform, the NCL promoted protective legislation to better working conditions for women.

Advocates of protective legislation had won a major victory in 1908 when the U.S. Supreme Court, in Muller v. Oregon, reversed its previous rulings and upheld an Oregon law that limited the number of hours women could

work in a day to ten. A mass of sociological evidence put together by Florence Kelley of the NCL and Josephine Goldmark of the WTUL convinced the Court that long hours endangered women and therefore the entire human race. The Court’s ruling set a precedent, but one that separated the well-being of women workers from that of men by arguing that women’s reproductive role justified special treatment. Later generations of women fighting for equality would question the effectiveness of this strategy and argue that it ultimately closed good jobs to women. The WTUL, however, greeted protective legislation as a first step in the attempt to ensure the safety of all workers.

Reform also fueled the fight for woman suffrage. For women like Jane Addams, involvement in social reform led inevitably to support for woman suffrage. These new suffragists emphasized the reforms that could be accomplished if women had the vote. Addams insisted that in an urban, industrial society, a good housekeeper could not be sure the food she fed her family, or the water and milk they drank, were pure unless she could vote. She needed the ballot as well as the broom to keep her home clean.

��

What types of people were drawn to the progressive movement, and why?

What were the key tenets of progressive theory? Progressivism emphasized action and experimentation. Dismissing the view that humans should leave progress to the dictates of natural selection, a new group of reform Darwinists argued that evolution could be advanced more rapidly if men and women used their intellects to improve society. In their zeal for action, progressives often showed an unchecked admiration for speed and efficiency that promoted scientific management, a new cult to improve productivity. These varied strands of progressive theory found practical application in state and local politics, where reformers challenged traditional laissez-faire government.

Reform Darwinism and Social Engineering The active, interventionist approach of the progressives directly challenged social Darwinism, with its insistence on survival of the fittest. A new group of sociologists argued that progress could be advanced more rapidly if people used their intellects to alter their environment. The best statement of this reform Darwinism came from sociologist Lester Frank Ward in his book Dynamic Sociology (1883). Ward insisted the “blind natural forces in society must give way to human foresight.” This theory condemned the laissez-faire approach, insisting that the liberal state should play a more active role in solving social problems.

Efficiency and expertise became progressives’ watchwords. In Drift and Mastery (1914), journalist and critic Walter Lippmann called for skilled “technocrats” to use scientific techniques to control social change. Unlike the Populists, who advocated a greater voice for the masses, progressives, for all their interest in social justice, insisted that experts be put in charge. At its extreme, the application of expertise and social engineering took the form of scientific management.

Progressive Government: City and State Progressivism burst forth at every level of government in 1900, but nowhere more forcefully than in Cleveland with the election of Democrat Thomas Loftin Johnson as mayor. A self-made millionaire by age forty, Johnson moved to Cleveland in 1899, where he began his career in politics. During his mayoral campaign, he pledged to reduce the streetcar fare from five cents to three cents. His election touched off a seven-year war between Johnson and the streetcar magnates. To get his three-cent fare, Johnson had Cleveland buy the streetcar system, a tactic of municipal ownership progressives called “gas and water socialism.” Under Johnson’s administration, Cleveland became, in the words of journalist Lincoln Steffens, the “best governed city in America.”

In Wisconsin, Republican Robert M. La Follette converted to the progressive cause early in the 1900s. La Follette capitalized on the grassroots movement for reform to launch his long political career as governor (1901–1905) and U.S. senator (1906–1925). La Follette brought

scientists and professors into his administration and used the university, just down the street from the statehouse in Madison, as a resource. As governor, La Follette lowered railroad rates, raised railroad taxes, improved education, preached conservation, established factory regulation and workers’ compensation, instituted the first direct primary in the country, and inaugurated the first state income tax. Under his leadership, Wisconsin earned the title “laboratory of democracy.”

West of the Rockies, progressivism arrived somewhat later and found a champion in Republican Hiram Johnson, who served as governor of California from 1911 to 1917 and later as U.S. senator. The Southern Pacific Railroad had dominated California politics since the 1870s. As governor, Johnson promised to “kick the Southern Pacific out of politics” and “return the government to the people,” winning support from progressive voters. During Johnson’s governorship, California adopted the direct primary; supported initiative, referendum, and recall; strengthened the state’s railroad commission; and enacted an employer’s liability law.

��

How did progressives justify their demand for more activist government?

How did Theodore Roosevelt advance the progressive agenda? On September 6, 1901, anarchist Leon Czolgosz shot President William McKinley while McKinley was attending the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. Eight days later, McKinley died. When news of the assassination reached Republican boss Mark Hanna, he is said to have growled, “Now that damned cowboy is president.” He was speaking of Vice President Theodore Roosevelt, the colorful hero of San Juan Hill, who had indeed punched cattle in the Dakotas in the 1880s.

Roosevelt immediately reassured the shocked nation that he intended “to continue absolutely unbroken” the policies of McKinley. But Roosevelt was as different from McKinley as the nineteenth century from the twentieth. An activist and a moralist, imbued with the progressive spirit, Roosevelt would turn the Executive Mansion, which he dubbed the White House, into a “bully pulpit.” As president, he achieved major reforms, advocated conservation and antitrust lawsuits, and championed the nation’s emergence as a world power. In the process, Roosevelt would work to shift the nation’s center of power from Wall Street to Washington.

After serving nearly two terms as president, Roosevelt left office at the height of his powers. Any man would have found it difficult to follow in his footsteps, but his handpicked successor, William Howard Taft, proved poorly suited to the task. Taft’s presidency was marked by vigorous trust- busting, but it ended with a progressive stalemate and a bitter break with Roosevelt that split the Republican Party.

The Square Deal At age forty-two, Theodore Roosevelt became the youngest man ever to move into the White House. A patrician by birth and an activist by temperament, Roosevelt brought to the job enormous talent and energy. Early in his career, he had determined that the path to power did not lie in the good government leagues formed by his well-bred New York friends. “If it is the muckers that govern,” he wrote, “then I want to see if I cannot hold my own with them.” He served his political apprenticeship under a Republican ward boss in a grubby meeting hall above a saloon on Morton Street. Roosevelt’s rise in politics was swift and sure.

He went from the New York assembly at the age of twenty-three to the presidency with time out as a cowboy in the Dakotas, police commissioner of New York City, assistant secretary of the navy, and colonel of the Rough Riders. Elected governor of New York in 1898, he alienated the Republican boss, who finagled to get him “kicked upstairs” as a candidate for the vice presidency in 1900. The party bosses reasoned Roosevelt could do little harm as vice president. But one bullet proved the error of their logic.

Once president, Roosevelt would harness his explosive energy to strengthen the power of the federal government, putting business on notice that it could no longer count on a weak federal government to give it free rein. In Roosevelt’s eyes, self-interested capitalists like John D. Rockefeller, whose Standard Oil trust monopolized the refinery business, constituted “the most dangerous members of the criminal class — the criminals of great wealth.”

The “absolutely vital question” facing the country, Roosevelt wrote to a friend in 1901, was “whether or not the government has the power to control the trusts.” The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 had been badly weakened by a conservative Supreme Court and by attorneys general more willing to use it against labor unions than against monopolies. To determine whether the law had any teeth left, Roosevelt, in one of his first acts as president, ordered his attorney general to begin a secret antitrust investigation of the Northern Securities Company, a behemoth that monopolized railroad traffic in the Northwest.

Just five months after Roosevelt took office, Wall Street rocked with the news that the government had filed an antitrust suit against Northern Securities. As one newspaper editor sarcastically observed, “Wall Street is paralyzed at the thought that a President of the United States would sink so low as to try to enforce the law.” Roosevelt’s thunderbolt put Wall Street on notice that the new president expected to be treated as an equal and was willing to use government as a weapon to curb business excesses. Roosevelt later recounted how J. P. Morgan had come to him to suggest that “if we have done something wrong, send your man to my man and they can fix it up.” Roosevelt responded, “That can’t be done. We don’t want to fix it up; we want to stop it.” The president chortled over the exchange, noting “Mr. Morgan could not help regarding me as a big rival operator.” And indeed he was. Perhaps sensing the new mood, the Supreme Court, in a significant turnaround, upheld the Sherman Act and called for the dissolution of Northern Securities in 1904.

“Hurrah for Teddy the Trustbuster,” cheered the papers. Roosevelt went on to use the Sherman Act against forty-three trusts, including such giants as American Tobacco, Du Pont, and Standard Oil. Always the moralist, he insisted on a “rule of reason.” He would punish “bad” trusts (those that broke the law) and leave “good” ones alone. In practice, he preferred regulation to antitrust suits. In 1903, he pressured Congress to pass the Elkins Act, outlawing railroad rebates. He created the new cabinet-level Department of Commerce and Labor with the subsidiary Bureau of Corporations to act as a corporate watchdog.

In his handling of the anthracite coal strike in 1902, Roosevelt again demonstrated his willingness to assert the authority of the presidency, this time to mediate between labor and management. In May, 147,000 coal miners in Pennsylvania went out on strike. The United Mine Workers (UMW) demanded a reduction in the workday from twelve to ten hours, an equitable system of weighing each miner’s output, and a 10 percent wage increase, along with recognition of the union. When asked about the appalling conditions in the mines that led to the strike, George Baer, the mine operators’ spokesman, scoffed, “The miners don’t suffer, why they can’t even speak English.”

The strike dragged on through the summer and into the fall. Hoarding and profiteering more than doubled the price of coal. As winter approached, coal shortages touched off near riots in the nation’s big cities. At this juncture, Roosevelt stepped in. Instead of sending in troops, he determined to mediate. His unprecedented intervention served notice that government counted itself an independent force in business and labor disputes. At the

same time, it gave unionism a boost by granting the UMW a place at the table.

At the meeting, Baer and the mine owners refused to talk with the union representative — a move that angered the attorney general and insulted the president. Beside himself with rage over the “woodenheaded obstinacy and stupidity” of management, Roosevelt threatened to seize the mines and run them with federal troops. This quickly brought management to the table. In the end, the miners won a reduction in hours and a wage increase, but the owners succeeded in preventing formal recognition of the UMW.

Taken together, Roosevelt’s actions in the Northern Securities case and the anthracite coal strike marked a dramatic departure from the use of federal troops to put down strikes that had characterized the Gilded Age. Roosevelt’s actions demonstrated conclusively that government intended to act as a countervailing force to the power of the big corporations. Pleased with his role in the anthracite strike, Roosevelt announced that all he had tried to do was give labor and capital a “square deal.”

The phrase “Square Deal” became Roosevelt’s campaign slogan in the 1904 election. Roosevelt easily defeated the Democrats, who abandoned William Jennings Bryan to support Judge Alton B. Parker, a “safe” choice they hoped would lure business votes away from Roosevelt. In the months before the election, the president prudently toned down his criticism of big business. Roosevelt swept into office with the largest popular majority — 57.9 percent — any candidate had polled up to that time.

Roosevelt the Reformer “Tomorrow I shall come into my office in my own right,” Roosevelt is said to have remarked on the eve of his election. “Then watch out for me!” Roosevelt’s stunning victory gave him a mandate for reform. He would need all the popularity and political savvy he could muster, however, to guide his reform measures through Congress. The Senate remained controlled by a staunchly conservative Republican “Old Guard,” with many senators on the payrolls of the corporations Roosevelt sought to curb. As the New York Times suggested, “a millionaire could buy a Senate seat, just as he would buy an opera box, a yacht, or any other luxury.”

Roosevelt’s pet project remained railroad regulation. The Elkins Act prohibiting rebates had not worked. Roosevelt determined that the only solution lay in giving the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) real power to set rates and prevent discriminatory practices. But the right to determine the price of goods or services was an age-old prerogative of private enterprise, and one that business had no intention of yielding to government.

The Hepburn Act of 1906 marked the crowning legislative achievement of Roosevelt’s presidency. It gave the ICC the power to set rates subject to court review. Committed progressives like La Follette judged the law a defeat for reform. Die-hard conservatives branded it a “piece of populism.” Both sides exaggerated. The law left the courts too much power and failed to provide adequate means for the ICC to determine rates, but its passage proved a landmark in federal control of private industry. For the first time, a

government commission had the power to investigate private business records and to set rates.

Always an apt reader of the public temper, Roosevelt witnessed a growing appetite for reform. Revelations of corporate and political wrongdoing as well as social injustice filled the papers and boosted the sales of popular magazines. Roosevelt counted many of the new investigative journalists among his friends. But he warned them against going too far, citing the allegorical character in Pilgrim’s Progress who was too busy raking muck to notice higher things. Roosevelt’s criticism gave the American vocabulary a new word, muckraker, which journalists soon appropriated as a title of honor.

Muckraking, as Roosevelt well knew, provided enormous help in securing progressive legislation. In the spring of 1906, publicity generated by the muckrakers about poisons in patent medicines goaded the Senate, with Roosevelt’s backing, into passing a pure food and drug bill. Opponents in the House of Representatives hoped to keep the legislation locked up in committee.

There it would have died, were it not for the publication of Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle (1906), with its sensational account of filthy conditions in meatpacking plants. Roosevelt, who read the book over breakfast, was sickened by descriptions of rat feces and rotten meat. He invited Sinclair to the White House to discuss the problem. But the two were soon at loggerheads: Sinclair wanted socialism; Roosevelt wanted food inspection. He got it, thanks to the publicity generated by The Jungle. Congress passed

the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act in 1906. As Sinclair ruefully observed, “I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.”

In the waning years of his administration, Roosevelt allied with the more progressive elements of the Republican Party. In speech after speech, he attacked “malefactors of great wealth.” Styling himself a “radical,” he claimed credit for leading the “ultra conservative” party of McKinley to a position of “progressive conservatism and conservative radicalism.”

When an economic panic developed in the fall of 1907, business interests quickly blamed the president. Once again, J. P. Morgan stepped in to avert disaster, this time switching funds from one bank to another to prop up weak institutions. For his services, Morgan dispatched his lieutenants to Washington, where they told Roosevelt that the sale of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company would aid the economy “but little benefit” U.S. Steel. Willing to take the word of a gentleman, Roosevelt tacitly agreed not to institute antitrust proceedings against U.S. Steel over the acquisition.

But as Roosevelt later learned, Morgan and his men had been less than candid. The acquisition of Tennessee Coal and Iron for a price below market value greatly strengthened U.S. Steel and undercut the economy of the Southeast. Roosevelt’s promise would give rise to the charge that he acted as a tool of the Morgan interests.

The charge of collusion between business and government underscored the extent to which corporate leaders like Morgan found federal regulation

preferable to unbridled competition or harsher state measures. During the Progressive Era, enlightened business leaders cooperated with government in the hope of avoiding antitrust prosecution. Convinced that regulation and not trust-busting offered the best way to deal with big business, Roosevelt never acknowledged that his regulatory policies fostered an alliance between business and government that today is called corporate liberalism.

Roosevelt and Conservation In the area of conservation, Roosevelt proved indisputably ahead of his time. When he took office, some 43 million acres of forestland remained as government reserves. He more than quadrupled that number to 194 million acres. To conserve natural resources, he fought western cattle barons, lumber kings, mining interests, and powerful leaders in Congress, including Speaker of the House Joseph Cannon, who vowed to spend “not one cent for scenery.”

As the first president to have lived and worked in the West, Roosevelt came to the White House convinced of the need for better management of the nation’s rivers and forests as well as the preservation of wildlife and wilderness. During his presidency, he placed the nation’s conservation policy in the hands of scientifically trained experts like his chief forester, Gifford Pinchot. Pinchot preached conservation — the efficient use of natural resources. Willing to permit grazing, lumbering, and the development of hydroelectric power, conservationists fought private interests only when they felt business acted irresponsibly or threatened to monopolize water and electric power.

Preservationists like John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, believed that the wilderness needed to be protected. Muir soon clashed with Roosevelt. After a devastating earthquake in 1906, San Francisco sought federal approval for a project that would supply fresh water and electric power to the city. The plan called for building a dam that would flood the spectacular Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park. Muir, who had played a central role in establishing the park, fiercely opposed the plan. After a protracted publicity battle, Roosevelt and the conservationists prevailed. To placate Muir, Roosevelt set aside a section of California’s redwood forest as “Muir Woods.”

In 1907, Congress attempted to put the brakes on Roosevelt’s conservation program by passing a law limiting his power to create forest reserves in six western states. In the days leading up to the law’s enactment, Roosevelt feverishly created twenty-one new reserves and enlarged eleven more, saving sixteen million acres from development. Once again, Roosevelt had outwitted his adversaries. “Opponents of the forest service turned handsprings in their wrath,” he wrote, “but the threats … were really only a tribute to the efficiency of our action.”

Worried that private utilities were gobbling up waterpower sites and creating a monopoly of hydroelectric power, he connived with Pinchot to withdraw 2,565 power sites from private use by designating them “ranger stations.” Firm in his commitment to wild America, Roosevelt proved willing to stretch the law when it served his ends. His legacy is more than 234 million acres of American wilderness saved for posterity (Map 21.1).

MAP 21.1 National Parks and Forests

The national park system in the West began with Yellowstone in 1872. Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Kings Canyon, and Sequoia followed in the 1890s. During his presidency, Theodore Roosevelt added six parks — Crater Lake, Wind Cave, Petrified Forest, Lassen Volcanic, Mesa Verde, and Zion.

Description “The map marks the following:

National parks with dates of initial protection:

North Cascades 1968, Olympic 1909, Mt. Rainier 1899, Glacier 1910, Coulee Dam 1946, Crater Lake 1902, Yellowstone 1872, Grand Teton 1929 in the North West.

Redwood 1968, Lassen Volcanic 1907, Yosemite 1890, Kings Canyon 1890, Sequoia 1890, Death Valley 1933, Channel Islands 1938, Great Basin 1922, Arches 1929, Canyonlands 1964, Capitol Reef 1937, Zion 1909, Bryce Canyon 1923, Canyon de Chelly 1931, Mesa Verde 1906, Alibates Flint Quarries 1965, Grand Canyon 1893, Petrified Forest 1906, Rocky Mountain 1915, Saguaro 1933 , White Sands 1933, Theodore Roosevelt 1947,

Wind Cave 1903, Badlands 1929, Dinosaur 1915, Voyageurs 1971, Isle Royale 1931, and Joshua Tree 1936 in the West.

Carlsbad Caverns 1923, Guadalupe Mountains 1966, Big Bend 1935, Amistad 1965, and Lake Meredith 1965 in the South.

Acadia 1916 in the Northeast. Shenandoah 1926, Hot Springs 1832, Mammoth Cave 1926, and Great Smoky Mountains 1926 in the East.

Biscayne 1968, Everglades 19 34, and Dry Tortugas 1935 in the Southeast.

A highlighted Alaskan region marking Katmai 1918, Lake Clark 19 78, Denali 1917, Kobuk Valley 1978, Gates of the Arctic 1978, Wrangel- St. Elias 1978, Kenai Fjords 19 78, and Glacier Bay 1925.

A highlighted Hawaiian territory marking Haleakala 1916 and Hawai’i Volcanoes 1916.

A highlighted Caribbean territory marking the Virgin Islands 1956.

National forests: North Washington, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, an extensive area within California’s center and eastern regions, sections within New Mexico and Arizona, large areas of Colorado, Northwest Wyoming Nebraska. Areas within Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, and East Texas on the East. Spotted areas throughout the Eastern coastal and additional Gulf states.”

The Big Stick Roosevelt’s activism extended to his foreign policy. A fierce proponent of America’s interests abroad, he relied on executive power to pursue a vigorous foreign policy, sometimes stretching the powers of the presidency beyond legal limits. In his relations with the European powers, he relied on military strength and diplomacy, a combination he aptly described with the aphorism, “Speak softly but carry a big stick.”

A strong supporter of the Monroe Doctrine, Roosevelt jealously guarded the U.S. sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere. His proprietary attitude toward the Caribbean became evident in the case of the Panama Canal. Roosevelt had long been a supporter of a canal linking the Caribbean and the Pacific. By enabling ships to move quickly from the Atlantic to the Pacific, a canal would effectively double the U.S. Navy’s power.

Having decided on a route across the Panamanian isthmus (a narrow strip of land connecting North and South America), Roosevelt in 1902 offered the Colombian government a one-time sum of $10 million and an annual rent of $250,000. When the government in Bogotá held out for more, Roosevelt became incensed at what he called the “homicidal corruptionists” in Colombia for trying to “blackmail” the United States.

At the prompting of a group of New York investors, the Panamanians staged an uprising in 1903, and with unseemly haste, the U.S. government recognized the new government within twenty-four hours. The Panamanians promptly accepted the $10 million, and the building got underway. The canal would take eleven years and $375 million to complete; it opened in 1914 (Map 21.2).

MAP 21.2 The Panama Canal, 1914

The Panama Canal, completed in 1914, bisects the isthmus in a series of massive locks and dams. As Theodore Roosevelt had planned, the canal greatly strengthened the U.S. Navy by allowing ships to move from the Atlantic to the Pacific in a matter of days.

Description “The map shows the Panama Canal which extends from Colon on the north to the Gulf of Panama on the south. The Panama Canal Zone (U. S.) is a small stretch surrounding the Panama Canal.

A map of America in the inset shows that the distance from San Francisco to New York, encircling the southern part of North America and crossing the Canal Zone is 5,200 miles.

The distance between these two cities, encircling the southern tip of South America is 13,000 miles.”

In the wake of the Panama affair, a confrontation with Germany over Venezuela, and yet another default on a European debt, this time in the Dominican Republic, Roosevelt grew concerned that financial instability in Latin America would lead European powers to interfere. In 1904, he announced the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, in which he declared the United States had a right to act as “an international police power” in the Western Hemisphere. Roosevelt stated the United States would not intervene in Latin America as long as nations there conducted their affairs with “decency,” but it would step in to stop “brutal wrongdoing.” The Roosevelt Corollary served notice to the European powers that the United States would police the hemisphere.

In Asia, Roosevelt inherited the Open Door policy initiated by Secretary of State John Hay in 1899, designed to ensure U.S. commercial entry into China. As European powers raced to secure Chinese trade and territory, Roosevelt was tempted to use force to gain economic or possibly territorial concessions. Realizing that Americans would not support an aggressive Asian policy, the president sensibly held back.

In his relations with Europe, Roosevelt sought to establish the United States as a rising force in world affairs. When tensions flared between France and Germany in Morocco in 1905, Roosevelt mediated at a conference in Algeciras, Spain, where he worked to maintain a balance of power that helped neutralize German ambitions. His skillful mediation gained him a

reputation as an astute player on the world stage and demonstrated the nation’s new presence in world affairs.

Roosevelt earned the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 for his role in negotiating an end to the Russo-Japanese War, which had broken out when the Japanese invaded Chinese Manchuria, threatening Russia’s sphere of influence in the area. Once again, Roosevelt sought to maintain a balance of power, in this case working to curb Japanese expansionism. Roosevelt admired the Japanese, judging them “the most dashing fighters in the world,” but he did not want Japan to become too strong in Asia.

When good relations with Japan were jeopardized by California’s blatant racism manifested in segregated public schools for Asians, Roosevelt smoothed over the incident and negotiated the “Gentlemen’s Agreement” in 1907, which allowed the Japanese to save face by voluntarily restricting immigration to the United States. To demonstrate America’s naval power and to counter Japan’s growing bellicosity, Roosevelt dispatched the Great White Fleet, sixteen of the navy’s most up-to-date battleships, on a “goodwill mission” around the world. U.S. relations with Japan improved, and in the 1908 Root-Takahira agreement the two nations pledged to maintain the Open Door and support the status quo in the Pacific. Roosevelt’s show of American force constituted a classic example of his dictum, “Speak softly but carry a big stick.”

The Troubled Presidency of William Howard Taft

Roosevelt promised on the eve of his election in 1904 that he would not seek another term. In 1909, at the age of fifty, he retired from the presidency and removed himself from the political scene by going on safari in Africa. Roosevelt turned the White House over to his handpicked successor, William Howard Taft, a lawyer who had served as governor- general of the Philippines. Affectionately known as “Big Bill,” Taft had served as Roosevelt’s right-hand man in the cabinet. In the presidential election of 1908, Taft soundly defeated the perennial Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan.

A genial man with a talent for law, Taft had no experience in elective office, no feel for politics, and no nerve for controversy. His ambitious wife coveted the office and urged him to seek it. He would have been better off listening to his mother, who warned, “Roosevelt is a good fighter and enjoys it, but the malice of politics would make you miserable.” Sadly for Taft, his wife suffered a stroke in his first months in office, leaving him grieving and without his strongest ally.

Once in office, Taft proved a perfect tool in the hands of Republicans who yearned for a return to the days of a less active executive. A lawyer by training and instinct, Taft believed that it was up to the courts, not the president, to arbitrate social issues. Roosevelt had carried presidential power to a new level, often flouting the separation of powers and showing thinly veiled contempt for Congress and the courts. He believed that the president had the legal right to act as steward of the people, and to do anything necessary “unless the Constitution or the laws explicitly forbid him to do it.” Taft found such presidential activism difficult to condone.

Although he pursued the trusts vigorously, he acted more as a judge than a steward. Wary of the progressive insurgents in Congress, Taft relied increasingly on conservatives in the Republican Party. As a progressive senator lamented, “Taft is a ponderous and amiable man completely surrounded by men who know exactly what they want.”

Taft’s troubles began on the eve of his inaugural, when he called a special session of Congress to deal with the tariff. Roosevelt had been too politically astute to tackle the troublesome tariff issue, even though he knew that rates needed to be lowered. Taft blundered into the fray, hoping to use public opinion to get a tariff reduction. But by the time Congress finished tinkering with the rate schedule, the Payne-Aldrich bill that emerged actually raised the tariff, benefiting big business and the trusts at the expense of consumers.

As if paralyzed, Taft neither fought for changes nor vetoed the measure. On a tour of the Midwest in 1909, he was greeted with jeers when he claimed, “I think the Payne bill is the best bill that the Republican Party ever passed.” In the eyes of a growing number of Americans, Taft’s praise of the tariff made him either a fool or a liar.

Taft’s legalism soon got him into hot water in the area of conservation. He undid Roosevelt’s work to preserve hydroelectric power sites when he learned that they had been improperly designated as ranger stations. And when Gifford Pinchot publicly denounced Taft’s secretary of the interior as a tool of western land-grabbers, Taft fired Pinchot, touching off a storm of controversy that damaged Taft and alienated Roosevelt. When Roosevelt

returned from Africa, Pinchot was among the first to greet him with a half dozen letters from progressives complaining about Taft’s leadership.

Roosevelt returned to the United States in June 1910, where he received a hero’s welcome and attracted a stream of visitors and reporters seeking his advice and opinions. Hurt, Taft kept his distance. By late summer, Roosevelt had taken sides with the progressive insurgents in his party. “Taft is utterly hopeless as a leader,” Roosevelt confided to his son as he set out on a speaking tour of the West. Reading the mood of the country, Roosevelt began to sound more and more like a candidate.

With the Republican Party divided, the Democrats swept the congressional elections of 1910. Branding the Payne-Aldrich tariff “the mother of trusts,” they captured a majority in the House of Representatives and won several key governorships. The revitalized Democratic Party could look to new leaders, among them the progressive governor of New Jersey, Woodrow Wilson.

The new Democratic majority in the House, working with progressive Republicans in the Senate, achieved a number of key reforms, including legislation to regulate railroad safety, to create the Children’s Bureau in the Department of Labor, and to establish an eight-hour day for federal workers and miners. Two significant constitutional amendments — the Sixteenth Amendment, which provided for a modest graduated income tax, and the Seventeenth Amendment, which called for the direct election of senators (formerly chosen by state legislatures) — went to the states, where they

would win ratification in 1913. While Congress rode the high tide of progressive reform, Taft sat on the sidelines.

In foreign policy, Taft continued Roosevelt’s policy of extending U.S. influence abroad, but here, too, Taft had a difficult time following Roosevelt. Taft’s “dollar diplomacy” championed commercial goals, rather than the strategic aims Roosevelt had pursued. Taft naively assumed he could substitute “dollars for bullets.” In the Caribbean, he provoked anti- American feeling by dispatching U.S. Marines to Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic in 1912 pursuant to the Roosevelt Corollary. In Asia, he openly avowed his intent to promote “active intervention to secure for … our capitalists opportunity for profitable investment.” Lacking Roosevelt’s understanding of power politics, Taft failed to recognize that an aggressive commercial policy could not exist without the willingness to use military might to back it up.

Taft faced the limits of dollar diplomacy when revolution broke out in Mexico in 1911. Under pressure to protect American investments, he mobilized troops along the border. In the end, however, with no popular support for a war with Mexico, he had to fall back on diplomatic pressure to salvage American interests.

Taft’s greatest dream was to encourage world peace through the use of a world court and arbitration. He unsuccessfully sponsored a series of arbitration treaties that Roosevelt, who prized national honor more than international law, vehemently opposed as weak and cowardly. By 1910, Roosevelt had become a vocal critic of Taft’s foreign policy.

The final breach between Taft and Roosevelt came in 1911, when Taft’s attorney general filed an antitrust suit against U.S. Steel. In its brief against the corporation, the government cited Roosevelt’s agreement with the Morgan interests in the 1907 acquisition of Tennessee Coal and Iron. The incident greatly embarrassed Roosevelt. Either he had been hoodwinked or he had colluded with Morgan. Neither idea pleased him. Thoroughly enraged, he lambasted Taft’s “archaic” antitrust policy and hinted that he might be persuaded to run for president again.

��

What advances in the progressive agenda were made at the federal level between 1901 and 1913?

How did progressivism evolve during Woodrow Wilson’s first term? Disillusionment with Taft resulted in a split in the Republican Party and the creation of a new Progressive Party that rallied to Theodore Roosevelt. In the election of 1912, four candidates styled themselves “progressives,” but it was Democrat Woodrow Wilson, with a minority of the popular vote, who won the presidency. He would continue Roosevelt’s presidential power and help enact progressive legislation.

Woodrow Wilson Woodrow Wilson, the Democrats’ presidential nominee in 1912, speaks to an outdoor campaign rally in New York City. Note the absence of a microphone. Wilson, a former professor of political science and president of Princeton University and recently elected governor of New Jersey, gave carefully phrased, logical, and clear speeches in a somewhat professorial style that contrasted with the charisma of the Bull Moose candidate, Theodore Roosevelt.

Progressive Insurgency and the Election of 1912 Convinced that Taft was inept, in February 1912 Roosevelt declared his candidacy for the Republican nomination, announcing, “My hat is in the ring.” Taft, with uncharacteristic strength, refused to step aside. As he bitterly told a journalist, “Even a rat in a corner will fight.” Roosevelt took advantage of newly passed primary election laws and ran in thirteen states, winning 278 delegates to Taft’s 48. But at the Chicago convention, Taft’s bosses refused to seat the Roosevelt delegates. Fistfights broke out on the convention floor as Taft steamrolled the convention to win nomination on the first ballot. Crying robbery, Roosevelt’s supporters bolted the party.

Seven weeks later, in the same Chicago auditorium, the hastily organized Progressive Party met to nominate Roosevelt. Full of reforming zeal, the delegates chose Roosevelt and Hiram Johnson to head the new party. Jane Addams seconded Roosevelt’s nomination. “I have been fighting for progressive principles for thirty years,” she told the enthusiastic crowd. “This is the first time there has been a chance to make them effective. This is the biggest day of my life.” The new party lustily approved the most ambitious platform since that of the Populists. Planks called for woman

suffrage, presidential primaries, conservation of natural resources, an end to child labor, workers’ compensation, a living wage for both men and women workers, social security, health insurance, and a federal income tax.

Roosevelt arrived in Chicago to accept the nomination and announced that he felt “as fit as a bull moose,” giving the new party a nickname and a mascot. With characteristic vigor, he launched his campaign with the exhortation, “We stand at Armageddon and do battle for the Lord!” But for all the excitement and the cheering, the new Progressive Party was doomed, and the candidate knew it. Privately he confessed to a friend, “I am under no illusion about it. It is a forlorn hope.” The people may have supported Roosevelt, but the politicians, even progressives like La Follette, refused to back the new party. The Democrats, delighted at the split in the Republican ranks, nominated Woodrow Wilson, the governor of New Jersey.

Voters in 1912 could choose among four candidates who claimed to be progressives. Taft, Roosevelt, and Wilson each embraced the label, and even the Socialist candidate, Eugene V. Debs, styled himself a progressive. That the term progressive could stretch to cover these diverse candidates underscored major disagreements in progressive thinking about the relationship between business and government. Taft, in spite of his trust- busting, was generally viewed as the candidate of the Republican Old Guard. Debs urged voters to support the Socialist Party as the true spirit of the working class. The real contest for the presidency came down to a fight between Roosevelt and Wilson and the two political philosophies summed up in their respective campaign slogans: “The New Nationalism” and “The New Freedom.”

The New Nationalism expressed Roosevelt’s belief in federal planning and regulation. He accepted the inevitability of big business but demanded that government act as “a steward of the people” to regulate the giant corporations. Wilson, schooled in the Democratic principles of limited government and states’ rights, set a markedly different course with his New Freedom. He promised to use antitrust legislation to get rid of big corporations and to give small businesses and farmers better opportunities in the marketplace.

The energy and enthusiasm of the Bull Moosers made the race seem closer than it was. In the end, the Republican vote split, while the Democrats remained united. No candidate claimed a majority in the race. Wilson captured a bare 42 percent of the popular vote. Roosevelt and his Bull Moose Party won 27 percent, an unprecedented tally for a new party. Taft came in third with 23 percent. The Socialist Party, led by Debs, captured a surprising 6 percent (Map 21.3). The Republican Party moved in a conservative direction, while the Progressive Party essentially collapsed after Roosevelt’s defeat. It had always been, in the words of one astute observer, “a house divided against itself and already mortgaged.”

MAP 21.3 The Election of 1912

Description “The data are as follows:

Woodrow Wilson (Democrat) won a total of 435 electoral votes with 5 in Oregon; 4 in Idaho and Montana; 3 in Nevada; 2 in Arizona; 3 in Arizona, New Mexico, and Wyoming, 6 in Colorado; 5 in North Dakota; 8 in Nebraska; 10 each in Kansas and Oklahoma; 20 in Texas; 13 in Iowa; 18 in Missouri; 9 in Arkansas; 10 each in Louisiana and Mississippi; 12 each in Alabama and Tennessee; 14 in Georgia; 6 in Florida; 9 in South Carolina; 12 in North Carolina and Virginia; 13 in Kentucky; 8 in West Virginia; 29 Illinois; 13 in Wisconsin; 15 in Indiana; 24 in Ohio; 45 in New York; 4 in New Hampshire; 6 in Maine; 18 in Massachusetts; 5 in Rhode Island; 7 in Connecticut; 14 in New Jersey; 3 in Delaware; and 8 in Maryland. He won 6,293,454 popular votes with the percentage of 41.9 percent.

Theodore Roosevelt (Progressive): Of the total 88 electoral votes he won, 38 were in Pennsylvania; 15 in Michigan; 12 in Minnesota; 5 in South Dakota; 11 in California; and 7 in Washington. He won 4,119,538 popular votes with the percentage being 27.4 percent.

William H. Taft (Republican): He won 8 electoral votes, with 4 each in Utah and Vermont. He won 3,484,980 popular votes with the percentage being 23.2 percent.

Eugene V. Debs (Socialist): He did not win any electoral votes though he got 900,672 popular votes with the percentage of 6.1 percent.”

Wilson’s Reforms: Tariff, Banking, and the Trusts Born in Virginia and raised in Georgia, Woodrow Wilson became the first southerner elected president since 1844 and only the second Democrat to occupy the White House since Reconstruction. A believer in states’ rights, Wilson nevertheless promised legislation to break the hold of the trusts. This lean, ascetic scholar was, as one biographer conceded, a man whose “political convictions were never as fixed as his ambition.” Building on the base built by Roosevelt in strengthening presidential power, Wilson exerted leadership to achieve banking reform and worked through his party in Congress to accomplish the Democratic agenda. Before he was finished, Wilson lent his support to many of the Progressive Party’s social reforms.

With the Democrats thoroughly in control of Congress, Wilson immediately called for tariff reform. “The object of the tariff,” Wilson told Congress, “must be effective competition.” The Democratic House of Representatives hastily passed the Underwood tariff, which lowered rates by 15 percent. To compensate for lost revenue, the House approved a moderate federal

income tax made possible by the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment a month earlier. In the Senate, lobbyists for industries quietly went to work to get the tariff raised, but Wilson rallied public opinion by attacking the “industrious and insidious lobby.” In the harsh glare of publicity, the Senate passed the Underwood tariff.

Wilson next turned his attention to banking. The panic of 1907 led the government to turn once again to J. P. Morgan to avoid economic catastrophe. For years Morgan had acted virtually as a fourth branch of the government, called in to keep the country’s finances afloat in times of panic.

But by the time Wilson came to office, Morgan’s legendary power had come under close scrutiny. In 1913, a Senate committee investigated the “money trust,” calling Morgan himself to testify. The committee uncovered an alarming concentration of banking power. J. P. Morgan and Company and its affiliates held 341 directorships in 112 corporations, controlling assets of more than $22 million (billions in today’s dollars). On the witness stand Morgan adamantly refused to discuss his private financial transactions, insisting his power resulted from character, not cash. But Morgan’s days as Wall Street’s Jupiter were fading. Three months after testifying before the Pujo committee, Morgan died. His estate, valued at $68 million, led Andrew Carnegie to joke, “And to think, he was not a rich man!” Surely not compared to Carnegie, who had pocketed $225 million in the U.S. Steel merger Morgan orchestrated. Carnegie’s jibe, however, missed the mark. Morgan’s power came not from the millions he owned,

but from the many more millions he controlled. His death signaled the end of the “money trust” and the end of an era.

The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 marked the most significant piece of domestic legislation of Wilson’s presidency. It established a national banking system composed of twelve regional banks, privately controlled but regulated and supervised by the Federal Reserve Board, appointed by the president. It gave the United States its first efficient banking and currency system and, at the same time, provided for a greater degree of government control over banking. The new system made currency more elastic and credit adequate for the needs of business and agriculture.

Wilson, flush with success, tackled the trust issue next. When Congress reconvened in January 1914, he supported the introduction and passage of the Clayton Antitrust Act to outlaw “unfair competition” — practices such as price discrimination and interlocking directorates (directors from one corporation sitting on the board of another). In the midst of the successful fight for the Clayton Act, Wilson changed course and threw his support behind the creation of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), precisely the kind of federal regulatory agency that Roosevelt had advocated in his New Nationalism. The FTC, created in 1914, had not only wide investigatory powers but also the authority to prosecute corporations for “unfair trade practices” and to enforce its judgments by issuing “cease and desist” orders. Despite his campaign promises, Wilson’s antitrust program worked to regulate rather than to break up big business.

Wilson, Reluctant Progressive By the fall of 1914, Wilson declared that the progressive movement had fulfilled its mission and that the country needed “a time of healing.” Progressives watched in dismay as Wilson repeatedly obstructed or obstinately refused to endorse further reforms. He failed to support labor’s demand for an end to court injunctions against labor unions. He refused to support child labor legislation or woman suffrage. Wilson used the rhetoric of the New Freedom to justify his actions, claiming that his administration would condone “special privileges to none.” But in fact, his stance often reflected the interests of his small-business constituency.

In the face of Wilson’s obstinacy, reform might have ended in 1913 had not politics intruded. In the congressional elections of 1914, the Republican Party, no longer split by Roosevelt’s Bull Moose faction, won substantial gains. Democratic strategists recognized that Wilson needed to pick up support in the Midwest and the West by capturing votes from former Bull Moose progressives. Wilson responded belatedly by lending his support to reform in the months leading up to the election of 1916.

In a sharp about-face, he cultivated union labor, farmers, and social reformers. To please labor, he appointed progressive Louis Brandeis to the Supreme Court. To woo farmers, he threw his support behind legislation to obtain rural credits. And he won praise from labor by supporting workers’ compensation and the Keating-Owen child labor law (1916), which outlawed the regular employment of children younger than sixteen. When a railroad strike threatened in the months before the election, Wilson ordered

Congress to establish an eight-hour day on the railroads. He had moved a long way from his New Freedom of 1912, and, as Wilson noted, the Democrats had “come very near to carrying out the platform of the Progressive Party.” Wilson’s shift toward reform, along with his claim that he had kept the United States out of the war in Europe (discussed in chapter 22), helped him win reelection in 1916.

��

How did party politics change between 1912 and 1916, and what impact did this change have on progressivism?

What were the limits of progressive reform? While progressivism called for a more active role for the liberal state, at heart it was a movement that sought reforms designed to preserve American institutions and stem the tide of more radical change. Its basic conservatism can be seen by comparing it with the more radical movements of socialism, radical labor, and birth control — and by looking at the groups progressive reform left out, including women, Asians, and African Americans.

Radical Alternatives The year 1900 marked the birth of the Social Democratic Party in America, later called simply the Socialist Party. Like the progressives, the socialists were middle-class and native-born. They had broken with the older, more militant Socialist Labor Party precisely because of its dogmatic approach and immigrant constituency. The new group of socialists proved eager to appeal to a broad mass of disaffected Americans.

The Socialist Party chose as its presidential standard-bearer Eugene V. Debs, whose experience in the Pullman strike of 1894 (see chapter 20) convinced him that “there is no hope for the toiling masses of my countrymen, except by the pathways mapped out by Socialism.” Debs would run for president five times, in every election (except 1916) from 1900 to 1920. The socialism Debs advocated preached cooperation over competition and urged men and women to liberate themselves from “the barbarism of private ownership and wage slavery.” In the 1912 election,

Debs indicted both old parties as each dedicated to the preservation of capitalism and the continuation of the wage system. Styling the Socialist Party the “revolutionary party of the working class,” he urged voters to rally to his standard. Debs’s best showing came in 1912, when his 6 percent of the popular vote totaled more than 900,000 votes.

Further to the left and more radical than the socialists stood the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), nicknamed the Wobblies. In 1905, Debs, along with Western Federation of Miners leader William Dudley “Big Bill” Haywood, created the IWW, “one big union” dedicated to organizing the most destitute segment of the workforce, the unskilled workers disdained by Samuel Gompers’s AFL: western miners, migrant farmworkers, lumbermen, and immigrant textile workers. Haywood, a craggy-faced miner with one eye (he had lost the other in a childhood accident), was a charismatic leader and a proletarian intellectual. Seeing workers on the lowest rung of the social ladder as the victims of violent repression, the IWW advocated direct action, sabotage, and the general strike — tactics designed to trigger a workers’ uprising and overthrow the capitalist state. The IWW claimed it had as many as 100,000 members. Although membership fluctuated greatly, the influence of the IWW extended far beyond its numbers (as discussed in chapter 22).

In contrast to political radicals like Debs and Haywood, Margaret Sanger promoted the birth control movement as a means of social change. Sanger, a nurse who had worked among the poor on New York’s Lower East Side, coined the term birth control in 1915 and launched a movement with broad social implications. Sanger and her followers saw birth control not only as a

sexual and medical reform but also as a means to alter social and political power relationships and to alleviate human misery. By having fewer babies, the working class could constrict the size of the workforce and make possible higher wages and at the same time refuse to provide “cannon fodder” for the world’s armies.

The desire for family limitation was widespread, and in this sense, birth control was nothing new. The birthrate in the United States had been falling consistently throughout the nineteenth century. The average number of children per family dropped from 7.0 in 1800 to 3.6 by 1900. But the open advocacy of contraception, the use of artificial means to prevent pregnancy, struck many people as both new and shocking, and it was illegal. Anthony Comstock, New York City’s commissioner of vice, promoted laws in the 1870s making it a felony not only to sell contraceptive devices like condoms and cervical caps but also to publish information on how to prevent pregnancy.

When Sanger used her militant feminist paper, the Woman Rebel, to promote birth control, the Post Office confiscated Sanger’s publication and brought charges of obscenity against her. Facing arrest, she fled to Europe, only to return in 1916 as something of a national celebrity. In her absence, birth control had become linked with free speech and had been taken up as a liberal cause. Under public pressure, the government dropped the charges against Sanger, who undertook a nationwide tour to publicize the birth control cause.

Sanger then took direct action, opening the nation’s first birth control clinic in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn in October 1916. Located in the heart of a Jewish and Italian immigrant neighborhood, the clinic attracted 464 clients. On the tenth day, police shut down the clinic and threw Sanger in jail. By then, she had become a national figure, and the cause she championed had gained legitimacy, if not legality. Sanger soon reopened her clinic. After World War I, the birth control movement would become much less radical. Altering her tactics to suit the conservative temper of the times, Sanger sought support from medical doctors and eugenicists. But in its infancy, birth control was part of a radical vision for reforming the world that made common cause with the socialists and the IWW in challenging the limits of progressive reform.

Progressivism for White Men Only The day before President Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration in March 1913, the largest mass march to that date in the nation’s history took place as more than five thousand demonstrators took to the streets in Washington to demand the vote for women. A rowdy crowd on hand to celebrate the Democrats’ triumph attacked the marchers. Men spat at the suffragists and threw lighted cigarettes and matches at their clothing. “If my wife were where you are,” a burly cop told one suffragist, “I’d break her head.” But for all the marching, Wilson pointedly ignored woman suffrage in his inaugural address the next day.

The march served as a reminder that the political gains of progressivism were not spread equally throughout the population. As the twentieth century

dawned, women still could not vote in most states, although they had won major victories in the West. Increasingly, however, woman suffrage had become an international movement.

Alice Paul, a Quaker social worker who had visited England and participated in suffrage activism there, returned to the United States in 1910 in time to plan the mass march on the eve of Wilson’s inauguration and to lobby for a federal amendment to give women the vote. Paul’s dramatic tactics alienated many in the National American Woman Suffrage Association. In 1916, Paul founded the militant National Woman’s Party, which became the radical voice of the suffrage movement.

Women weren’t the only group left out in progressive reform. Progressivism, as it was practiced in the West and South, was tainted with racism by seeking to limit the rights of Asians and African Americans. Anti-Asian bigotry in the West led to a renewal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1902. At first, California governor Hiram Johnson stood against the strong anti-Asian prejudice of his state. But in 1913, he caved in to popular pressure and signed the Alien Land Law, which barred Japanese immigrants from purchasing land in California.

South of the Mason-Dixon line, the progressives’ racism targeted African Americans. Progressives preached the disfranchisement of black voters as a reform. During the bitter electoral fights that had pitted Populists against Democrats in the 1890s, the party of white supremacy held its power by votes purchased or coerced from African Americans. Southern progressives proposed to reform the electoral system by eliminating black voters.

Beginning in 1890 in Mississippi, southern states curtailed the African American vote through devices such as poll taxes (fees required for voting) and literacy tests.

The Progressive Era also witnessed the rise of Jim Crow laws to segregate public facilities. The new railroads precipitated segregation in the South where it had rarely existed before, at least on paper. Soon, separate railcars, separate waiting rooms, separate bathrooms, and separate dining facilities for blacks sprang up across the South. In courtrooms in Mississippi, blacks were required to swear on a separate Bible.

In the face of this growing repression, Booker T. Washington, the preeminent black leader of the day, urged caution and restraint. A former slave, Washington opened the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama in 1881 to teach vocational skills to African Americans. He emphasized education and economic progress for his race and urged African Americans to put aside issues of political and social equality. In an 1895 speech in Atlanta that came to be known as the Atlanta Compromise, he stated, “In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.” Washington’s accommodationist policy appealed to whites and elevated “the wizard of Tuskegee” to the role of national spokesman for African Americans.

The year after Washington proclaimed the Atlanta Compromise, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of racial segregation, affirming in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) the constitutionality of the doctrine of “separate but equal.” Blacks could be segregated in separate schools, restrooms, and other

facilities as long as the facilities were “equal” to those provided for whites. Of course, facilities for blacks rarely proved equal.

Booker T. Washington and Theodore Roosevelt Dine at the White House Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to the White House in 1901, stirring up a hornet’s nest of controversy that continued into the election of 1904. The Republican campaign piece pictured shows Roosevelt and a light-skinned Washington sitting under a portrait of Abraham Lincoln. Democrats’ campaign buttons pictured Washington with darker skin and implied that Roosevelt had “painted the White House black” and favored “race mingling.”

Woodrow Wilson brought to the White House southern attitudes toward race and racial segregation. He instituted segregation in the federal

workforce, especially the Post Office, and approved segregated drinking fountains and restrooms in the nation’s capital. When critics attacked the policy, Wilson insisted that segregation was “in the interest of the Negro.”

In 1906, a major race riot in Atlanta called into question Booker T. Washington’s strategy of uplift and accommodation. For three days in September, the streets of Atlanta ran red with blood as angry white mobs chased and cornered any blacks they happened upon. An estimated 250 African Americans died in the riots — members of Atlanta’s black middle class along with the poor and derelict. Professor William Crogman of Clark College noted the central irony of the riot: “Here we have worked and prayed and tried to make good men and women of our colored population,” he observed, “and at our very doorstep the whites kill these good men.” The riot caused many African Americans to question Washington’s strategy of gradualism and accommodation.

Foremost among Washington’s critics stood W. E. B. Du Bois, a Harvard graduate who urged African Americans to fight for civil rights and racial justice. In The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Du Bois attacked the “Tuskegee Machine,” comparing Washington to a political boss who used his influence to silence his critics and reward his followers. Du Bois founded the Niagara movement in 1905, calling for universal male suffrage, civil rights, and leadership composed of a black intellectual elite or “talented tenth.” The Atlanta riot only bolstered his resolve. In 1909, the Niagara movement helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a coalition of blacks and whites that sought legal and political rights for African Americans through the courts. In the decades

that followed, the NAACP came to represent the future for African Americans, while Booker T. Washington, who died in 1915, represented the past.

��

How did race, class, and gender shape the limits of progressive reform?

Conclusion: How did the Progressive Era give rise to the liberal state? Progressivism’s goal was to reform the existing system — by government intervention if necessary — but without uprooting any of the traditional American political, economic, or social institutions. As Theodore Roosevelt, the bellwether of the movement, insisted, “The only true conservative is the man who resolutely sets his face toward the future.” Roosevelt was such a man, and progressivism was such a movement. But although progressivism was never radical, progressives’ willingness to use the power of government to regulate business and achieve a measure of social justice redefined liberalism in the twentieth century, tying it to the expanded power of the state.

Progressivism contained many paradoxes. A diverse coalition of individuals and interests, the progressive movement began at the grass roots but left as its legacy a stronger presidency and unprecedented federal involvement in the economy and social welfare. A movement that believed in social justice, progressivism often promoted social control. And while progressives called for greater democracy, they fostered elitism with their worship of experts and efficiency, often failed to champion equality for women, and adopted racist policies toward Asians and African Americans.

Whatever its inconsistencies and limitations, progressivism took action to deal with the problems posed by urban industrialism. Progressivism saw

grassroots activists address social problems on the local and state levels and search for national solutions. By increasing the power of the presidency and expanding the power of the state, progressives worked to bring about greater social justice and to achieve a better balance between government and business. Jane Addams and Theodore Roosevelt could lay equal claim to the movement that redefined liberalism and launched the liberal state of the twentieth century. War on a global scale would provide progressivism with yet another challenge even before it had completed its ambitious agenda.

Chapter Review

��

progressivism settlement houses social gospel reform Darwinism muckraking Roosevelt Corollary The New Nationalism The New Freedom Socialist Party Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) birth control movement Plessy v. Ferguson

�� Progressives and Progressivism

How did progressivism differ from earlier reform movements?

Why was grassroots activism so important to the progressive movement?

Theodore Roosevelt and Progressivism

What progressive ideals were embodied in Roosevelt’s Square Deal?

What were the limits of progressive reform during Roosevelt’s presidency?

Woodrow Wilson and Progressivism

How did Wilson’s progressivism differ from Roosevelt’s?

How did Wilson’s progressive agenda change during his presidency?

�� , ��

To what extent, in both the short term and the long term, did progressivism reflect the interests of African Americans, working-class Americans, and women?

What progressive ideas and policies continue to influence American social and political life today?

��

1883 Lester Frank Ward champions reform Darwinism in Dynamic Sociology.

1889 Jane Addams opens Hull House in Chicago.

1893 Lillian Wald opens Henry Street settlement house in New York.

1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decided.

1900 Socialist Party founded.

1901 William McKinley assassinated; Theodore Roosevelt becomes presidesnt.

1902 Antitrust lawsuit filed against Northern Securities Company. Roosevelt mediates anthracite coal strike.

1903 Women’s Trade Union League founded. Panama Canal construction begins.

1904 Roosevelt Corollary to Monroe Doctrine announced.

1905 Industrial Workers of the World founded.

1906 Atlanta race riot kills several hundred blacks. Pure Food and Drug Act and Meat Inspection Act enacted. Hepburn Act enacted.

1907

Panic on Wall Street causes economic downturn. “Gentlemen’s Agreement” made with Japan.

1908 William Howard Taft elected president. Muller v. Oregon decided.

1909 Garment workers strike. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People formed.

1910 Progressive Hiram Johnson elected California governor.

1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire kills workers.

1912 Roosevelt runs for president on Progressive Party ticket. Woodrow Wilson elected president.

1913 Suffragists march in Washington, D.C. Federal Reserve Act enacted.

1914 Journalist Walter Lippmann calls for scientific techniques to control social change. Federal Trade Commission created. Clayton Antitrust Act enacted.

1916 Margaret Sanger opens first U.S. birth control clinic.

�� 22 �� : �� 1914–1920

�� This chapter will explore the following questions:

What was Woodrow Wilson’s foreign policy agenda? What role did the United States play in World War I? What impact did the war have on the home front? What part did Woodrow Wilson play at the Paris peace conference? Why was America’s transition from war to peace so turbulent? Conclusion: Victory, but at what cost?

�� GEORGE “BROWNIE” BROWNE WAS ONE OF TWO MILLION SOLDIERS who crossed the Atlantic during World War I to serve in the American Expeditionary Force in France. The twenty-three-year- old civil engineer from Waterbury, Connecticut, volunteered in July 1917, three months after the United States entered the war, serving with the 117th Engineers Regiment, 42nd Division. Two-thirds of the “doughboys” (American soldiers in Europe) saw action during the war, and few white troops saw more than Brownie did.

When the 42nd arrived at the front, veteran French troops taught Brownie’s regiment of engineers how to build and maintain trenches, barbed wire entanglements, and artillery and machine-gun positions. Although Brownie came under German fire each day, he wrote Martha Johnson, his girlfriend back home, “the longer I’m here the more spirit I have to ‘stick it out’ for the good of humanity and the U.S. which is the same thing.”

Training ended in the spring of 1918 when the Germans launched a massive offensive in the Champagne region. The German bombardment made the night “as light as daytime, and the ground … was a mass of flames and whistling steel from the bursting shells.” One doughboy from the 42nd remembered, “Dead bodies were all around me. Americans, French, Hun [Germans] in all phases and positions of death.” Another declared that soon “the odor was something fierce. We had to put on our gas masks to keep from getting

sick.” Eight days of combat cost the 42nd nearly 6,500 dead, wounded, and missing, 20 percent of the division.

After only ten days’ rest, Brownie and his unit joined in the first major American offensive, an attack against German defenses at Saint- Mihiel. On September 12, 3,000 American artillery launched more than a million rounds against German positions. This time the engineers preceded the advancing infantry, cutting through or blasting any barbed wire that remained. The battle cost the 42nd another 1,200 casualties, but Brownie was not among them.

At the end of September, the 42nd shifted to the Meuse-Argonne region, where it participated in the most brutal American fighting of the war. And it was there that Brownie’s war ended. The Germans fired thousands of poison gas shells, and the gas, “so thick you could cut it with a knife,” felled Brownie. When the war ended on November 11, 1918, he was recovering at a camp behind the lines. Discharged from the army in February 1919, Brownie returned home, where he and Martha married. Like the rest of the country, they were eager to get on with their lives.

When the Great War, as the Europeans called it, erupted in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson declared America’s absolute neutrality. But trade and principle entangled the United States in Europe’s troubles and gradually drew the nation into the conflict. Wilson claimed that America’s participation would serve grand purposes and uplift both the United States and the entire world.

At home, the war helped progressives finally achieve their goals of national prohibition and woman suffrage, but it also promoted a vicious attack on Americans’ civil liberties. Hyperpatriotism meant intolerance, repression, and vigilante violence. In 1919, Wilson sailed for Europe to secure a just peace. Unable to dictate terms to the victors, he accepted disappointing compromises. Upon his return to the United States, he met a crushing defeat that marked the end of Wilsonian internationalism abroad. Crackdowns on dissenters, immigrants, racial and ethnic minorities, and unions also signaled the end of the Progressive Era at home.

What was Woodrow Wilson’s foreign policy agenda? Shortly after winning election to the presidency in 1912, Woodrow Wilson confided to a friend: “It would be an irony of fate if my administration had to deal with foreign affairs.” Indeed, Wilson had focused his life and career on domestic concerns. In his campaign for the presidency, Wilson had hardly mentioned the world abroad.

Wilson, however, could not avoid the world and the rising tide of militarism, nationalism, and violence that beat against American shores. Trade and economic interests compelled the nation outward. Moreover, Wilson was drawn abroad by his own progressive political principles. He believed that the United States had a moral duty to champion peaceful free trade, national self-determination, and political democracy. “We have no selfish ends to serve,” he proclaimed. “We desire no conquest, no dominion…. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind.” Yet as president, Wilson was as ready as any American president to apply military solutions to problems of foreign policy. This readiness led Wilson and the United States into military conflict in Mexico and then in Europe.

Taming the Americas When he took office, Wilson sought to distinguish his foreign policy from that of his Republican predecessors. To Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt’s “big stick” and William Howard Taft’s “dollar diplomacy” appeared as crude flexing of military and economic muscle (see chapter 21). To signal a new

direction, Wilson appointed William Jennings Bryan, a pacifist, as secretary of state.

But Wilson and Bryan, like Roosevelt and Taft, also believed that the Monroe Doctrine gave the United States special rights and responsibilities in the Western Hemisphere. Issued in 1823 to warn Europeans not to attempt to colonize the Americas again, the doctrine had become a cloak for U.S. domination. Wilson thus authorized U.S. military intervention in Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic, paving the way for U.S. banks and corporations to take financial control. All the while, Wilson believed that U.S. actions were promoting order and democracy (Map 22.1).

MAP 22.1 U.S. Involvement in Latin America and the Caribbean, 1895–1941

Victory against Spain in 1898 made Puerto Rico an American possession and Cuba a protectorate. The United States later gained control of the Panama Canal Zone. The nation protected its expanding economic interests with military force by propping up friendly, though not necessarily democratic, governments.

Description The map highlights the prominent regions and the corresponding callouts read as follows:

U. S. possessions in 1900: The United States; Puerto Rico, Ceded to U.S by Spain, 1898; U. S. Virgin Islands, Purchased from Denmark for 25 million dollars, 1917.

U. S. protectorates or areas of temporary occupation: Nicaragua, U. S. intervention, 1909 to 1910, Occupied, 1912 to 1925, 1926 to 1933; Panama, Independent from Colombia, 1903, Protectorate, 1903 to 1939; Canal Zone, Leased 1903, Completed 1914; Cuba, Protectorate, 1898 to 1934, Occupied, 1898 to 1902; 1906 to 1909; 1912; 1917 to 1922; Haiti, Protectorate, 1915 to 1936, Occupied, 1915 to 1934; Dominican Republic, Protectorate, 1905 to 1941, Occupied, 1916 to 1924.

Mexico–U. S. border, Border dispute, January 1916 to February 1917; Veracruz in Mexico, U. S. intervention, April to November 1914; Honduras, U. S. intervention, 1912; Venezuela, U. S. intervention in border dispute, 1895 to 1896, U. S. intervention in monetary dispute, 1902.

A globe in the inset highlights the region discussed here.

Wilson’s most serious involvement in Latin America came in Mexico. When General Victoriano Huerta seized power by violent means in 1913, most European nations promptly recognized Mexico’s new government, but Wilson refused, declaring that he would not support a “government of butchers.” In April 1914, Wilson sent eight hundred Marines to seize the port of Veracruz to prevent the unloading of a large shipment of arms for

Huerta. Huerta fled to Spain, and the United States welcomed a new government.

But a rebellion erupted among desperately poor farmers, who believed that the new government, aided by U.S. business interests, had betrayed the revolution’s promise to help the common people. In January 1916, the rebel army, commanded by Francisco “Pancho” Villa, seized a train carrying gold to Texas from an American-owned mine in Mexico and killed the seventeen American engineers aboard. In March, Villa’s men crossed the border for a predawn raid on Columbus, New Mexico, where they killed eighteen Americans.

Wilson promptly dispatched twelve thousand troops, led by Major General John J. Pershing. But Villa avoided capture, and in January 1917, Wilson recalled Pershing so that he might prepare the army for the possibility of fighting in the Great War.

The European Crisis Before 1914, Europe had enjoyed decades of peace, but just beneath the surface lay the potentially destructive forces of nationalism and imperialism. The consolidation of the German and Italian states into unified nations and the similar ambition of Russia to create a Pan-Slavic union initiated new rivalries throughout Europe. As the conviction spread that colonial possessions were a mark of national greatness, competition expanded onto the world stage. Most ominously, Germany’s efforts under Kaiser Wilhelm II to challenge Great Britain’s world supremacy by creating

industrial muscle at home, an empire abroad, and a mighty navy threatened the balance of power and thus the peace.

European nations sought to avoid an explosion by developing a complex web of military and diplomatic alliances. By 1914, Germany, Austria- Hungary, and Italy (the Triple Alliance) stood opposed to Great Britain, France, and Russia (the Triple Entente, also known as “the Allies”). But in their effort to prevent war through a balance of power, Europeans had actually magnified the possibility of large-scale conflict (Map 22.2). Treaties, some of them secret, obligated members of the alliances to come to the aid of another member if attacked.

MAP 22.2 European Alliances after the Outbreak of World War I

With Germany and Austria-Hungary wedged between their Entente rivals and all parties fully armed, Europe was poised for war when Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary was assassinated in Sarajevo in June 1914.

Description “The areas marked on the map are:

Central Powers (Triple Alliance, except Italy, and allies): Germany; Austria-Hungary including Sarajevo (June 28, 1914 Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand triggers World War I); Bulgaria; and the Ottoman Empire in the southeast.

Allied Powers (Triple Entente and allies): Russia; Romania; Serbia; Greece; Montenegro; Italy; France; Portugal; Luxembourg; Belgium; and Great Britain.

Neutral nations: Norway, Sweden, and Denmark on the north the Netherlands on the northwest; Switzerland in the central region; Spain on the southwest; and Albania on the southeast.

The map also shows the Black Sea, Mediterranean Sea, Adriatic Sea, Atlantic Ocean, North Sea, and the Baltic Sea.”

The fatal sequence began on June 28, 1914, in the city of Sarajevo, when a Bosnian Serb terrorist assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. On July 18, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Russia announced that it would back the Serbs. Compelled by treaty to support Austria-Hungary, on August 3 Germany attacked Russia and France. In response, on August 4 Great Britain, upholding its pact with France, declared war on Germany. Within weeks, Europe was engulfed in war. The conflict became a world war when Japan, seeing an opportunity to rid itself of European competition in China, joined the cause against Germany.

The evenly matched alliances would fight a disastrous war lasting more than four years, at a cost of 8.5 million soldiers’ lives. A war that started with a solitary murder proved impossible to stop.

The Ordeal of American Neutrality Woodrow Wilson promptly announced that because the war engaged no vital American interest and involved no significant principle, the United States would remain neutral. Neutrality entitled the United States to trade

safely with all nations at war, he declared. Unfettered trade, Wilson believed, was not only a right under international law but also a necessity, because in 1913, the U.S. economy had slipped into a recession that wartime disruption of European trade could drastically worsen.

Although Wilson proclaimed neutrality, his sympathies, like those of most Americans, lay with Great Britain and France. Americans gratefully remembered crucial French assistance in the American Revolution and shared with the British a language, a culture, and a commitment to liberty. Germany, by contrast, was a monarchy with strong militaristic traditions. Still, Wilson insisted on neutrality, in part because he feared the conflict’s effects on the United States as a nation of immigrants. As he told the German ambassador, “We definitely have to be neutral, since otherwise our mixed populations would wage war on each other.”

Britain’s powerful fleet controlled the seas and quickly set up an economic blockade of Germany. The United States vigorously protested, but Britain refused to give up its naval advantage. The blockade actually had little economic impact on the United States. Between 1914 and the spring of 1917, while U.S. trade with Germany evaporated, war-related exports to Britain — food, clothing, steel, and munitions — escalated by some 400 percent, enough to pull the American economy out of its slump. Although the British blockade violated American neutrality, the Wilson administration gradually accepted it, thus beginning the fateful process of alienation from Germany.

Germany retaliated with a submarine blockade of British ports. German Unterseebooten, or U-boats, threatened notions of civilized warfare. Unlike surface warships that could harmlessly stop freighters and prevent them from entering a war zone, submarines relied on sinking their prey. And once they sank a ship, the tiny U-boats could not pick up survivors. Nevertheless, in February 1915, Germany announced that it intended to sink on sight enemy ships heading to the British Isles. On May 7, 1915, a German U-boat torpedoed the British passenger liner Lusitania, killing 1,198 passengers, 128 of them U.S. citizens.

American newspapers featured drawings of drowning women and children, and some demanded war. Calmer voices pointed out that the Lusitania carried millions of rounds of ammunition and thus was a legitimate target. Secretary of State Bryan resisted the hysteria, declaring that a ship carrying war materiel “should not rely on passengers to protect her from attack — it would be like putting women and children in front of an army.” He counseled Wilson to warn American citizens that they traveled on ships of warring countries at their own risk.

A peace coalition grew rapidly, promising a “war against war.” Sickened by the struggle in Europe that had already cost millions their lives, antiwar Americans vowed to hold Wilson to his word — America must remain neutral. They had many reasons to fight for peace, but they believed fervently that Germany posed no threat to the American homeland. One peace advocate declared that it would be a “crime” to “send thousands of husbands and fathers and sons to a useless slaughter.” The most popular song in 1915 was “I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier.” Former president

Theodore Roosevelt denounced the peace movement as “absolutely futile,” as well as “silly.” He claimed that it was motivated by “physical cowardice.”

Wilson sought a middle course that would retain his commitment to peace and neutrality without condoning German attacks on passenger ships. On May 10, 1915, he announced that any further destruction of ships would be regarded as “deliberately unfriendly” and might lead the United States to break diplomatic relations with Germany, essentially demanding that Germany abandon unrestricted submarine warfare. Bryan resigned, predicting that the president had placed the United States on a collision course with Germany. Wilson replaced Bryan with Robert Lansing, who believed that Germany’s antidemocratic character and goal of “world dominance” meant that it “must not be permitted to win this war.”

After Germany apologized for the civilian deaths on the Lusitania, tensions eased. In 1916, Germany went further, promising no more submarine attacks without warning and without provisions for the safety of civilians. Wilson’s supporters celebrated the success of his middle-of-the-road strategy.

Wilson’s diplomacy proved helpful in his bid for reelection in 1916. In the contest against Republican Charles Evans Hughes, the Democratic Party ran Wilson under the slogan “He kept us out of war.” Wilson felt uneasy with the claim, protesting that “they talk of me as though I were a god. Any little German lieutenant can push us into the war at any time by some calculated outrage.” But the Democrats’ case for Wilson gave him the

victory, though only by the razor-thin margins of 600,000 popular and 23 electoral votes.

The United States Enters the War Step by step, the United States backed away from “absolute neutrality.” The consequence of protesting the German blockade of Great Britain but accepting the British blockade of Germany was that by 1916, the United States was supplying the Allies with 40 percent of their war materiel. When France and Britain ran short of money to pay for U.S. goods and asked for loans, Wilson argued that “loans by American bankers to any foreign government which is at war are inconsistent with the true spirit of neutrality.” But rather than jeopardize America’s wartime prosperity, he allowed billions of dollars in loans that kept American goods flowing to Britain and France.

In January 1917, Germany decided that it could no longer afford to allow American shipping to reach Great Britain while Britain’s blockage gradually starved Germany. It announced that its navy would resume unrestricted submarine warfare and sink without warning any ship, enemy or neutral, found in the waters off Great Britain. Germany understood that the decision would probably bring the United States into the war, but gambled that its submarines would strangle the British economy and allow German armies to win a military victory in France before American troops arrived in Europe.

Resisting demands for war, Wilson only broke off diplomatic relations with Germany. On February 25, 1917, British authorities informed Wilson of a secret telegram sent by the German foreign secretary, Arthur Zimmermann, to the German minister in Mexico. It promised that in the event of war between Germany and the United States, Germany would see that Mexico regained its “lost provinces” of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona if Mexico would declare war against the United States. Wilson angrily responded to the Zimmermann telegram by asking Congress to approve a policy of “armed neutrality” that would allow merchant ships to fight back against attackers.

In March, German submarines sank five American vessels off Britain, killing 66 Americans. On April 2, the president asked Congress to issue a declaration of war. He accused Germany of “warfare against all mankind.” Still, he called for a “war without hate” and declared that America fought only to “vindicate the principles of peace and justice.” He promised a world made “safe for democracy.” On April 6, 1917, by majorities of 373 to 50 in the House and 82 to 6 in the Senate, Congress voted to declare war.

Wilson feared what war would do at home. He said despairingly, “Once lead this people into war, and they’ll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance. To fight you must be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit of ruthless brutality will infect Congress, the courts, the policeman on the beat, the man in the street.”

��

Why did President Wilson fail to maintain U.S. neutrality during World War I?

What role did the United States play in World War I? Americans soldiers sailed for France eager to do their part in making the world safe for democracy. Some doughboys maintained their idealism to the end. Although black soldiers eventually won respect under the French command, they faced discrimination under American commanders. The majority of American soldiers found little that was noble in rats, lice, and poison gas and, despite the progressives’ hopes, little to elevate the human soul in a landscape of utter destruction and death.

The Call to Arms When America entered the war, Britain and France were nearly exhausted after almost three years of conflict. Millions of soldiers had perished; food and morale were dangerously low. Another Allied power, Russia, was in turmoil. In March 1917, a revolution had forced Czar Nicholas II to abdicate, and one year later, in a separate peace with Germany, the Bolshevik revolutionary government withdrew Russia from the war. Peace with Russia allowed Germany to withdraw hundreds of thousands of its soldiers from the eastern front and to deploy them against the Allies on the western front in France.

On May 18, 1917, Wilson signed a sweeping Selective Service Act, authorizing a draft of all young men into the armed forces. Conscription transformed a tiny volunteer military of 80,000 men into a vast army and navy. Draft boards eventually inducted 2.8 million men into the armed

services, in addition to the 2 million who volunteered. Among the 4.8 million men under arms, 370,000 were black Americans. Nearly 64,000 men became conscientious objectors, and remarkably, 3 million simply evaded service.

Training camps sought to transform raw white recruits into fighting men. Progressives in the government were also determined that the camps turn out soldiers with the highest moral and civic values. To provide recruits with “invisible armor,” YMCA workers and veterans of the settlement house and playground movements led them in games, singing, and college extension courses. The army asked soldiers to stop thinking about sex, explaining that a “man who is thinking below the belt is not efficient.” Wilson’s choice to command the army on the battlefields of France, Major General John “Black Jack” Pershing, was as morally upright as he was militarily uncompromising. Described by one observer as “lean, clean, keen,” he gave progressives perfect confidence.

The War in France At the front, the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) discovered a desperate situation. The war had degenerated into a stalemate of armies dug into hundreds of miles of trenches that stretched across France. Huddling in the mud among the corpses and rats, soldiers were separated from the enemy by only a few hundred yards of no-man’s-land. When ordered “over the top,” troops raced desperately toward the enemy’s trenches, only to be entangled in barbed wire, enveloped in poison gas, and mowed down by machine guns. The three-day battle of the Somme in 1916 cost the French

and British forces 600,000 dead and wounded, and the Germans 500,000. The deadliest battle of the war allowed the Allies to advance their trenches only a few meaningless miles.

Life in the Trenches One U.S. soldier in a rat-infested trench watches for danger, while three others sit or lie in exhausted sleep. This trench is dry for the moment, but with the rains came mud so deep that wounded men drowned in it. Barbed wire, machine-gun nests, and mortars backed by heavy artillery protected the trenches. Trenches with millions of combatants stretched from French ports on the English Channel all the way to Switzerland. Such holes were miserable, but a decent shave with a Gillette safety razor and a friendly game of checkers offered doughboys temporary relief. Inevitably, however, the whistles would blow, sending the young men rushing toward enemy lines.

Description

A U. S. soldier leans across the walls of the trench, watching for enemies. A game of trench checkers is at the bottom right corner, and a Gillette Khaki set with compartments holding Gillette blue blades and a razor stem at the top left corner.

Still, U.S. troops saw almost no combat in 1917. Troops continued to train and used much of their free time to explore places that most of them could otherwise never hope to see. True to the crusader image, American officials allowed only uplifting tourism. The temptations of Paris were off-limits. French premier Georges Clemenceau’s offer to supply American troops with licensed prostitutes was declined with the half-serious remark that if Wilson found out, he would stop the war.

African American soldiers had a different experience. Separate treatment by race began during training. Blacks were rigidly segregated, were usually assigned to labor battalions, and faced crude abuse and miserable living conditions. When black troops arrived in Europe, white commanders insisted on maintaining American racial standards and warned the French against “spoiling the Negroes.”

In February 1918, General Pershing received an urgent call from the French for help on the front lines. Pershing sent what he considered less valuable black regiments from the 92nd Division. At the front, they were integrated into the French army. The black 369th Regiment spent 191 days in battle, longer than any other American outfit, and won more medals than any other American combat unit. Black soldiers recognized the irony of having to serve with the French to gain respect.

The vacation for white soldiers ended abruptly in March 1918 when a million German soldiers punched a hole in the Allied lines. Pershing finally committed the AEF to combat. In May and June, at Cantigny and then at Château-Thierry, the eager but green Americans checked the German advance with a series of assaults (Map 22.3). Then they headed toward the forest stronghold of Belleau Wood. After charging through a wheat field against withering machine-gun fire, the Marines plunged into hand-to-hand combat. Victory came hard, but a German report praised the enemy’s spirit, noting that “the Americans’ nerves are not yet worn out.” Indeed, it was German morale that was on the verge of cracking.

MAP 22.3 The American Expeditionary Force, 1918

In the last year of the war, the AEF joined the French army on the western front to respond to the final German offensive and pursue the retreating enemy until surrender.

Description “The map highlights Germany, the prominent among the central powers; France and Belgium, the Allied Powers; Netherlands and Luxemburg, the neutral nations. The Armistice Line (November 11, 1918) extended from the south of Germany–France border to Belgium¬–Netherland border on the north, crossing the Meuse River near Sedan in

France. The stabilized front (1915 to 1917) ran from the German–France border on the south, westward across the Meuse River by St. Mihiel, and then northward to Flanders in Belgium via the Somme River.

The German spring offensive along the limits of German advance, 1918 took place across the stabilized fronts near the Belgium–France border on the north; across the Somme River to Cantigny; and on the northwestern front of the Marne River. From the west, the U. S. troops moved to Cantigny, and then went northeastward across the Somme River and the stabilized front; from Paris to Château-Thierry and toward the stabilized front; from around the Marne River and St. Mihiel to Meuse-Argonne and northward across the stabilized front; and from Meuse-Argonne and the southern region of the Meuse River to St. Mihiel.

Allied victories took place in Cantigny (May 28, 1918); Bellau Wood (June 6 to June 25, 1918); Château-Thierry (May 31 to June 4, 1918); To the north of the Marne River, Second Battle of Marne (July 18 to August 6, 1918); Meuse-Argonne (September 26 to November 11, 1918); and St. Mihiel (September 12 to 16, 1918). A globe in the inset highlights the region discussed here.”

In the summer of 1918, the Allies launched a massive counteroffensive that would end the war. One-quarter of a million U.S. troops joined in the rout of German forces along the Marne River. In September, more than one million Americans took part in the assault that threw the Germans back from positions along the Meuse River. In four brutal days, the AEF sustained 45,000 casualties. In November, a revolt against the German government sent Kaiser Wilhelm II fleeing to Holland. On November 11, 1918, a delegation from the newly established German republic met with the French high command to sign an armistice that brought the fighting to an end.

The history of the AEF was brief, bloody, and victorious. When Germany had resumed unrestricted U-boat warfare in 1917, it had been gambling that it could defeat Britain and France before the Americans could raise and train an army and ship it to France. The German military had miscalculated badly. By the end, 112,000 AEF soldiers perished from wounds and disease, while another 230,000 Americans suffered casualties but survived. Only the Civil War, which lasted much longer, had cost more American lives. European nations, however, suffered much greater losses: 1.7 million Germans, 1.7 million Russians, 1.4 million French, and 700,000 Britons (Figure 22.1). Where they had fought, the landscape was as blasted and barren as the moon.

FIGURE 22.1 Global Comparison: Casualties of the First World War

Historians disagree about the number of casualties in World War I. Record keeping in many countries was poor. The destructive nature of the war meant that countless soldiers were wholly obliterated or instantly buried. This chart shows estimates of casualties (the combined number of wounded and killed soldiers) per country. The percentage listed with each casualty figure

represents the portion of soldiers mobilized who became casualties. However approximate, these figures make clear that the conflict that raged from 1914 to 1918 was a truly catastrophic world war. Although soldiers came from almost every part of the globe, the human devastation was not evenly distributed. Which country suffered the most casualties? Which country suffered the greatest percentage of casualties? What do you think was the principal reason that the United States suffered a smaller percentage of casualties than most other nations?

Description “The pie chart shows the following:

Total mobilized: 57,777,500; Total casualties 29,518,250 (51 percent of those mobilized). Out of the total casualties, 8,280,250 were killed and 21,238,000 wounded.

Casualties per country: Africa, Unknown; Australia, 211,000 (64 percent); Austria- Hungary, 4,820,000 (74 percent); Belgium, 57,000 (28 percent); Bulgaria, 254,000 (64 percent); Canada, 241,000 (39 percent); French Empire, 5,651,000 (75 percent); Germany, 5,952,000 (54 percent); Great Britain, 2,367,000 (44 percent); Greece, 26,000 (11 percent); India, 108,000 (7 percent); Italy, 1,407,000 (26 percent); Japan, 1,250 (0.2 percent); Montenegro, 13,000 (26 percent); New Zealand, 73,000 (66 percent); Portugal, 22,000 (22 percent); Romania, 320,000 (43 percent); Russia, 6,650,000 (55 percent); Serbia, 261,000 (37 percent); South Africa, 19,000 (13 percent); Turkey, 736,000 (46 percent); and the United States, 321,000 (8 percent).

Killed per country: Africa, 10,000; Australia, 59,000; Austria-Hungary, 1,200,000; Belgium, 13,000; Bulgaria, 101,000; Canada, 67,000; French Empire, 1,385,000; Germany, 1,718,000; Great Britain, 703,000; Greece, 5,000; India, 43,000; Italy, 460,000; Japan, 250; Montenegro, 3,000; New Zealand, 18,000; Portugal, 7,000; Romania, 200,000; Russia, 1,700,000; Serbia, 128,000; South Africa, 7,000; Turkey, 336,000; and the United States, 117,000.”

��

How did the AEF contribute to the defeat of Germany?

What impact did the war have on the home front? Many progressives hoped that the war would improve the quality of American life as well as free Europe from tyranny and militarism. Mobilization helped propel the crusades for woman suffrage and prohibition to success. Progressives enthusiastically channeled industrial and agricultural production into the vast war effort. Labor shortages caused by workers entering the military provided new opportunities for women in the booming wartime economy. With labor at a premium, unionized workers gained higher pay and shorter hours. To instill loyalty in Americans whose ancestry was rooted in the belligerent nations, Wilson launched a campaign to foster patriotism, but fanning patriotism led to suppressing dissent. When the government launched a harsh assault on civil liberties, mobs gained license to attack those whom they considered disloyal. As Wilson feared, democracy took a beating at home when the nation undertook its crusade for democracy abroad.

The Progressive Stake in the War Progressives embraced the idea that the war could be an agent of national improvement. The Wilson administration, realizing that the federal government would have to assert greater control to mobilize the nation’s human and physical resources, created new agencies to manage the war effort. Bernard Baruch, a Wall Street stockbroker, headed the War Industries Board, charged with stimulating and directing industrial production. Baruch brought management and labor together into a team that produced

everything from boots to bullets and made U.S. troops the best-equipped soldiers in the world.

Herbert Hoover, a self-made millionaire engineer, headed the Food Administration. He led remarkably successful “Hooverizing” campaigns for “meatless” Mondays and “wheatless” Wednesdays and other ways of conserving resources. Guaranteed high prices, the American heartland not only supplied the needs of U.S. citizens and armed forces but also became the breadbasket of America’s allies.

Wartime agencies multiplied: The Railroad Administration directed railroad traffic, the Fuel Administration coordinated the coal industry and other fuel suppliers, the Shipping Board organized the merchant marine, and the National War Labor Policies Board resolved labor disputes. Their successes gave most progressives reason to believe that, indeed, war and reform marched together. Still, skeptics like Wisconsin senator Robert La Follette declared that Wilson’s promises of permanent peace and democracy were a case of “the blind leading the blind.”

Industrial leaders found that wartime agencies enforced efficiency, which helped corporate profits triple. Some working people also had cause to celebrate: Mobilization meant high prices for farmers and plentiful jobs at high wages in the new war industries (Figure 22.2). Because increased industrial production required peaceful labor relations, the National War Labor Policies Board enacted the eight-hour day, a living minimum wage, and collective bargaining rights in some industries. The American

Federation of Labor (AFL) saw its membership soar from 2.7 million to more than 5 million.

FIGURE 22.2 Industrial Wages, 1912–1920

With help from unions and progressive reformers, wageworkers gradually improved their economic condition. The entry of millions of young men into the armed forces during World War I caused labor shortages and led to a rapid surge in industrial wages.

Description “The horizontal axis shows years along the horizontal axis and wages in millions of dollars along the vertical axis. The agricultural workers’ wages were 7,000 million dollars in 1912 and continued along the same until mid-1916 after which it increased to cross 10,000 million dollars by 1917. By 1919, the wages reached 11,000 million dollars but dipped to 10,000 million dollars by 1920. Industrial wages, on the other hand, stood at 11,000

million dollars in 1912 and rose to 15,000 by the latter half of 1915 with minor fluctuations in between. It hit 20,000 by mid-1917 and surged further during 1918 and 1919 to reach 30,000 million dollars in 1920.

The total wages stood at 18,000 million dollars in 1912 and reached 20,000 million dollars during mid-1915. By 1917, the wages crossed 27,000 million and hit 33,000 in 1918. It continually increased and was accounted to be 40,000 million in 1920.

All data are approximate.”

The war also provided a huge boost to the crusade to ban alcohol. By 1917, prohibitionists had convinced nineteen states to go dry. Liquor’s opponents now argued that banning alcohol would make the cause of democracy powerful and pure. At the same time, shutting down the distilleries would save millions of bushels of grain that could feed the United States and its allies. “Shall the many have food or the few drink?” the drys asked. Prohibition received an additional boost because many of the breweries had German names — Schlitz, Pabst, and Anheuser-Busch, for example. In December 1917, Congress passed the Eighteenth Amendment, which banned the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcohol. After swift ratification by the states, the prohibition amendment went into effect on January 1, 1920.

Women, War, and the Battle for Suffrage Women had made real strides during the Progressive Era, and war presented new opportunities. More than 25,000 women served in France. About half were nurses. The others drove ambulances; ran canteens for the Salvation

Army, Red Cross, and YMCA; worked with French civilians in devastated areas; and acted as telephone operators and war correspondents. Like men who joined the war effort, they believed that they were taking part in a great national crusade. “I am more than willing to live as a soldier and know of the hardships I would have to undergo,” one canteen worker declared when applying to go overseas, “but I want to help my country…. I want … to do the real work.” And like men, women struggled against disillusionment in France. One woman explained: “Over in America, we thought we knew something about the war … but when you get here the difference is [like the one between] studying the laws of electricity and being struck by lightning.”

Nora Saltonstall, daughter of a prominent Massachusetts family, was one of the American women who volunteered with the Red Cross and sailed for France. Attached to a mobile surgical hospital that followed closely behind the French armies, she became a driver, chauffeuring personnel, transporting the wounded, and hauling supplies. Soon she was driving on muddy, shell-pocked roads in the dark without lights. Her life, she said, consisted of “choked carburetors, broken springs, long hours on the road, food snatched when you can get it, and sleep.” She “hated the war,” but she told her mother, “I love my job.” She was proud of “doing something necessary here.”

At home, long-standing barriers against hiring women fell when millions of workingmen became soldiers and few new immigrant workers crossed the Atlantic. Tens of thousands of women found work with the railroads and in defense plants as welders, metalworkers, and heavy machine operators. A

black woman, a domestic before the war, celebrated her job as a laborer in a railroad yard: “We … do not have to work as hard as at housework which requires us to be on duty from six o’clock in the morning until nine or ten at night, with might[y] little time off and at very poor wages.” Other women found white-collar work. Between 1910 and 1920, the number of women clerks doubled. Before the war ended, more than a million women had found work in war industries. One women’s rights advocate exaggerated when she declared, “At last … women are coming into the labor and festival of life on equal terms with men,” but women had made real economic strides.

The most dramatic advance for women came in the political arena. Adopting a state-by-state approach before the war, suffragists had achieved some success (Map 22.4). More commonly, voting rights for women met strong hostility and defeat. After 1910, suffrage leaders added a federal campaign to amend the Constitution to the traditional state-by-state strategy for suffrage.

MAP 22.4 Women’s Voting Rights before the Nineteenth Amendment

The long campaign for women’s voting rights reversed the pioneer epic that moved from east to west. From its first successes in the new democratic West, suffrage rolled eastward toward the entrenched, male-dominated public life of the Northeast and South.

Description “The map shows the following data:

Full voting with effective date: New York (1917); Michigan (1918); northern part of Wisconsin; South Dakota (1918); Kansas (1912); Oklahoma (1918); Montana (1914); Wyoming (1890); Colorado (1893); Utah (1870); Idaho (1896); Arizona (1912); California (1911); Nevada (1914); Oregon (1912); and Washington (1910).

Partial voting rights for women (presidential vote in all; local, county vote in some): Maine; Ohio; Indiana; Illinois; Tennessee; Wisconsin; Iowa; Missouri; Arkansas; Texas; Minnesota; North Dakota; and Nebraska.

No voting rights for women: New Hampshire; Vermont; Massachusetts; Rhode Island; Connecticut; New Jersey; Delaware; Pennsylvania; Maryland; Virginia; West Virginia;

North Carolina; Kentucky; South Carolina; Georgia; Alabama; Mississippi; Florida; Louisiana; and New Mexico.”

The radical wing of the suffragists, led by Alice Paul, picketed the White House, where the marchers unfurled banners that proclaimed “America Is Not a Democracy. Twenty Million Women Are Denied the Right to Vote.” They chained themselves to fences and went to jail, where many engaged in hunger strikes. “They seem bent on making their cause as obnoxious as possible,” Woodrow Wilson declared. His wife, Edith, detested the idea of “masculinized” voting women. But membership in the mainstream organization, the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), led by Carrie Chapman Catt, soared to some two million. Seeing the handwriting on the wall, the Republican and Progressive parties endorsed woman suffrage in 1916.

In 1918, Wilson finally gave his support to suffrage, calling the amendment “vital to the winning of the war.” He conceded that it would be wrong not to reward the wartime “partnership of suffering and sacrifice” with a “partnership of privilege and right.” By linking their cause to the wartime emphasis on national unity, the advocates of woman suffrage finally triumphed. In 1919, Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment, granting women the vote, and by August 1920 the required two-thirds of the states had ratified it.

Rally around the Flag — or Else

When Congress committed the nation to war, only a handful of peace advocates resisted the tide of patriotism. A group of professional women, led by settlement house leader Jane Addams and economics professor Emily Greene Balch, denounced what Addams described as “the pathetic belief in the regenerative results of war.” But after America entered the conflict, advocates for peace were labeled cowards and traitors.

To suppress criticism of the war, Wilson stirred up patriotic fervor. In 1917, the president created the Committee on Public Information under the direction of George Creel, a journalist who became the nation’s cheerleader for war. Creel sent “Four-Minute Men,” a squad of 75,000 volunteers, around the country to give brief pep talks that celebrated successes on the battlefields and in the factories. Posters, pamphlets, and cartoons depicted brave American soldiers and sailors defending freedom and democracy against the evil “Huns,” the derogatory nickname applied to German soldiers.

America rallied around Creel’s campaign. The film industry cranked out pro-war melodramas and taught audiences to hiss at the German kaiser. Colleges and universities generated war propaganda in the guise of scholarship. When Professor James McKeen Cattell of Columbia University urged that America seek peace with Germany short of victory, university president Nicholas Murray Butler fired him on the grounds that “what had been folly is now treason.”

A firestorm of anti-German passion erupted. Across the nation, “100% American” campaigns enlisted ordinary people to sniff out disloyalty.

German, the most widely taught foreign language in 1914, practically disappeared from the nation’s schools. Targeting German-born Americans, the Saturday Evening Post declared that it was time to rid the country of “the scum of the melting pot.” Anti-German action reached its extreme with the lynching of Robert Prager, a German-born baker with socialist leanings. Persuaded by the defense lawyer who praised what he called a “patriotic murder,” the jury at the trial of the killers took only twenty-five minutes to acquit.

As hysteria increased, the campaign reached absurd levels. Menus across the nation changed German toast to French toast and sauerkraut to liberty cabbage. In Milwaukee, vigilantes mounted a machine gun outside the Pabst Theater to prevent the staging of Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell, a powerful protest against tyranny. The fiancée of one of the war’s leading critics, caught dancing on the dunes of Cape Cod, was held on suspicion of signaling to German submarines.

The Wilson administration’s zeal in suppressing dissent contrasted sharply with its war aims of defending democracy. In the name of self-defense, the Espionage Act (June 1917), the Trading with the Enemy Act (October 1917), and the Sedition Act (May 1918) gave the government sweeping powers to punish any opinion or activity it considered “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive.” When Postmaster General Albert Burleson blocked mailing privileges for dissenting publications, dozens of journals were forced to close down. Of the 1,500 individuals eventually charged with sedition, all but a dozen had merely spoken words the government found objectionable.

One of them was Eugene V. Debs, the leader of the Socialist Party, who was convicted under the Espionage Act and sentenced to ten years. In a speech on June 16, 1918, Debs declared that the United States was not fighting a noble war to make the world safe for democracy but had joined greedy European imperialists seeking to conquer the globe. The government claimed that Debs had crossed the line between legitimate dissent and criminal speech. From the Atlanta penitentiary, Debs argued that he was just telling the truth, like hundreds of his friends who were also in jail.

The president hoped that national commitment to the war would silence partisan politics, but his Republican rivals used the war as a weapon against the Democrats. The trick was to oppose Wilson’s conduct of the war, but not the war itself. Republicans outshouted Wilson on the nation’s need to mobilize for war but then complained that Wilson’s War Industries Board was a tyrannical agency that crushed free enterprise. As the war progressed, Republicans gathered power against the Democrats, who had narrowly reelected Wilson in 1916.

In 1918, Republicans gained a narrow majority in both the House and the Senate. The end of Democratic control of Congress not only halted further domestic reform but also meant that the United States would advance toward military victory in Europe with political power divided between a Democratic president and a Republican Congress likely to challenge Wilson’s plans for international cooperation.

��

How did progressive ideals fare during wartime?

What part did Woodrow Wilson play at the Paris peace conference? Wilson decided to reaffirm his noble war ideals by announcing his peace aims before the end of hostilities. He hoped the victorious Allies would adopt his plan for international democracy, but he was sorely disappointed. America’s allies understood that Wilson’s principles jeopardized their own postwar plans for the acquisition of enemy territory, new colonial empires, and reparations. Wilson also faced strong opposition at home from those who feared that his enthusiasm for international cooperation would undermine American independence.

Wilson’s Fourteen Points On January 8, 1918, ten months before the armistice in Europe, President Wilson revealed to Congress his Fourteen Points, his blueprint for a new democratic world order. The first five points affirmed basic liberal ideals: an end to secret treaties, freedom of the seas, removal of economic barriers to free trade, reduction of weapons of war, and recognition of the rights of colonized peoples. The next eight points supported the right to self- determination of European peoples who had been dominated by Germany or its allies. Wilson’s fourteenth point called for a “general association of nations” — a League of Nations — to provide “mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.” A League of Nations reflected Wilson’s lifelong dream of a “parliament of man.” Only such an organization of “peace-loving nations,” he believed, could justify the war and secure a lasting peace.

The Paris Peace Conference From January 18 to June 28, 1919, the eyes of the world focused on Paris. Inspired by his mission, Wilson decided to head the U.S. delegation. He said he owed it to the American soldiers. “It is now my duty,” he announced, “to play my full part in making good what they gave their life’s blood to obtain.” A dubious British diplomat retorted that Wilson was drawn to Paris “as a debutante is entranced by the prospect of her first ball.” The decision to leave the country at a time when his political opponents challenged his leadership was risky enough, but his stubborn refusal to include prominent Republicans in the delegation proved foolhardy and eventually cost him his dream of a new world order.

After four terrible years of war, the common people of Europe almost worshipped Wilson, believing that he would create a safer, more decent world. When the peace conference convened at Louis XIV’s magnificent palace at Versailles, however, Wilson encountered a different reception. To the Allied leaders, Wilson appeared a naive and impractical moralist. His desire to gather former enemies within a new international democratic order showed how little he understood hard European realities. Georges Clemenceau, premier of France, claimed that Wilson “believed you could do everything by formulas” and “empty theory.” Disparaging the Fourteen Points, he added, “God himself was content with ten commandments.”

The Allies wanted to fasten blame for the war on Germany, totally disarm it, and make it pay so dearly that it would never threaten its neighbors again. The French demanded retribution in the form of territory containing

Germany’s richest mineral resources. The British made it clear that they were not about to give up the powerful weapon of naval blockade for the vague principle of freedom of the seas.

The Allies forced Wilson to make drastic compromises. In return for France’s moderating its territorial claims, he agreed to support Article 231 of the peace treaty, assigning war guilt to Germany. Though saved from permanently losing Rhineland territory to the French, Germany was outraged at being singled out as the instigator of the war and being saddled with more than $33 billion in damages. Many Germans felt that their nation had been betrayed. After agreeing to an armistice in the belief that peace terms would be based in Wilson’s generous Fourteen Points, they faced hardship and humiliation instead.

Wilson had better success in establishing the principle of national self- determination. But from the beginning, Secretary of State Robert Lansing knew that the president’s concept of self-determination was “simply loaded with dynamite.” Lansing wondered, “What unit has he in mind? Does he mean a race, a territorial area, or a community?” Even Wilson was vague about what self-determination actually meant. “When I gave utterance to those words,” he admitted, “I said them without the knowledge that nationalities existed, which are coming to us day after day.” Lansing suspected that the notion “will raise hopes which can never be realized. It will, I fear, cost thousands of lives. In the end it is bound to be discredited, to be called the dream of an idealist who failed to realize the danger until it was too late.”

Yet partly on the basis of self-determination, the conference redrew the map of Europe and parts of the rest of the world. Portions of Austria-Hungary were ceded to Italy, Poland, and Romania, and the remainder was reassembled into Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia — independent republics whose boundaries were drawn with attention to concentrations of major ethnic groups.

More arbitrarily, the Ottoman empire was carved up into small mandates (including Palestine) run by local leaders but under the control of France and Great Britain. The conference reserved the mandate system for those regions it deemed insufficiently “civilized” to have full independence. Thus, the reconstructed nations — each beset with ethnic and nationalist rivalries — faced the challenge of making a new democratic government work (Map 22.5). Many of today’s bitterest disputes — in the Balkans and Iraq, between Greece and Turkey, between Arabs and Jews — have roots in the decisions made in Paris in 1919.

MAP 22.5 Europe after World War I

The post–World War I settlement redrew boundaries to create new nations based on ethnic groupings. Within defeated Germany and Russia, the outcome left bitter peoples who resolved to recover the territory taken from them.

Description The map highlights Yugoslavia, Hungary, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland as new and reconstituted nations. Danzig in Poland is labeled Free City. The region along the western border of Germany including Rhineland and Saar, and the Turkey– Greece border regions are shaded as Demilitarized or Allied occupation zone.

Wilson hoped that self-determination would also dictate the fate of Germany’s colonies in Asia and Africa. But the Allies, who had taken over the colonies during the war, went no further than allowing the League of Nations a mandate to administer them. Technically, the mandate system rejected imperialism, but in reality it allowed the Allies to maintain control. Thus, while denying Germany its colonies, the Allies retained and added to their own empires.

The cause of democratic equality suffered another setback when the peace conference rejected Japan’s call for a statement of racial equality in the treaty. Wilson’s belief in the superiority of whites, as well as his apprehension about how white Americans would respond to such a declaration, led him to oppose the clause. To soothe hurt feelings, Wilson agreed to grant Japan a mandate over the Shantung Peninsula in northern China, which had formerly been controlled by Germany. The gesture mollified Japan’s moderate leaders, but the military faction preparing to take over the country used bitterness toward racist Western colonialism to build support for expanding Japanese power throughout Asia.

Closest to Wilson’s heart was finding a new way to manage international relations. In Wilson’s view, war had discredited the old strategy of balance of power. Instead, he proposed a League of Nations that would provide collective security. The league would establish rules of international conduct and resolve conflicts between nations through rational and peaceful means. When the Allies agreed to the league, Wilson was overjoyed. He believed that the league would rectify the errors his colleagues had forced on him in Paris.

To some Europeans and Americans, the Versailles treaty came as a bitter disappointment. Wilson’s admirers were shocked that the president dealt in compromise like any other politician. But without Wilson’s presence, the treaty that was signed on June 28, 1919, surely would have been more vindictive. Wilson returned home in July 1919 consoled that, despite his frustrations, he had gained what he most wanted — a League of Nations. In Wilson’s judgment, “We have completed in the least time possible the greatest work that four men have ever done.”

The Signing of Peace in the Hall of Mirrors, Versailles, 28th June 1919, by Sir William Orpen Set in the dazzling Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, built for Louis XIV as a symbol of his power, this painting captures the moment when the treaty was signed in June 1919. The leaders

in charge of putting the world back together after the Great War are gathered at the table. Wilson is seated fifth from the left, dignified but seemingly isolated, while the French premier Georges Clemenceau and the British prime minister David Lloyd George are huddled together at Wilson’s left.

Description The dignitaries are seated at a long table with several standing behind the table. In front of the long table, Doctor Johannes Bell of Germany signs the treaty while Herr Hermann Muller leans over him. Opposite them, Georges Clemenceau and David Lloyd George are sitting close to each other while Woodrow Wilson is seated to their left, holding a sheet of paper.

The Fight for the Treaty The tumultuous reception Wilson received when he arrived home persuaded him, probably correctly, that the American people supported the treaty. When the president submitted the treaty to the Senate in July 1919, he warned that failure to ratify it would “break the heart of the world.” By then, however, criticism of the treaty was mounting, especially from Americans convinced that their countries of ethnic origin — Ireland, Italy, and Germany — had not been given fair treatment. Others worried that the president’s concessions at Versailles had jeopardized the treaty’s capacity to provide a workable plan for rebuilding Europe and to guarantee world peace.

In the Senate, the treaty confronted Republican “irreconcilables,” a group that was unalterably opposed to the treaty because it entangled the United States in world affairs. A larger group of Republicans did not object to

American participation in world politics but feared that membership in the League of Nations would jeopardize the nation’s ability to act independently. No Republican, in any case, was eager to hand Wilson and the Democrats a foreign policy victory with the 1920 presidential election little more than a year away.

At the center of Republican opposition was Wilson’s archenemy, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts. Lodge was no isolationist, but he thought that much of the Fourteen Points was a “general bleat about virtue being better than vice.” Lodge expected the United States’ economic and military power to propel the nation into a major role in world affairs. But he insisted that membership in the League of Nations, which would require collective action to maintain peace, threatened the nation’s independence in foreign relations.

With Lodge as its chairman, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee produced several amendments, or reservations, that sought to limit the consequences of American membership in the league. For example, several reservations required approval of both the House and the Senate before the United States could participate in league-sponsored economic sanctions or military action.

It gradually became clear that ratification of the treaty depended on acceptance of the Lodge reservations. Democratic senators, who overwhelmingly supported the treaty, urged Wilson to accept Lodge’s terms, arguing that they left the essentials of the treaty intact. Wilson, however, insisted that the reservations cut “the very heart out of the treaty.”

Wilson decided to take his case directly to the people. On September 3, 1919, still exhausted from the peace conference, he set out by train on the most ambitious speaking tour ever undertaken by a president. On September 25 in Pueblo, Colorado, Wilson collapsed and had to return to Washington. There, he suffered a massive stroke that partially paralyzed him. From his bedroom, Wilson sent messages instructing Democrats in the Senate to hold firm against any and all reservations. Wilson commanded enough loyalty to ensure a vote against the Lodge reservations. But when the treaty without reservations came before the Senate in March 1920, the combined opposition of the Republican irreconcilables and reservationists left Wilson six votes short of the two-thirds majority needed for passage.

The nations of Europe organized the League of Nations at Geneva, Switzerland. Although Woodrow Wilson received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1920 for his central role in creating the league, the United States never became a member. Whether American membership could have prevented the world war that would begin in Europe in 1939 is highly unlikely, but the United States’ failure to join certainly weakened the league from the start. In refusing to accept relatively minor compromises with Senate moderates, Wilson lost his treaty and American membership in the league.

��

Why did the Senate fail to ratify the Versailles treaty?

Why was America’s transition from war to peace so turbulent? The defeat of Wilson’s plan for international democracy proved the crowning blow to progressives, who had hoped that the war could boost reform at home. When the war ended, Americans wanted to demobilize swiftly. In the process, servicemen, defense workers, and farmers lost their war-related jobs. The volatile combination — of unemployed veterans returning home, a stalled economy, and leftover wartime patriotism looking for a new cause — threatened to explode. Wartime anti-German passion was quickly succeeded by the Red scare, an antiradical campaign broad enough to ensnare unionists, socialists, dissenters, and African Americans and Mexicans who had committed no offense but to seek an escape from rural poverty as they moved north.

Economic Hardship and Labor Upheaval Americans demanded that the nation return to a peacetime economy. The government abruptly abandoned its wartime economic controls and canceled war contracts. In a matter of months, three million soldiers returned from the military and flooded the job market just as war production ceased. Unemployment soared. At the same time, consumers went on a postwar spending spree that drove inflation skyward. In 1919 alone, prices rose 75 percent over prewar levels.

Most of the gains workers had made during the war evaporated. Freed from government controls, business turned against the eight-hour day and attacked labor unions. With inflation eating up their paychecks, workers fought back. The year 1919 witnessed nearly 3,600 strikes involving 4 million workers. The most spectacular strike occurred in February 1919 in Seattle, where shipyard workers had been put out of work by demobilization. When a coalition of the radical Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, known as Wobblies) and the moderate American Federation of Labor (AFL) called a general strike, the largest work stoppage in American history shut down the city. Newspapers claimed that the walkout was “a Bolshevik effort to start a revolution.” The suppression of the Seattle general strike by city officials cost the AFL many of its wartime gains and contributed to the destruction of the IWW soon afterward.

A strike by Boston policemen in the fall of 1919 underscored postwar hostility toward labor militancy. Although the police were paid less than pick-and-shovel laborers, they won little sympathy. Once the officers stopped walking their beats, looters sacked the city. Massachusetts governor Calvin Coolidge called in the National Guard to restore order and broke the Boston police strike. The public welcomed Coolidge’s anti-union assurance that “there is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time.”

Labor strife climaxed in the violent steel strike of 1919. Faced with the industry’s plan to revert to seven-day weeks, twelve-hour days, and weekly wages of about $20, Samuel Gompers, head of the AFL, called for a strike. In September, 350,000 workers in fifteen states walked out. The steel

industry hired 30,000 strikebreakers and convinced the public that the strikers were radicals bent on subverting democracy and capitalism. In January 1920, after 18 striking workers were killed, the strike collapsed. That devastating defeat initiated a sharp decline in the fortunes of the labor movement, a trend that would continue for almost twenty years.

The Red Scare Suppression of labor strikes was one response to the widespread fear of internal subversion that swept the nation in 1919. The Red scare (“Red” referred to the color of the Bolshevik flag) exceeded even the assault on civil liberties during the war. It had homegrown causes: the postwar recession, labor unrest, terrorist acts, and the difficulties of reintegrating millions of returning veterans. But unsettling events abroad also added to Americans’ anxieties.

Two epidemics swept the globe in 1918. One was Spanish influenza, which brought on a deadly accumulation of fluid in the lungs. A nurse near the front lines in France observed that victims “run a high temperature, so high that we can’t believe it’s true…. It is accompanied by vomiting and dysentery. When they die, as about half of them do, they turn a ghastly dark gray and are taken out at once and cremated.” It was the deadliest outbreak of disease since the Black Death six centuries earlier. Before the flu virus had run its course, at least 40 million people had died worldwide, far more than in all the battles of World War I. The victims included an astounding 700,000 Americans.

The other epidemic was Russian bolshevism, which seemed to most Americans equally contagious and deadly. Bolshevism became even more menacing in March 1919, when the new Soviet leaders created the Comintern, a worldwide association of Communists sworn to revolution in capitalist countries. A Communist revolution in the United States was extremely unlikely, but edgy Americans, faced with a flurry of terrorist acts, believed otherwise. Dozens of prominent individuals had received bombs through the mail. On September 16, 1920, a wagon filled with dynamite and iron exploded on Wall Street, killing 38 and maiming 143 others. Authorities never caught the terrorists, and the successful attack on America’s financial capital fed the nation’s anger and fear.

Even before the Wall Street bombing, the government had initiated a hunt for domestic revolutionaries. Led by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, who believed that “there could be no nice distinctions drawn between the theoretical ideals of the radicals and their actual violations of our national laws,” the campaign targeted men and women for their ideas, not their illegal acts. In January 1920, Palmer ordered a series of raids that netted 6,000 alleged subversives. Finding no revolutionary conspiracies, Palmer nevertheless ordered 500 noncitizen suspects deported.

His action came in the wake of a campaign against the most notorious radical alien, Russian-born Emma Goldman. Before the war, Goldman’s passionate support of labor strikes, women’s rights, and birth control had made her a symbol of radicalism. In 1919, after she spent time in prison for denouncing military conscription, J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the Justice Department’s Radical Division, ordered her deported. One observer

remarked, “With Prohibition coming in and Emma Goldman goin’ out, ’twill be a dull country.”

The effort to rid the country of alien radicals was matched by efforts to crush troublesome citizens. Law enforcement officials and vigilante groups joined hands against so-called Reds. In November 1919, in the rugged lumber town of Centralia, Washington, a menacing crowd gathered in front of the IWW hall. Nervous Wobblies inside opened fire, killing three people. Three IWW members were arrested and later convicted of murder, but another, ex-soldier Wesley Everett, was carried off by the mob, which castrated him, hung him from a bridge, and then riddled his body with bullets. His death was officially ruled a suicide.

Public institutions joined the attack on civil liberties. Local libraries removed dissenting books. Schools fired unorthodox teachers. Police shut down radical newspapers. State legislatures refused to seat elected representatives who professed socialist ideas. And in 1919, Congress removed its lone socialist representative, Victor Berger, on the pretext that he was a threat to national safety.

That same year, the Supreme Court provided a formula for restricting free speech. In upholding the conviction of socialist Charles Schenck for publishing a pamphlet urging resistance to the draft during wartime (Schenck v. United States), the Court established a “clear and present danger” test. Such utterances as Schenck’s during a time of national peril, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, were equivalent to shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater.

In 1920, the assault on civil liberties provoked the creation of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which was dedicated to defending an individual’s constitutional rights. One of the ACLU’s founders, Roger Baldwin, declared, “So long as we have enough people in this country willing to fight for their rights, we’ll be called a democracy.” The ACLU championed the targets of Attorney General Palmer’s campaign — politically radical immigrants, trade unionists, socialists and Communists, and antiwar activists who still languished in jail.

The Red scare eventually collapsed because of its excesses. In particular, the antiradical campaign lost credibility after Palmer warned that radicals were planning to celebrate the Bolshevik Revolution with a nationwide wave of violence on May 1, 1920. Officials called out state militias, mobilized bomb squads, and even placed machine-gun nests at major city intersections. When May 1 came and went without a single disturbance, the public mood turned from fear to scorn.

The Great Migrations of African Americans and Mexicans Before the Red scare lost steam, the government raised alarms about the loyalty of African Americans. Black soldiers returned from fighting for democracy in France determined to bring democracy to the United States, but nothing they did in France persuaded white Americans that race relations should change. A Justice Department investigation concluded that Reds were fomenting racial unrest among blacks. Although the report was

wrong about Bolshevik influence, it was correct in noticing a new stirring among African Americans.

In 1900, nine of every ten blacks still lived in the South, where poverty, disfranchisement, segregation, and violence dominated their lives. A majority of black men worked as dirt-poor tenant farmers or sharecroppers, while many black women worked in the homes of whites as domestics. Whites remained committed to keeping blacks down. “If we own a good farm or horse, or cow, or bird-dog, or yoke of oxen,” a black sharecropper in Mississippi observed in 1913, “we are harassed until we are bound to sell, give away, or run away, before we can have any peace in our lives.”

The First World War provided African Americans with the opportunity to escape the South’s cotton fields and kitchens. When war channeled nearly five million American workers into military service and almost ended European immigration, northern industrialists turned to black labor. Black men in the South found work in northern steel mills, shipyards, munitions plants, railroad yards, automobile factories, and mines. From 1915 to 1920, a half million blacks (approximately 10 percent of the South’s black population) boarded trains bound for Philadelphia, Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago, St. Louis, and other industrial cities.

Thousands of migrants wrote home to tell family and friends about their experiences in the North. One man announced proudly that he had recently been promoted to “first assistant to the head carpenter.” He added, “I should have been here twenty years ago. I just begin to feel like a man…. My children are going to the same school with the whites and I don’t have to

[h]umble to no one. I have registered — will vote the next election and there ain’t any ‘yes sir’ — it’s all yes and no and Sam and Bill.”

But the North was not the promised land. Black men stood on the lowest rungs of the labor ladder. Jobs of any kind proved scarce for black women, and most worked as domestic servants, just as they had in the South. The existing black middle class sometimes shunned the less educated, less sophisticated rural southerners crowding into northern cities. Many whites, fearful of losing jobs and status, lashed out against the new migrants. Savage race riots ripped through two dozen northern cities. The worst occurred in July 1917 when a mob of whites invaded a section of East St. Louis, Illinois, and murdered thirty-nine people. In 1918, the nation witnessed ninety-six lynchings of blacks, some of them decorated war veterans still in uniform.

Still, most black migrants stayed in the North and encouraged friends and family to follow. By 1940, more than one million blacks had left the South, profoundly changing their own lives and the course of the nation’s history. Black enclaves such as Harlem in New York and the South Side of Chicago, “cities within cities,” emerged in the North. These assertive communities provided a foundation for black protest and political organization in the years ahead.

African Americans Migrate North Wearing their Sunday best and carrying the rest of what they own in two suitcases, three generations of this southern family wait to board a northern- bound train in 1912. In Chicago, the League on Urban Conditions among Negroes, which became the Urban League, sought to ease the transition of southern blacks to life in the North by distributing cards such as the one shown here (front and back).

Description “The text on the cards distributed by the Urban League reads, If you are a stranger in the city; If you want a job; If you want a place to live; If you are having trouble with your employer; If you want information or advice of any kind; Call upon; The Chicago League on Urban Conditions among Negroes. 3719 South State Street. Telephone Douglas 9098; T. Arnold Hill. Executive Secretary. No charges. No fees. We want to help You.

The text on another card below it reads, Self- Help. 1. Do not loaf. 2. Get a job at once. 3. Do not live in crowded rooms. Others can be obtained. 3. Do not carry on loud conversations in street cars and public places. 4. Do not keep your children out of school. 5. Do not send for your family until you get a job. 5. Do not think you can hold your job unless you are industrious, sober, efficient and prompt. Cleanliness and fresh air are necessary for good health. In case of sickness send immediately for a good physician. Become an active member in some church as soon as you reach the city. Issued by ______________.”

At nearly the same time, another migration was under way in the American Southwest. Between 1910 and 1920, the Mexican-born population in the United States soared from 222,000 to 478,000. Mexican immigration resulted from developments on both sides of the border. When Mexicans revolted against dictator Porfirio Díaz in 1910, initiating a ten-year civil war, migrants flooded northward. In the United States, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and later the disruption of World War I cut off the supply of cheap foreign labor and caused western employers in the expanding rail, mining, construction, and agricultural industries to look south to Mexico for workers.

Like immigrants from Europe and black migrants from the South, Mexicans in the American Southwest dreamed of a better life. And like the others, they found both opportunity and disappointment. Wages were better than in Mexico, but life in the fields, mines, and factories was hard, and living conditions — in boxcars, labor camps, or urban barrios — were dismal. Signs warning “No Mexicans Allowed” increased rather than declined. Mexicans were considered excellent prospects for manual labor but not for

citizenship. By 1920, ethnic Mexicans made up about three-fourths of California’s farm laborers.

Among Mexican Americans, some of whom had lived in the Southwest for more than a century, los recién llegados (the recent arrivals) encountered mixed reactions. One Mexican American expressed this ambivalence: “We are all Mexicans anyway because the gueros [Anglos] always treat all of us alike.” But he also called for immigration quotas because the recent arrivals drove down wages and incited white prejudice that affected all ethnic Mexicans.

Despite friction, large-scale immigration into the Southwest meant a resurgence of the Mexican cultural presence, which became the basis for greater solidarity and political action for the ethnic Mexican population. In 1929 in Texas, Mexican Americans formed the League of United Latin American Citizens.

Postwar Politics and the Election of 1920 A thousand miles away in Washington, D.C., President Woodrow Wilson, bedridden and paralyzed, ignored the mountain of domestic troubles — labor strikes, the Red scare, race riots, immigration backlash — and insisted that the 1920 election would be a “solemn referendum” on the League of Nations. Dutifully, the Democratic nominees for president, James M. Cox of Ohio, and for vice president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt of New York,

campaigned on Wilson’s international ideals. The Republican Party chose the handsome, friendly Warren Gamaliel Harding, senator from Ohio.

Harding found the winning formula when he declared that “America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums [questionable remedies], but normalcy.” But what was “normalcy”? Harding explained: “By ‘normalcy’ I don’t mean the old order but a regular steady order of things. I mean normal procedure, the natural way, without excess.” Eager to put wartime crusades and postwar strife behind them, voters responded by giving Harding the largest presidential victory ever: 60.5 percent of the popular vote and 404 out of 531 electoral votes (Map 22.6). Harding’s election lifted the national pall, signaling a new, more easygoing era.

MAP 22.6 The Election of 1920

Description “The map shows the number of votes obtained by each Presidential candidate as follows:

Warren G. Harding (Republican): Maine, 6; New Hampshire, 4; Vermont, 4; Massachusetts, 18; New York, 45; Rhode Island, 5; Connecticut, 7; New Jersey, 14; Delaware,3; Maryland, 8; Pennsylvania, 38; West Virginia, 8; Ohio, 24; Michigan, 15; Indiana, 15;Tennessee, 12; Illinois, 29; Wisconsin, 13; Iowa, 13; Missouri, 18; Minnesota, 12; North Dakota, 5; South Dakota, 5; Nebraska, 8; Kansas, 10; Oklahoma, 10; Montana, 4; Wyoming, 3; Colorado, 6; New Mexico, 3; Arizona, 3; Utah, 4; Idaho, 4; Washington, 7; Oregon, 5; Nevada, 3; and California, 13.

Electoral Vote: 404; Popular vote: 16,143,407; Percent of Vote, 60.5 percent.

James M. Cox (Democrat): Virginia, 12; Kentucky, 13; North Carolina, 12; South Carolina, 9; Georgia, 14; Alabama, 12; Florida, 6; Mississippi, 10; Louisiana, 10; Arkansas, 9; and Texas, 20.

Electoral Vote: 127; Popular vote: 9,130,328; Percent of Vote, 34.2 percent.

Eugene V. Debs (Socialist): Electoral Vote: 0; Popular vote: 919,799; Percent of Vote, 3.4 percent.”

��

How did the Red scare contribute to the erosion of civil liberties after the war?

Conclusion: Victory, but at what cost? America’s experience in World War I was exceptional. For much of the world, the Great War produced great destruction — blackened fields, ruined factories, and millions of casualties. But in the United States, war and prosperity marched hand in hand. America emerged from the war with the strongest economy in the world and a position of international preeminence.

Still, the nation paid a heavy price both at home and abroad. American soldiers and sailors encountered unprecedented horrors — submarines, poison gas, machine guns — and more than 100,000 died. But rather than redeeming the sacrifice of others as Woodrow Wilson promised, the peace that followed the armistice tarnished it.

At home, rather than permanently improving working conditions, advancing public health, and spreading educational opportunity as progressives had hoped, the war threatened to undermine the achievements of the previous two decades. Rather than promoting democracy, the war bred fear, intolerance, and repression that led to a crackdown on dissent and a demand for conformity. Reformers could count only woman suffrage as a permanent victory.

Woodrow Wilson had promised more than anyone could deliver. Progressive hopes of extending democracy and liberal reform nationally and internationally were dashed. In 1920, a bruised and disillusioned society stumbled into a new decade. The era coming to an end had called on

Americans to crusade and sacrifice. The new era promised peace, prosperity, and a good time.

Chapter Review

��

Triple Alliance Triple Entente Lusitania Bolshevik American Expeditionary Force (AEF) Eighteenth Amendment (prohibition) Nineteenth Amendment (woman suffrage) Fourteen Points League of Nations Versailles treaty Red scare Schenck v. United States

�� The Path to War

Describe Woodrow Wilson’s foreign policy during his first term in office. How did Wilson see the relationship between the United States and the rest of the world?

Is it fair to describe the American people as “isolationist” prior to America’s entry into World War I? Why or why not?

The Home Front

How did the war affect the progressive agenda? How did progressives use the war to achieve their goals?

How did the domestic efforts of the American people affect U.S. participation in World War I abroad?

A Troubled Peace

What vision did Wilson have of the postwar world? Why did the Senate refuse to endorse his vision, as embodied in the Treaty of Versailles?

What led to the Red scare, and why did it eventually subside?

�� , ��

Why did Woodrow Wilson initially oppose the country’s entry into World War I? What events and experiences helped change his mind?

How did World War I change the place of the United States in the world? What role in world affairs was America poised to take as it entered the 1920s?

��

1914 U.S. Marines occupy Veracruz, Mexico. Archduke Franz Ferdinand assassinated. Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia. Germany attacks Russia and France. Great Britain declares war on Germany.

1915 German U-boat sinks Lusitania.

1915–1920 Great migration of blacks out of the South and Mexicans out of Mexico.

1916 Pancho Villa attacks Americans in Mexico and New Mexico. Wilson reelected. Republican and Progressive parties endorse woman suffrage.

1917 United States declares war on Germany. Selective Service Act enacted. Committee on Public Information created. Espionage Act and Trading with the Enemy Act enacted.

1918 Russia arranges separate peace with Germany.

U.S. Marines see first major combat. Armistice ending World War I signed. President Wilson endorses woman suffrage. Sedition Act enacted. Republicans win majority in both houses of Congress. Wilson gives Fourteen Points speech. Global influenza epidemic starts.

1919 Paris peace conference begins. Treaty of Versailles signed. Wave of labor strikes occurs. Red scare grips Americans. Schenck v. United States decision limits free speech.

1920 Prohibition begins. American women get right to vote. Senate votes against ratification of Treaty of Versailles. American Civil Liberties Union founded. Palmer raids ordered. Warren G. Harding elected president.

�� 23 �� 1920–1932

�� This chapter will explore the following questions:

How did big business shape the “New Era” of the 1920s? In what ways did the Roaring Twenties challenge traditional values? Why did the relationship between urban and rural America deteriorate in the 1920s? How did President Hoover respond to the economic crash of 1929? What impact did the economic depression have on everyday life? Conclusion: Why did the hope of the 1920s turn to despair?

�� BORN IN 1863 ON A FARM IN DEARBORN, MICHIGAN, HENRY FORD at sixteen fled rural life for Detroit, where he became a journeyman machinist. In 1893, he put together one of the first successful gasoline-driven carriages in the United States. In 1903, Ford gathered twelve workers in a 250-by-50-foot shed and created the Ford Motor Company. By 1920, he had already produced six million automobiles; by 1927, the figure reached fifteen million. In 1920, a Ford car cost $845; in 1928, the price was less than $300, within range of most of the country’s skilled workingmen. Henry Ford put America on wheels, and in the eyes of most Americans he was an authentic American hero.

Ford’s early cars were custom-made one at a time. By 1914, his cars were being built along a continuously moving assembly line. Workers bolted on parts brought to them by cranes and conveyor belts. In 1920, one car rolled off the Ford assembly line every minute; in 1925, one appeared every ten seconds. Ford made only one kind of car, the Model T, which became synonymous with mass production (Map 23.1).

When Ford began his rise, progressive critics condemned the industrial giants of the nineteenth century as “robber barons” who lived in luxury while reducing their workers to wage slaves. Ford, however, identified with the common folk and saw himself as the benefactor of average Americans. But like the age in which he lived, Ford was more complex and more contradictory than this simple image suggests.

A man of genius whose compelling vision of modern mass production led the way in the 1920s, Ford was also cranky, tightfisted, and mean- spirited. He hated Jews and Catholics, bankers and doctors, liquor and tobacco, and his money allowed him to act on his prejudices. His automobile plants made him a billionaire, but their regimented assembly lines reduced workers to near robots. On the cutting edge of modern technology, Ford nevertheless remained nostalgic about rural values. He sought to revive the past in Greenfield Village, where he relocated buildings from a bygone era, including his parents’ farmhouse. His museum contrasted sharply with the roaring Ford assembly plant at River Rouge. Yet Ford insisted that if Americans remained true to their farming past and managed to be modern and scientific at the same time, all would be well.

Tension between traditional values and modern conditions lay at the heart of the conflicted 1920s. For the first time, more Americans lived in urban than in rural areas, and cities seemed to harbor everything rural people opposed. While millions admired urban America’s sophisticated new style and consumer products, others condemned postwar society for its loose morals and vulgar materialism. The Ku Klux Klan and other champions of an older America resorted to violence as well as words when they condemned the era’s “new woman,” “New Negro,” and surging immigrant populations. Those who sought to dam the tide of change proposed prohibition, Protestantism, and patriotism.

The public, disillusioned with the outcome of World War I, turned away from the Christian moralism and idealism of the Progressive Era. In the 1920s, Ford and businessmen like him replaced political reformers such as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson as the models of progress. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce crowed, “The American businessman is the most influential person in the nation.” The fortunes of the era rose, then in 1929 crashed, according to the values and practices of the business community. When prosperity collapsed, the nation entered the most serious economic depression of all time.

How did big business shape the “New Era” of the 1920s? Once Woodrow Wilson left the White House, government activism and civic reform declined and private economic endeavor took on new energy. The rise of a freewheeling economy and a heightened sense of individualism caused Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover to declare that America had entered a “New Era,” one of many labels used to describe the complex 1920s.

Some terms focus on the decade’s high-spirited energy and cultural change: Roaring Twenties, Jazz Age, Flaming Youth. Others echo the rising importance of money — Dollar Decade, Golden Twenties — or reflect the sinister side of gangster profiteering — Lawless Decade. Still others emphasize the lonely confusion of the Lost Generation and the stress and anxiety of the Aspirin Age.

America in the twenties was many things, but President Calvin Coolidge got at an essential truth when he declared, “The business of America is business.” Politicians and diplomats proclaimed business the heart of American civilization as they promoted its products at home and abroad. Average men and women bought into the idea that business and its wonderful products were what made America great, as they snatched up the flood of new consumer items American factories sent forth. Nothing caught Americans’ fancy more powerfully than the automobile.

A Business Government Republicans controlled the White House from 1921 to 1933. The first of the three Republican presidents was Warren Gamaliel Harding, the Ohio senator who in his 1920 campaign called for a “return to normalcy,” by which he meant the end of public crusades and a return to private pursuits. Harding appointed a few men of real merit to his cabinet. Herbert Hoover, for example, the former head of the wartime Food Administration, became secretary of commerce. But wealth and friendship also counted: Andrew Mellon, one of the richest men in America, became secretary of the treasury, and Harding handed out jobs to his friends, members of his old “Ohio gang.” This curious combination of ability and favoritism made for an uneven administration.

When Harding was elected in 1920 (see chapter 22, Map 22.6), the unemployment rate hit 20 percent, the highest ever up to that point. The bankruptcy rate of farmers increased tenfold. Harding pushed measures to regain national prosperity — high tariffs to protect American businesses, price supports for agriculture, and the dismantling of wartime government control over industry in favor of unregulated private business. “Never before, here or anywhere else,” the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said proudly, “has a government been so completely fused with business.”

Harding’s policies to boost American enterprise made him very popular, but ultimately his small-town friendliness and trusting ways did him in. Some of his friends in the Ohio gang were up to their necks in crime. Three of Harding’s appointees went to jail. Interior Secretary Albert Fall was

convicted of accepting bribes of more than $400,000 for leasing oil reserves on public land in Teapot Dome, Wyoming, and “Teapot Dome” became a synonym for political corruption.

On August 2, 1923, when Harding died from a heart attack, Vice President Calvin Coolidge became president. Coolidge, who once said that “the man who builds a factory builds a temple, the man who works there worships there,” continued and extended Harding’s policies of promoting business and limiting government. Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon reduced government’s control of the economy and cut taxes for corporations and wealthy individuals. New rules for the Federal Trade Commission severely restricted its power to regulate business. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover hedged government authority by encouraging trade associations that ideally would keep business honest and efficient through voluntary cooperation.

Coolidge found an ally in the Supreme Court. For years, the Court had thwarted federal regulation of hours, wages, and working conditions on the grounds that such legislation was the proper concern of the states. In the 1920s, the Court found ways to limit even a state’s ability to regulate business. It ruled against closed shops — businesses where only union members could be employed — while confirming the right of owners to form trade associations. In 1923, the Court declared unconstitutional the District of Columbia’s minimum-wage law for women, asserting that the law interfered with the freedom of employer and employee to make labor contracts. The Court and the president attacked government intrusion in the

free market, even when the prohibition of government regulation threatened the welfare of workers.

The election of 1924 confirmed the defeat of the progressive belief that the state should take a leading role in ensuring the general welfare. To oppose Coolidge, the Democrats nominated John W. Davis, a corporate lawyer whose conservative views differed little from Republican principles. Only the Progressive Party and its presidential nominee, Senator Robert La Follette of Wisconsin, offered a genuine alternative. When La Follette championed labor unions, regulation of business, and protection of civil liberties, Republicans coined the slogan “Coolidge or Chaos.” Voters chose Coolidge in a landslide. Coolidge was right when he declared, “This is a business country, and it wants a business government.” What was true of the government’s relationship to business at home was also true abroad.

Promoting Prosperity and Peace Abroad After leading the Senate’s successful effort to block U.S. membership in the League of Nations, Henry Cabot Lodge boasted, “We have torn Wilsonism up by the roots.” But repudiation of Wilson’s internationalism and rejection of collective security through the League of Nations did not mean that the United States retreated into isolationism. The United States emerged from World War I with its economy intact and enjoyed a decade of stunning growth. New York replaced London as the center of world finance, and the United States became the world’s chief creditor. Trade with the world and continuing chaos in Europe made withdrawal impossible.

One of the Republicans’ most ambitious foreign policy initiatives was the Washington Disarmament Conference, which convened in 1921 to establish a global balance of naval power. Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes shaped the Five-Power Naval Treaty of 1922 committing Britain, France, Japan, Italy, and the United States to reductions of their navies. The treaty led to the scrapping of more than two million tons of warships, by far the world’s greatest success in disarmament. By fostering international peace, Hughes also helped make the world a safer place for American trade.

A second major effort on behalf of world peace came in 1928, when Secretary of State Frank Kellogg joined French foreign minister Aristide Briand to produce the Kellogg-Briand pact. Nearly fifty nations signed the solemn pledge to renounce war and settle international disputes peacefully.

But Republican administrations preferred private-sector diplomacy to state action. With the blessing of the White House, a team of American financiers led by Charles Dawes swung into action when Germany suspended its war reparation payments in 1923. Impoverished, Germany was staggering under the massive bill of $33 billion presented by the victorious Allies in the Versailles treaty. When Germany failed to meet its annual payment, France occupied Germany’s industrial Ruhr Valley, creating the worst international crisis since the war. In 1924, the Dawes Plan halved Germany’s annual reparation payments, initiated fresh American loans to Germany, and caused the French to retreat from the Ruhr. Although the United States failed to join the League of Nations, it continued to exercise significant economic and diplomatic influence abroad. These Republican successes overseas helped fuel prosperity at home.

Automobiles, Mass Production, and Assembly-Line Progress The automobile industry emerged as the largest single manufacturing industry in the nation. Henry Ford shrewdly located his company in Detroit, knowing that key materials for his automobiles were manufactured in nearby states (Map 23.1). The heart of the American economy, the automobile industry not only employed hundreds of thousands of workers directly but also created whole new industries — filling stations, garages, fast-food restaurants, and “guest cottages” (motels). The need for tires, glass, steel, highways, oil, and refined gasoline for automobiles provided millions of related jobs. By 1929, one American in four found employment directly or indirectly in the automobile industry. “Give us our daily bread” was no longer addressed to the Almighty, one commentator joked, but to Detroit.

MAP 23.1 Auto Manufacturing

By the mid-1920s, the massive coal and steel industries of the Midwest had made that region the center of the new automobile industry. A major roadbuilding program by the federal government carried the thousands of new cars produced each day to every corner of the country.

Description “The map highlights the states according to the number of factories producing auto parts, materials, and vehicles as follows:

8 to 20: New Hampshire; Rhode Island; Delaware; Virginia; North Carolina; Tennessee; Alabama; Arkansas; Louisiana; Nebraska; Kansas; Texas; Colorado; and Oregon.

21 to 50: Massachusetts; New Jersey; Wisconsin; Minnesota; Iowa; Missouri; and Washington.

51 to 100: Pennsylvania; Indiana; and Illinois.

More than 100: New York; Ohio; Michigan; and California.

The map also shows major roads connecting most of the northern states of Maine, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin. Major roads were also in North Carolina, Florida, and Texas. In the west, major roads connect Washington, Oregon, and California.”

Automobiles changed where people lived, what work they did, how they spent their leisure, even how they thought. Hundreds of small towns decayed because the automobile enabled rural people to skip them on their way to cities. In cities, streetcars began to disappear as workers moved to the suburbs and commuted to work along crowded highways. Nothing shaped modern America more than the automobile, and efficient mass production made the automobile revolution possible.

Mass production by the assembly-line technique became standard in almost every factory, from automobiles to meatpacking to cigarettes. To improve efficiency, corporations reduced assembly-line work to the simplest, most repetitive tasks. Changes on the assembly line and in management, along with technological advances, significantly boosted overall efficiency. Between 1922 and 1929, productivity in manufacturing increased 32 percent. Average wages, however, increased only 8 percent.

Auto Assembly Line This photograph of an automobile assembly line in the 1920s makes clear that workers stayed in one place while work came to them.

Industries also developed programs for workers that came to be called welfare capitalism. Some businesses improved safety and sanitation inside factories. They also instituted paid vacations and pension plans. Welfare capitalism encouraged loyalty to the company and discouraged traditional labor unions. One labor organizer in the steel industry bemoaned the success of welfare capitalism. “So many workmen here had been lulled to sleep by the company union, the welfare plans, the social organizations fostered by the employer,” he declared, “that they had come to look upon

the employer as their protector, and had believed vigorous trade union organization unnecessary for their welfare.”

Consumer Culture Mass production fueled corporate profits and national economic prosperity. During the 1920s, personal income increased by one-third, the cost of living stayed the same, and unemployment remained low. But the rewards of the economic boom were not evenly distributed. Americans who labored with their hands inched ahead, while white-collar workers enjoyed significantly more money and more leisure time to spend it. Mass production of new products — automobiles, radios, refrigerators, electric irons, washing machines — produced a consumer goods revolution.

In this new era of plenty, more people than ever conceived of the American dream in terms of the things they could acquire. Middletown (1929), a study of the inhabitants of Muncie, Indiana, revealed that Muncie had become, above all, “a culture in which everything hinges on money.” Faced with technological and organizational change beyond their understanding, many citizens had lost confidence in their ability to play an effective role in civic affairs. More and more, they became passive consumers, deferring to the supposed expertise of leaders in politics and economics.

The rapidly expanding business of advertising stimulated the desire for new products and attacked the traditional values of thrift and saving. Advertising linked material goods to the fulfillment of every spiritual and emotional need. Americans increasingly measured their social status, and indeed their

personal worth, on the yardstick of material possessions. Happiness itself depended on owning a car and choosing the right cigarettes and toothpaste.

By the 1920s, the United States had achieved the physical capacity to satisfy Americans’ material wants (Figure 23.1). The economic problem shifted from production to consumption: Who would buy the goods flying off American assembly lines? One solution was to expand America’s markets in foreign countries, and government and business joined in that effort. Another solution to the problem of consumption was to expand the market at home.

FIGURE 23.1 Production of Consumer Goods, 1921–1929

Transportation, communications, and entertainment changed the lives of consumers in the 1920s. Laborsaving devices for the home were popular, but the vastly greater sales of automobiles and radios showed that consumerism was powerful in moving people’s attention beyond their homes.

Description “The bar graph shows types of consumer goods on the horizontal axis and production in thousands on the vertical axis.

1921: Automobiles, 1,400,000; Electric ranges, 10,000; Phonographs, 520,000; Radio receivers, 5,000; Refrigerators, 8,000; and Typewriters, 460,000.

1925: Automobiles, 380,000; Electric ranges, 12,000; Phonographs, 600,000; Radio receivers, 2,300,000; Refrigerators, 12,000; and Typewriters, 750,000.

1929: Automobiles, 4,500,000; Electric ranges, 250,000; Phonographs, 550,000; Radio receivers, 4,900,000; Refrigerators, 900,000; and Typewriters, 990,000.

All data are approximate.”

Henry Ford realized early on that “mass production requires mass consumption.” He understood that automobile workers not only produced cars, but would also buy them if they made enough money. “One’s own employees ought to be one’s own best customers,” Ford said. In 1914, he raised wages in his factories to $5 a day, more than twice the going rate. High wages made for workers who were more loyal and more exploitable, and high wages returned as profits when workers bought Fords.

Many people’s incomes, however, could not satisfy the growing desire for consumer goods. The solution was installment buying — a little money down, a payment each month, which allowed people to purchase expensive

items they could not otherwise afford or to purchase items before saving the necessary money. As one newspaper announced, “The first responsibility of an American to his country is no longer that of a citizen, but of a consumer.” During the 1920s, America’s motto became spend, not save. Old values — “Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without” — seemed about as pertinent as a horse and buggy. American culture had shifted.

��

How did mass production transform the United States?

In what ways did the Roaring Twenties challenge traditional values? The theme of personal freedom resulted in a whirl of activity that earned the decade the name “Roaring Twenties.” Prohibition made lawbreakers of millions of otherwise decent folk. Flappers and “new women” challenged traditional gender boundaries. Other Americans enjoyed the Roaring Twenties through the words and images of vastly expanded mass communication, especially radio and movies. In America’s big cities, particularly New York, a burst of creativity produced the “New Negro,” who disturbed white Americans. The “Lost Generation” of writers, profoundly disillusioned with mainstream America’s culture, fled the country.

Prohibition Republicans generally sought to limit the powers of government, but the twenties witnessed a great exception to this rule when the federal government implemented one of the last reforms of the Progressive Era: the Eighteenth Amendment, which banned the manufacture and sale of alcohol. It took effect in January 1920 (see chapter 22). Enforcement of prohibition led to marked growth in the federal government, as it created a huge apparatus to fight crime and built new prisons to house the influx of convicts.

Drying up the rivers of liquor that Americans consumed, supporters of prohibition claimed, would eliminate crime, boost production, and lift the nation’s morals. Prohibition would destroy the saloon, which according to a leading “dry” was the “most fiendish, corrupt and hell-soaked institution that ever crawled out of the slime of the eternal pit.” Instead, prohibition initiated a fourteen-year orgy of lawbreaking unparalleled in the nation’s history.

The Treasury Department agents charged with enforcing prohibition faced a staggering task. Although they smashed more than 172,000 illegal stills in 1925 alone, loopholes in the law almost guaranteed failure. Sacramental wine was permitted, allowing fake clergy to party with fake congregations. Farmers were allowed to ferment their own “fruit juices.” Doctors and dentists could prescribe liquor for medicinal purposes.

In 1929, a Treasury agent in Indiana reported intense local resistance to enforcement of prohibition. “Conditions in most important cities very bad,” he declared. “Lax and corrupt public officials great handicap … prevalence of drinking among minor boys and the … middle or better classes of adults.” The “speakeasy,” an illegal nightclub, became common in American cities. Speakeasies’ dance floors led to the sexual integration of the formerly all-male drinking culture, changing American social life forever. Detroit, probably America’s wettest city, was home to more than 20,000 illegal drinking establishments, making the alcohol business the city’s second-largest industry, behind automobile manufacturing.

Eventually, serious criminals took over the liquor trade. During the first four years of prohibition, Chicago witnessed more than two hundred gang- related killings as rival mobs struggled for control of the liquor trade. The most notorious event came on St. Valentine’s Day 1929, when Alphonse “Big Al” Capone’s Italian-dominated mob machine-gunned seven members of a rival Irish gang. Capone’s bootlegging empire brought in $95 million a year, when a chicken dinner cost 5 cents. Federal authorities finally sent Capone to prison for income tax evasion. “I violate the Prohibition law — sure,” he told a reporter. “Who doesn’t? The only difference is, I take more chances than the man who drinks a cocktail before dinner.”

Capone’s self-serving statement made a valid point. Enforcement of prohibition was less than evenhanded. Vigilante groups, including the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, the Anti-Saloon League, and the Ku Klux Klan, helped enforce prohibition and targeted immigrants, working people, and African Americans. Working-class Americans asked why “the poor man’s club is raided while the rich man is left alone.” The answer was that the war on alcohol was fueled by the same class, ethnic, and religious discrimination that permeated so much of life in the 1920s.

By the end of the “dry” years, Americans overwhelmingly favored the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment, the “noble experiment,” as Herbert Hoover called prohibition. In 1931, a panel of experts reported that the experiment had failed. The social and political costs of prohibition outweighed the benefits. Prohibition fueled criminal activity, corrupted the police, demoralized the courts, and caused ordinary citizens to break the

law. In 1933, the nation ended prohibition, making the Eighteenth Amendment the only constitutional amendment to be repealed.

The New Woman Of all the changes in American life in the 1920s, none sparked more heated debate than changes in the traditional roles of women. Increasing numbers of women worked and went to college, defying older gender norms. Even mainstream magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post began publishing stories about young, college-educated women who drank gin cocktails, smoked cigarettes, and wore skimpy dresses and dangly necklaces. Before the Great War, the new woman dwelt in New York City’s bohemian Greenwich Village, but afterward the mass media brought her into middle- class America’s living rooms.

When the Nineteenth Amendment, ratified in 1920, granted women the vote, feminists felt liberated and expected women to reshape the political landscape. A Kansas woman declared, “I went to bed last night a slave[;] I awoke this morning a free woman.” Women began pressuring Congress to pass laws that especially concerned women, including measures to protect women in factories. Black women lobbied particularly for federal courts to assume jurisdiction over the crime of lynching. But women’s only significant national legislative success came in 1921 when Congress enacted the Sheppard-Towner Act, which extended federal assistance to states seeking to reduce high infant mortality rates.

A number of factors helped check women’s political influence. Male domination of both political parties, the rarity of female candidates, and lack of experience in voting, especially among recent immigrants, kept many women away from the polls. In some places, male-run political organizations actually disfranchised women, despite the Nineteenth Amendment. In the South, poll taxes, literacy tests, and outright terrorism continued to decimate the vote of African Americans, men and women alike.

Most important, rather than forming a solid voting bloc, feminists divided. Some argued for women’s right to special protection; others demanded equal protection. The radical National Woman’s Party fought for an Equal Rights Amendment that stated flatly: “Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States.” The more moderate League of Women Voters feared that the amendment threatened state laws that provided women special protection, such as preventing them from working on certain dangerous machines. Congress defeated the Equal Rights Amendment in 1923, and radical women were forced to work for the causes of birth control, legal equality for minorities, and the end of child labor through other means.

Economically, more women worked for pay — approximately one in four by 1930 — but they clustered in “women’s jobs.” Women almost monopolized the occupations of librarian, nurse, elementary school teacher, secretary, typist, and telephone operator. Women also represented 40 percent of salesclerks by 1930. More female white-collar workers meant

that fewer women were interested in protective legislation for women; new women wanted salaries and opportunities equal to men’s.

Increased earnings gave working women more buying power in the new consumer culture. A stereotype soon emerged of the flapper, so called because of the short-lived fad of wearing unbuckled rain boots. The flapper had short bobbed hair and wore lipstick and rouge. She spent freely on the latest styles, and she danced all night to wild jazz. As F. Scott Fitzgerald described her in his novel This Side of Paradise (1920), she was “lovely and expensive and about nineteen.”

The new woman both reflected and propelled the modern birth control movement. Margaret Sanger, the crusading pioneer for contraception during the Progressive Era (see chapter 21), restated her principal conviction in 1920: “No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.” Shifting strategy in the twenties, Sanger courted the conservative American Medical Association and linked birth control with the eugenics movement, which advocated limiting reproduction among “undesirable” groups. Thus, she made contraception a respectable subject for discussion.

Flapper style and values spread from coast to coast through films, novels, magazines, and advertisements. New women challenged American convictions about separate spheres for women and men, the double standard of sexual conduct, and Victorian ideas of proper female appearance and behavior. Although only a minority of American women became flappers,

all women, even those who remained at home, heard about girls gone wild and felt the great changes of the era.

The New Negro The 1920s witnessed the emergence not only of the “new woman” but also of the “New Negro.” African Americans who challenged the caste system that confined dark-skinned Americans to the lowest levels of society confronted whites who insisted that race relations would not change.

As southern blacks flooded northern cities (see chapter 22), they found decent housing in short supply, even if they had the money to pay. Property owners resolved to keep their neighborhoods all white. Although the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a law requiring segregated housing in 1917, inventive white homeowners created other means to draw racial boundaries. Real estate agents refused to show blacks houses in white neighborhoods. Banks turned down blacks for mortgages. Whites signed agreements promising not to sell their homes to blacks. If a black family managed to slip through their defenses, whites resorted to violence. Housing was only one area of life that sparked racial violence.

The prominent African American intellectual W. E. B. Du Bois and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) aggressively pursued the passage of a federal anti-lynching law to counter mob violence against blacks in the South. At the same time, however, many disillusioned poor urban blacks turned to the new leadership of the Jamaican-born Marcus Garvey, who urged African Americans to rediscover

the heritage of Africa, take pride in their own achievements, and maintain racial purity by avoiding miscegenation. In 1917, Garvey launched the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) to help African Americans gain economic and political independence entirely outside white society.

In 1919, the UNIA created its own shipping company, the Black Star Line, to support the “Back to Africa” movement among black Americans. In 1927, the federal government pinned charges of illegal practices on Garvey and deported him to Jamaica. Nevertheless, the issues Garvey raised about racial pride, black identity, and the search for equality persisted, and his legacy remains at the center of black nationalist thought.

Still, most African Americans maintained hope in the American promise. In New York City, hope and talent came together. The city’s black population jumped 115 percent (from 152,000 to 327,000) in the 1920s. In Harlem in uptown Manhattan, an extraordinary mix of black artists, sculptors, novelists, musicians, and poets set out to create a distinctive African American culture that drew on their identities as Americans and Africans. As scholar Alain Locke put it in 1925, they introduced to the world the “New Negro” to proclaim African Americans’ creative genius.

The emergence of the New Negro came to be known as the Harlem Renaissance. Building on the achievement and pride displayed by black soldiers during the war, black artists sought to defeat the fresh assault of racial discrimination and violence with poems, paintings, and plays. “We younger Negro artists … intend to express our individual dark-skinned

selves without fear or shame,” poet Langston Hughes said of the Harlem Renaissance. “If white people are pleased, we are glad. If they are not, it doesn’t matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly, too.”

The Harlem Renaissance produced dazzling talent. Black writer James Weldon Johnson, who in 1903 had written the Negro national anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” wrote God’s Trombones (1927), in which he expressed the wisdom and beauty of black folktales from the South. The poetry of Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Countee Cullen celebrated the vitality of life in Harlem. Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) explored the complex passions of black people in a southern community. Black painters, led by Aaron Douglas, linked African art, which had recently inspired European artists, to the concept of the New Negro.

Despite such ferment, Harlem for most whites remained a separate black ghetto known only for its lively nightlife. Fashionable whites crowded into Harlem’s segregated nightclubs, the most famous of which was the Cotton Club, where they believed they could hear “real” jazz, a relatively new musical form, in its “natural” surroundings. The vigor of the Harlem Renaissance left a powerful legacy for black Americans, but the creative burst did little in the short run to dissolve the prejudice of white society.

Entertaining the Masses In the 1920s, popular culture, like consumer goods, was both mass- produced and mass-consumed. The rise of movies, radios, music, and sports

meant that Americans found plenty to do, and in doing the same things, they helped create a national culture.

Nothing offered entertainment like the movies. Hollywood, California, discovered the successful formula of combining wealth, sex, and adventure. Admission was cheap, and by 1929 the movies were drawing more than 80 million people in a single week. Hollywood created “movie stars,” glamorous beings whose every move was tracked by fan magazines. Rudolph Valentino, described as “catnip to women,” and Clara Bow, the “It Girl” (everyone knew what it was), became household names. Most loved of all was the comic Charlie Chaplin, whose famous character, the Little Tramp, showed an endearing inability to cope with the complexities of modern life.

Americans also found heroes in sports. Baseball became the national pastime in the 1920s. It remained essentially a game played by and for the working class. In George Herman “Babe” Ruth, baseball had the most cherished free spirit of the time. The rowdy escapades of the “Sultan of Swat” demonstrated that sports offered a way to break out of the ordinariness of everyday life. By “his sheer exuberance,” one sportswriter declared, Ruth “has lightened the cares of the world.”

The public also fell in love with a young boxer from the grim mining districts of Colorado. As a teenager, Jack Dempsey had made his living hanging around saloons betting he could beat anyone in the house. When he took the heavyweight crown just after World War I, he was revered as the people’s champ, the hero of average Americans who felt increasingly

confined by bureaucracy and routine. In Philadelphia in 1926, a crowd of 125,000 fans saw challenger Gene Tunney pound and defeat the people’s champ.

Football, mostly a college sport, appealed to the upper classes. The most famous coach, Knute Rockne of Notre Dame, celebrated football for its life lessons of hard work and teamwork. Let the professors make learning as exciting as football, Rockne advised, and the problem of getting young people to learn would disappear. But in keeping with the times, football moved toward a more commercial enterprise. Harold “Red” Grange, “the Galloping Ghost,” led the way by going from stardom at the University of Illinois to the Chicago Bears in the new professional football league.

The decade’s hero worship reached its peak in the celebration of Charles Lindbergh, a young pilot who set out on May 20, 1927, to become the first person to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic. Newspapers tagged Lindbergh “the Lone Eagle,” the perfect hero for an age that celebrated individual accomplishment. “Charles Lindbergh,” one journalist proclaimed, “is the stuff out of which have been made the pioneers that opened up the wilderness. His are the qualities which we, as a people, must nourish.” Lindbergh realized, however, that technical and organizational complexity was fast reducing chances for solitary achievement. Consequently, he titled his book about the flight We (1927) to include the machine that had made it all possible.

Another machine, the radio, became crucial to mass culture in the 1920s. The nation’s first licensed radio station, KDKA in Pittsburgh, began

broadcasting in 1920, and soon American airwaves buzzed with news, sermons, soap operas, sports, comedy, and music. Because they could now reach prospective customers in their own homes, advertisers bankrolled radio’s rapid growth. Between 1922 and 1929, the number of radio stations in the United States increased from 30 to 606. In just seven years, homes with radios jumped from 60,000 to a staggering 10.25 million.

The Lost Generation Some writers and artists felt alienated from America’s mass-culture society, which they found shallow and materialistic. Silly movie stars disgusted them. They believed that business culture blighted American life. In their minds, Henry Ford made a poor hero. Young, white, and mostly college educated, these expatriates, as they came to be called, felt embittered by the war and renounced the progressives who had promoted it as a crusade. For them, Europe — not Hollywood or Harlem — seemed the place to seek their potential.

The American-born writer Gertrude Stein, long established in Paris, remarked famously as the young exiles gathered around her, “They are the lost generation.” Most of the expatriates, however, believed to the contrary that they had finally found themselves. The Lost Generation helped launch the most creative period in American art and literature in the twentieth century. The novelist whose simple, clean style best illustrated the expatriate efforts to make art mirror basic reality was Ernest Hemingway. Admirers found the clipped language and hard lessons of his novel The Sun Also Rises (1926) to be perfect expressions of a world stripped of illusions.

Many writers who remained in America were expatriates in spirit. Before the war, intellectuals had eagerly joined progressive reform movements. Afterward, they were more likely critics of vulgar American culture. Novelist Sinclair Lewis in Main Street (1920) and Babbitt (1922) poked fun at his native Midwest as a cultural wasteland. Writers like James Thurber used humor to criticize America’s ridiculous habits. And southern writers, led by William Faulkner, explored the South’s tragic class and race heritage. Worries about alienation surfaced as well. F. Scott Fitzgerald spoke sadly in This Side of Paradise (1920) of a disillusioned generation “grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken.”

��

How did the new freedoms of the 1920s challenge older conceptions of gender and race?

Why did the relationship between urban and rural America deteriorate in the 1920s? Large areas of the country did not share in the wealth of the 1920s. By the end of the decade, 40 percent of the nation’s farmers were landless, and 90 percent of rural homes lacked indoor plumbing, gas, or electricity. Rural America’s traditional distrust of urban America turned to despair in the 1920s when the census reported that the majority of the population had shifted to the city (Map 23.2). Once the “backbone of the republic,” rural Americans had become poor country cousins. Urban domination over the nation’s political and cultural life and sharply rising economic difference drove rural Americans in often ugly, reactionary directions.

MAP 23.2 The Shift from Rural to Urban Population, 1920–1930

The movement of whites and Hispanics toward urban and agricultural opportunity made Florida, the West, and the Southwest the regions of fastest population growth. By contrast, large numbers of blacks left the rural South to find a better life in the North. Almost all migrating blacks went from the countryside to cities in distant parts of the nation, while white and Hispanic migrants tended to move shorter distances toward familiar places.

Description “The map shows the following:

Urban areas of strong growth: New York; Philadelphia; Baltimore; Washington D. C; Tampa; Miami; Detroit; Chicago; St. Louis; Amarillo; Odessa; Brownsville; Los Angeles; and San Francisco.

Regions with very strong growth: Florida (southern half); along the southeastern border and northwestern part of Texas; southern part of Arizona; southern California; southeastern

region of Nevada; southwest part of Oregon; and a small area in the southern region of South Dakota.

Regions of loss: Eastern parts of Maine; southern part of New York; central part of Pennsylvania; eastern Virginia; most of Georgia, Kentucky, Idaho, Ohio, and Indiana; most of Illinois except Chicago and other northeastern regions; eastern Iowa; Missouri; northwestern Arkansas; eastern Kansas; most of Wisconsin except the southeastern region bordering Illinois; northeastern half of Minnesota; and most of Idaho and Montana.

Moderate growth: This includes the regions not covered under regions showing very strong growth and regions of loss in the United States.

Migration of black population took place from Mississippi, Louisiana, eastern Texas, Alabama, lower Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia to St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington D. C.”

Cities seemed to stand for everything rural areas stood against. Rural America imagined itself as solidly Anglo-Saxon (despite the presence of millions of African Americans in the South and Mexican Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans in the West), and the cities seemed to be filled with undesirable immigrants. Rural America was the home of old- time Protestant religion, and the cities teemed with Catholics, Jews, liberal Protestants, and atheists. Rural America championed old-fashioned moral standards — abstinence and self-denial — while the cities spawned every imaginable vice. In the 1920s, frustrated rural people sought to recapture their country by helping to push through prohibition, dam the flow of immigrants, revive the Ku Klux Klan, defend the Bible as literal truth, and defeat an urban Roman Catholic for president.

Rejecting the Undesirables

Before the war, when about a million immigrants arrived each year, some citizens warned that foreigners who would never become truly American were drowning the nation. War against Germany and its allies expanded nativist and antiradical sentiment. After the war, large-scale immigration resumed (another 800,000 immigrants arrived in 1921) at a moment when industrialists no longer needed new factory laborers. Returning veterans, as well as African American and Mexican migration, had relieved labor shortages. Union leaders feared that millions of poor immigrants would undercut their efforts to organize American workers. Rural America’s God- fearing Protestants were particularly alarmed that most of the immigrants were Catholic or Jewish. In 1921, Congress responded by severely restricting immigration.

Three years later, Congress very nearly slammed the door shut. The Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 limited the number of immigrants to no more than 161,000 a year and established quotas for each European nation. The act revealed the fear and racism that fueled anti-immigration legislation. While it cut immigration by more than 80 percent, it squeezed some nationalities far more than others. Backers of Johnson-Reed, who declared that America had become the “garbage can and the dumping ground of the world,” manipulated quotas to ensure entry only to “good” immigrants from western Europe. The law, for example, allowed Great Britain 62,458 entries, but Russia could send only 1,992. Johnson-Reed reversed the trend toward immigration from southern and eastern Europe, which by 1914 had amounted to 75 percent of the yearly total.

The 1924 law also reaffirmed the 1880s legislation barring Chinese immigrants and added Japanese and other Asians to the list of the excluded. But it left open immigration from the Western Hemisphere because farmers in the Southwest demanded continued access to cheap agricultural labor. During the 1920s some 500,000 Mexicans crossed the border legally. In addition, Congress in 1924 passed the Indian Citizenship Act, which extended suffrage and citizenship to all Native Americans.

Rural Americans, who had most likely never laid eyes on a Polish packinghouse worker, a Slovak coal miner, an Armenian sewing machine operator, or a Chinese laundry worker, strongly supported immigration restriction, as did industrialists and labor leaders. The laws of the 1920s marked the end of the era symbolized by the Statue of Liberty’s open-armed welcome to Europe’s “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

Antiforeign hysteria climaxed in the trial of two anarchist immigrants from Italy, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Arrested in 1920 for robbery and murder in South Braintree, Massachusetts, the men were sentenced to death by a judge who openly referred to them as “anarchist bastards.” In response to doubts about the fairness of the verdict, a blue-ribbon review committee found the trial judge guilty of a “grave breach of official decorum” but refused to recommend a motion for retrial. When Massachusetts executed Sacco and Vanzetti on August 23, 1927, fifty thousand American mourners followed the caskets, convinced that the men had died because they were immigrants and radicals, not because they were murderers.

Sacco and Vanzetti Murder suspects Bartolomeo Vanzetti (left) and Nicola Sacco (right) talk with Sacco’s wife, Rosina, while waiting in the prisoners’ dock. Even today, the 1927 executions symbolize for some the shortcomings of American justice.

The Rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan Members of the Ku Klux Klan shared the nation’s sour antiforeign mood. The Klan first appeared in the South during Reconstruction to thwart black freedom and ended with the reestablishment of white supremacy (see chapter 16). In 1915, the Klan was reborn at Stone Mountain, Georgia, but when the new Klan extended its targets beyond black Americans, it quickly spread beyond the South. Under a banner proclaiming “100 percent

Americanism,” the Klan promised to defend family, morality, and traditional American values against the threats posed by blacks, immigrants, radicals, feminists, Catholics, and Jews.

Building on the frustrations of rural America, the Klan in the 1920s spread throughout the nation, helping to shape politics in Indiana, Illinois, California, Oregon, Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Kansas. The Klan believed that its America was under siege. “One by one all our traditional moral standards went by the boards or were so disregarded that they ceased to be binding,” Klan imperial wizard Hiram Wesley Evans explained in 1926. “The sacredness of our Sabbath, of our homes, of chastity, and finally even our right to teach our own children in schools [represented] fundamental facts and truth torn away from us.” The Klan cast its members as outcasts in their own land.

Eventually, social changes, along with criminal behavior, crippled the Klan. Immigration restrictions eased the worry about invading foreigners, and sensational wrongdoing by Klan leaders cost it the support of many supporters. Grand Dragon David Stephenson of Indiana, for example, went to jail for the kidnapping and rape of a woman who subsequently committed suicide. Yet the social grievances, economic problems, and religious anxieties of the countryside and small towns remained alive, ready to be ignited.

The Scopes Trial

In 1925 in a Tennessee courtroom, old-time religion and the new spirit of science went head-to-head. The confrontation occurred after several southern states passed legislation against the teaching of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution in the public schools. Scientists and civil liberties organizations called for a challenge to the law, and John Scopes, a young biology teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, offered to test his state’s ban on teaching evolution. When Scopes came to trial, Clarence Darrow, a brilliant defense lawyer from Chicago, volunteered to defend him. Darrow took on the prosecution’s William Jennings Bryan, three-time Democratic nominee for president, fundamentalist Christian, and symbol of rural America.

The Scopes trial quickly degenerated into a media circus. The first trial to be covered live on radio, it attracted a nationwide audience. When under relentless questioning by Darrow, Bryan declared on the witness stand that he did indeed believe that the world had been created in six days and that Jonah had lived in the belly of a whale, most urban observers ridiculed Bryan as a simpleton. Nevertheless, the Tennessee court upheld the law and punished Scopes with a $100 fine. Although fundamentalism won the battle, it lost the war.

Baltimore journalist H. L. Mencken had the last word in a merciless obituary for Bryan, who died just a week after the trial ended. Portraying the “monkey trial” as a battle between the country and the city, Mencken denounced Bryan as a “charlatan, a mountebank, a zany without shame or dignity,” motivated solely by “hatred of the city men who had laughed at him for so long.”

As Mencken’s acid words indicated, Bryan’s humiliation was not purely a victory of reason and science. It also revealed the disdain urban people felt for country people and the values they clung to. The Ku Klux Klan revival and the Scopes trial dramatized and inflamed divisions between city and country, intellectuals and the uneducated, the privileged and the poor, the doubters and the faithful.

Al Smith and the Election of 1928 The presidential election of 1928 brought many of the developments of the 1920s — prohibition, immigration, religion, and the clash of rural and urban values — into sharp focus. Republicans emphasized the economic success of their party’s pro-business government and turned to Herbert Hoover, the energetic secretary of commerce and symbol of 1920s prosperity. But because both parties generally agreed that the American economy was basically sound, the campaign turned on social issues that divided Americans.

The Democrats nominated four-time governor of New York Alfred E. Smith. Smith adopted “The Sidewalk of New York” as a campaign theme song and seemed to represent all that rural Americans feared and resented. A child of immigrants, Smith got his start in politics with the help of New York City’s Irish-dominated Tammany Hall political machine, to many the worst example of big-city corruption. He denounced immigration quotas, signed New York State’s anti-Klan bill, and opposed prohibition, believing that it was a nativist attack on immigrant customs. When Smith admitted enjoying an occasional beer, prohibition forces dubbed him “Alcohol Al.”

But Smith’s greatest vulnerability in the heartland was his religion. He was the first Catholic to run for president. A Methodist bishop in Virginia denounced Roman Catholicism as “the Mother of ignorance, superstition, intolerance and sin” and begged Protestants not to vote for a candidate who represented “the kind of dirty people that you find today on the sidewalks of New York.”

Hoover, who neatly combined the images of morality, efficiency, service, and prosperity, won the election by a landslide (Map 23.3). He received nearly 58 percent of the vote and gained 444 electoral votes to Smith’s 87. The only bright spot for Democrats was the nation’s cities, which voted Democratic. The decade-long war on alcohol had succeeded in bringing into the Democratic Party millions of new voters, especially immigrants and African Americans, who previously voted Republican.

MAP 23.3 The Election of 1928

Description “The map shows the votes won by the presidential candidates of 1928 election in each state:

Herbert Hoover (Republican): Maine, 6; New Hampshire, 4; Vermont, 4; Connecticut, 7; New Jersey, 14; New York, 45; Delaware, 3; Maryland, 8; Pennsylvania, 38; West Virginia, 8; Virginia, 12; North Carolina, 12; Tennessee, 12; Kentucky, 13; Ohio, 24; Michigan, 15; Indiana, 15; Illinois, 29; Wisconsin, 13; Minnesota, 12; Iowa, 13; Missouri, 18; North Dakota, 5; South Dakota, 5; Nebraska, 5; Kansas, 10; Oklahoma, 10; Texas, 20; Montana, 4; Wyoming, 3; Colorado, 6; New Mexico, 3; Idaho, 4; Nevada, 3; Utah, 4; Arizona, 3; Washington, 7; Oregon, 5; Nevada, 3; and California, 13.

Electoral vote: 444; Popular vote, 21,391,381; Percent of popular vote, 57.4 percent.

Alfred E. Smith (Democrat): Massachusetts, 18; Rhode Island, 5; South Carolina, 9; Georgia, 14; Alabama, 12; Mississippi, 10; Kansas, 9; and Louisiana, 10.

Electoral vote: 87; Popular vote, 15,016,443; Percent of popular vote, 40.3 percent.

Norman Thomas (Socialist): Electoral vote, 0; Popular vote: 881,951; Percent of popular vote, 2.3 percent.”

��

How did some Americans resist cultural change?

How did President Hoover respond to the economic crash of 1929? At his inauguration in 1929, Hoover told the American people, “Given a chance to go forward with the policies of the last eight years, we shall soon with the help of God be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation.” Those words came back to haunt Hoover when eight months later, the prosperity he celebrated collapsed in the stock market crash of 1929. The nation ended nearly three decades of barely interrupted economic growth. Like much of the world, the United States fell into the most serious economic depression of all time. Hoover’s reputation was among the first casualties, along with the reverence for business that had been the hallmark of the New Era.

Herbert Hoover: The Great Engineer When Hoover became president in 1929, he seemed the perfect choice to lead a prosperous business nation. His rise from poor Iowa orphan to one of the world’s most celebrated mining engineers by the time he was thirty confirmed America’s rags-to-riches ideal. His success in feeding civilian victims of the fighting during World War I won him acclaim as “the Great Humanitarian” and led Woodrow Wilson to name him head of the Food Administration once the United States entered the war. Hoover’s reputation soared even higher as secretary of commerce in the Harding and Coolidge administrations.

Hoover belonged to the progressive wing of his party. “The time when the employer could ride roughshod over his labor[ers] is disappearing with the doctrine of ‘laissez-faire’ on which it is founded,” he declared in 1909. Hoover brought a reform agenda to the White House: “We want to see a nation built of home owners and farm owners. We want to see their savings protected. We want to see them in steady jobs. We want to see more and more of them insured against death and accident, unemployment and old age. We want them all secure.”

But Hoover also had ideological and political liabilities. Principles that appeared strengths in the prosperous 1920s — individual self-reliance, industrial self-management, and a limited federal government — became straitjackets when economic catastrophe struck. Moreover, Hoover had never held an elected public office, had a poor political touch, and was too thin-skinned to be an effective politician. Even so, most Americans considered him “a sort of superman” able to solve any problem. But he confided to a friend his fear that “if some unprecedented calamity should come upon the nation … I would be sacrificed to the unreasoning disappointment of a people who expected too much.” The distorted national economy set the stage for the calamity Hoover so feared.

The Distorted Economy In the spring of 1929, the United States enjoyed a fragile prosperity. Although America had become the world’s leading economy, it had done little to help rebuild Europe’s shattered economy after World War I. Instead, the Republican administrations demanded that Allied nations repay their

war loans, creating a tangled web of debts and reparations that sapped Europe’s economic vitality. To boost American business, the United States enacted tariffs that prevented other nations from selling their goods to Americans. Fewer sales meant that foreign nations had less money to buy American goods. American banks propped up the nation’s export trade by extending credit to foreign customers, deepening their debt.

America’s domestic economy was also in trouble. Wealth was badly distributed. Farmers continued to suffer from low prices and chronic indebtedness. The average income of farm families was only $240 per year. The wages of industrial workers, though rising during the decade, failed to keep up with productivity and corporate profits. Overall, nearly two-thirds of all American families lived on less than the $2,000 per year that economists estimated would “supply only basic necessities.” In sharp contrast, the wealthiest 1 percent of the population received 15 percent of the nation’s income — the amount received by the poorest 42 percent. The Coolidge administration worsened the deepening inequality by cutting taxes on the wealthy.

By 1929, the inequality of wealth produced a serious problem in consumption. The rich, brilliantly portrayed in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby (1925), spent lavishly, but they could absorb only a tiny fraction of the nation’s output. For a time, the new device of installment buying — buying on credit — kept consumer demand up. By the end of the decade, four out of five cars and two out of three radios were bought on credit.

Signs of economic trouble began to appear at mid-decade. New construction slowed down. Automobile sales faltered. Companies began cutting back production and laying off workers. Between 1921 and 1928, as investment and loan opportunities faded, five thousand banks failed, wiping out the life savings of hundreds of thousands.

The Crash of 1929 Even as the economy faltered, Americans remained upbeat. Hoping for even bigger slices of the economic pie, Americans speculated wildly in the stock market on Wall Street. Between 1924 and 1929, the values of stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange increased by more than 400 percent. Buying stocks on margin — that is, putting up only part of the money at the time of purchase — accelerated. Some people got rich this way, but those who bought on credit could finance their loans only if their stocks increased in value. A Yale economist assured doubters that stock prices had reached “a permanently high plateau.” Former president Calvin Coolidge declared that, at current prices, stocks were a bargain. But President Hoover observed, “The only trouble with capitalism is capitalists. They’re too damned greedy.”

Finally, in the autumn of 1929, the market hesitated. Investors nervously began to sell their overvalued stocks. The dip quickly became a panic on October 24, the day that came to be known as Black Thursday. More panic selling came on Black Tuesday, October 29, the day the market suffered a greater fall than ever before. In the next six months, the stock market lost six-sevenths of its total value.

It was once thought that the crash alone caused the Great Depression. It did not. In 1929, the national and international economies were already riddled with severe problems. But the dramatic losses in the stock market crash and the fear of risking what was left acted as a great brake on economic activity. The collapse on Wall Street shattered the New Era’s confidence that America would enjoy perpetually expanding prosperity.

Hoover and the Limits of Individualism When the bubble broke, Americans expressed relief that Hoover sat in the White House. Not surprisingly for a man who had been such an active secretary of commerce, Hoover acted quickly to arrest the decline. In November 1929, to keep the stock market collapse from ravaging the entire economy, Hoover called a White House conference of business and labor leaders. He urged them to join in a voluntary plan for recovery: Businesses would maintain production and keep their workers on the job; labor would accept existing wages, hours, and conditions. Within a few months, however, the bargain fell apart. As demand for their products declined, industrialists cut production, sliced wages, and laid off workers. Poorly paid or unemployed workers could not buy much, and their decreased spending led to further cuts in production and further loss of jobs. Thus began the terrible spiral of economic decline.

To deal with the problems of rural America, Hoover got Congress to pass the Agricultural Marketing Act in 1929. The act created the Farm Board, which used its budget of $500 million to buy up agricultural surpluses and

thus, it was hoped, raise prices. But prices continued to fall. To help end the decline, Hoover joined conservatives in urging protective tariffs on agricultural goods, and the Hawley-Smoot tariff of 1930 established the highest rates in history. The same year, Congress also authorized $420 million for public works projects to give the unemployed jobs and create more purchasing power. In three years, the Hoover administration nearly doubled federal public works spending.

But with each year of Hoover’s term, the economy weakened. Tariffs did not end the suffering of farmers because foreign nations retaliated with increased tariffs of their own that crippled American farmers’ ability to sell abroad. In 1932, Hoover hoped to help hard-pressed industry with the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), a federal agency empowered to lend government funds to endangered banks and corporations. The theory was trickle-down economics: Pump money into the economy at the top, and in the long run the people at the bottom would benefit. Or, as one critic put it, “Feed the sparrows by feeding the horses.” In the end, very little of what enemies of the RFC called a “millionaires’ dole” trickled down to the poor.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of workers lost their jobs each month. By 1932, an astounding one-quarter of the American workforce (nearly thirteen million people) was unemployed. There was no direct federal assistance, and state services and private charities were swamped. The depression that began in 1929 devastated much of the world, but no other industrialized nation provided such feeble support to the jobless. Cries grew louder for the federal government to give hurting people relief.

Hoover was no do-nothing president, but there were limits to his conception of the government’s proper role in fighting the economic disaster. He compared direct federal aid to the needy to the “dole” in Britain, which he thought destroyed the moral fiber of the chronically unemployed. “Prosperity cannot be restored by raids on the public Treasury,” Hoover declared. Besides, he said, the poor could rely on their neighbors to protect them “from hunger and cold.” In 1931, he allowed the Red Cross to distribute government-owned agricultural surpluses to the hungry. In 1932, he relaxed his principles further to offer small federal loans, not gifts, to the states to help them in their relief efforts. But Hoover’s restricted notions of legitimate government action proved vastly inadequate to address the problems of restarting the economy and ending human suffering.

��

Why did the American economy collapse in 1929?

What impact did the economic depression have on everyday life? In 1930, suffering on a massive scale set in. Men and women hollow-eyed with hunger grew increasingly bewildered and angry in the face of cruel contradictions. They saw agricultural surpluses pile up in the countryside and knew that their children were going to bed hungry. They saw factories standing idle, yet they knew that they and millions of others were willing to work. The gap between the American people and leaders who failed to resolve these contradictions widened as the depression deepened. By 1932, America’s economic problems had created a dangerous social and political crisis.

The Human Toll Statistics only hint at the human tragedy of the Great Depression. When Hoover took office in 1929, the American economy stood at its peak. When he left in 1933, it had reached its twentieth-century low (Figure 23.2). In 1929, national income was $88 billion. By 1933, it had declined to $40 billion. In 1929, unemployment was 3.1 percent, or 1.5 million workers. By 1933, unemployment stood at 25 percent, almost 13 million workers. In Cleveland, Ohio, 50 percent of the workforce was jobless, and in Toledo, 80 percent. By 1932, more than 9,000 banks had shut their doors, wiping out millions of savings accounts.

FIGURE 23.2 Manufacturing and Agricultural Income, 1920–1940

After economic collapse, recovery in the 1930s began under New Deal auspices.

Description “The graph has years along the horizontal axis and income in millions of dollars along the vertical axis. The agricultural income stood at 12,800 million dollars in 1920 but declined to 8,000 million dollars in 1921. It picked up steadily during the subsequent years to 11,000 million dollars by 1928 but, saw a steep decline to 5,000 million dollars in early 1930s after which it climbed again gradually mid-1935 onward. However, it could only account for 9,000 million dollars by 1940. On the other hand, income from manufacturing was 16,500 million dollars in 1920 but declined to 12,500 million dollars in 1921. It then picked up slowly over the course of years to cross 15,000 million dollars in 1925 and continued to increase until 1928 when the income from manufacturing stood at 17,000

million dollars. This was followed by a massive decline to 8,000 million dollars by 1932. The income began to rise again year after year from 1933 and peaked at 16,500 million dollars by 1936. Though it dropped to 13,500 million dollars soon after this, it again began picking up slowly and stood at 13,600 million dollars by 1940.

All data are approximate.”

Jobless, homeless victims wandered in search of work, and the tramp, or hobo, became one of the most visible figures of the decade. Riding the rails or hitchhiking, a million vagabonds moved southward and westward looking for seasonal agricultural work. Other unemployed men and women, sick or less hopeful, huddled in doorways, overcome, one man remembered, by “helpless despair and submission.” Scavengers haunted alleys behind restaurants in search of food. One writer told of an elderly woman who always took off her glasses to avoid seeing the maggots crawling over the garbage she ate. In 1931, four New York City hospitals reported ninety-five deaths from starvation. “I don’t want to steal,” a Pennsylvania man wrote to the governor, “but I won’t let my wife and boy cry for something to eat…. How long is this going to keep up? I cannot stand it any longer.”

Rural poverty was most acute. Tenant farmers and sharecroppers, mainly in the South, revealed how poverty could crush the human spirit. Eight and a half million people, three million of them black, crowded into cabins without plumbing, electricity, or running water. They subsisted — just barely — on salt pork, cornmeal, molasses, beans, peas, and whatever they could hunt or fish. When economist John Maynard Keynes was asked whether anything like this degradation had existed before, he replied, “Yes, it was called the Dark Ages and it lasted four hundred years.”

There was no federal assistance to meet this human catastrophe, only a patchwork of strapped charities and broke state and local agencies. For a family of four without any income, the best the city of Philadelphia could do was provide $5.50 per week. That was not enough to live on, but better than Detroit, which allotted 60 cents a week before the city ran out of money altogether.

The deepening crisis roused old fears and caused some Americans to look for someone to blame. During the 1920s, cheap agricultural labor from Mexico flowed legally across the U.S. border, welcomed by the large farmers. In the 1930s, however, the public denounced the newcomers as dangerous aliens who took jobs from Americans. Government officials, most prominently those in Los Angeles County, targeted Mexican residents for deportation, regardless of citizenship status. As many as half a million Mexicans and Mexican Americans were deported or fled to Mexico.

The depression deeply affected the American family. Young people postponed marriage. When they did marry, they produced few children. White women, who generally worked in low-paying service areas, did not lose their jobs as often as men who worked in steel, automobile, and other heavy industries. Idle husbands suffered a loss of self-esteem. “Before the depression,” one unemployed man reported, “I wore the pants in this family, and rightly so.” Jobless, he lost self-respect and also “the respect of my children, and I am afraid that I am losing my wife.” Employers discriminated against married women workers, but necessity continued to drive women into the marketplace. As a result, by 1940, some 25 percent more women were employed for wages than in 1930.

Denial and Escape President Hoover assured Americans that economic recovery was on its way, but makeshift shantytowns, called “Hoovervilles,” that sprang up on the edges of America’s cities contradicted the president’s optimism. Newspapers, used as cover by those sleeping on the streets, were “Hoover blankets.” An empty pocket turned inside out was a “Hoover flag,” and jackrabbits caught for food were “Hoover hogs.” Bitter jokes circulated about the increasingly unpopular president. One told of Hoover asking for a nickel to telephone a friend. Flipping him a dime, an aide said, “Here, call them both.”

While Hoover practiced denial, most Americans sought refuge from reality at the movies. Throughout the depression, between 60 million and 75 million people (nearly two-thirds of the nation) scraped together enough change to fill the movie palaces every week. Box office hits such as 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933 capitalized on the hope that prosperity lay just around the corner. But a few filmmakers grappled with realities rather than escape them. The Public Enemy (1931) taught hard lessons about gangsters’ lawbreaking. Indeed, under the new production code of 1930, designed to protect public morals, all movies had to find some way to show that crime did not pay.

Despite Hollywood’s efforts to keep Americans on the right side of the law, crime increased. In the countryside, the plight of people who had lost their farms to bank foreclosures led to the romantic idea that bank robbers were only getting back what banks had stolen from the poor.

Woody Guthrie, a folksinger from Oklahoma, captured the public’s tolerance for outlaws in his tribute to a murderous bank robber with a choirboy face, “The Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd.” Guthrie sang that there were two kinds of robbers, those who used guns and those who used pens, and he observed that robbers with guns, like Pretty Boy Floyd, never drove families from their homes. Named Public Enemy No. 1, Floyd was shot and killed by police in 1934. His funeral in Oklahoma was attended by between twenty and forty thousand people, many of whom viewed Floyd as a tragic figure, a victim of the hard times.

Working-Class Militancy The nation’s working class bore the brunt of the economic collapse. By 1931, William Green, head of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), had turned militant. “I warn the people who are exploiting the workers,” he shouted, “that they can drive them only so far before they will turn on them and destroy them. They are taking no account of the history of nations in which governments have been overturned. Revolutions grow out of the depths of hunger.”

The American people were slow to anger, but on March 7, 1932, several thousand unemployed autoworkers gathered at the gates of Henry Ford’s River Rouge factory in Dearborn, Michigan, to demand work. Pelted with rocks, Ford’s private security forces responded with gunfire, killing four demonstrators. Forty thousand outraged citizens turned out for the unemployed men’s funerals.

Farmers mounted uprisings of their own. When Congress refused to guarantee farm prices, several thousand farmers created the National Farmers’ Holiday Association in 1932, so named because its members planned to take a “holiday” from shipping crops to market. Farm militants also resorted to what they called “penny sales.” When banks foreclosed and put farms up for auction, neighbors warned others not to bid, bought the foreclosed property for a few pennies, and returned it to the bankrupt owners. Activism won farmers little in the way of long-term solutions, but one individual observed that “the biggest and finest crop of revolutions you ever saw is sprouting all over the country right now.”

Even those who had proved their patriotism by serving in World War I rose up in protest against the government. In 1932, tens of thousands of unemployed veterans traveled to Washington, D.C., to petition Congress for the immediate payment of the pension (known as a “bonus”) that Congress had promised them in 1924. Hoover feared that the veterans would spark a riot and ordered the U.S. Army to evict the Bonus Marchers from their camp on the outskirts of the city. Tanks destroyed the squatters’ camps while five hundred soldiers wielding bayonets and tear gas sent the protesters fleeing. The spectacle of the army driving peaceful, petitioning veterans from the nation’s capital further undermined public support for the beleaguered Hoover.

The Great Depression — the massive failure of capitalism — catapulted the Communist Party to its greatest size and influence in American history. Some 100,000 Americans — workers, intellectuals, college students — joined the Communist Party in the belief that only an overthrow of the

capitalist system could save the victims of the depression. In 1931, the party, through its National Miners Union, moved into Harlan County, Kentucky, to support a strike by brutalized coal miners. Mine owners unleashed thugs against the strikers and eventually beat the miners down. But the Communist Party gained a reputation as the most dedicated and fearless champion of the union cause.

The left also led the fight against racism. While both major parties refused to challenge segregation in the South, the Socialist Party, led by Norman Thomas, attacked the system of sharecropping that left many African Americans in near servitude. The Communist Party also took action. When nine young black men in Scottsboro, Alabama (the Scottsboro Boys), were arrested on trumped-up rape charges in 1931, a team of lawyers sent by the party saved the defendants from the electric chair.

“Scottsboro Boys” Nine black youths, ranging in age from thirteen to twenty-one, were convicted of the rape of two white women and sentenced to death by an all-white jury in March 1931. None was executed, and eventually the state dropped the charges against the youngest four and granted paroles to the others. The last Scottsboro Boy left jail in 1950.

Radicals on the left often sparked action, but protests by moderate workers and farmers occurred on a far greater scale. Breadlines, soup kitchens, foreclosures, unemployment, government violence, and cold despair drove patriotic men and women to question American capitalism. “I am as conservative as any man could be,” a Wisconsin farmer explained, “but any economic system that has in its power to set me and my wife in the streets, at my age — what can I see but red?”

��

What was the human toll of the depression?

Conclusion: Why did the hope of the 1920s turn to despair? In the aftermath of World War I, America turned its back on progressive crusades and embraced conservative Republican politics, the growing influence of corporate leaders, and business values. Changes in the nation’s economy — Henry Ford’s automobile revolution, mass production, advertising — propelled fundamental change throughout society. Living standards rose, economic opportunity increased, and Americans threw themselves into private pleasures — gobbling up the latest household goods and fashions, attending baseball and football games and boxing matches, gathering around the radio, and going to the movies. As big cities came to dominate American life, the culture of youth and flappers became the leading edge of what one observer called a “revolution in manners and morals.” At home in Harlem and abroad in Paris, American literature, art, and music flourished.

For many Americans, however, none of the glamour and vitality had much meaning. Instead of seeking thrills at the speakeasies, plunging into speculation on Wall Street, or escaping overseas, the vast majority struggled to earn a decent living. Blue-collar America did not participate fully in white-collar prosperity. Rural America was almost entirely left out of the Roaring Twenties. Country folk, deeply suspicious and profoundly discontented, championed prohibition, revived the Klan, attacked immigration, and defended old-time Protestant religion.

The crash of 1929 and the depression that followed starkly revealed the economy’s crises of international trade and consumption. Hard times swept high living off the front pages of the nation’s newspapers. Different images emerged: hoboes hopping freight trains, strikers confronting police, malnourished sharecroppers staring blankly into the distance, empty apartment buildings alongside cardboard shantytowns, and mountains of food rotting in the sun while guards with shotguns chased away the hungry.

The depression hurt everyone, but the poor were hurt most. As farmers and workers sank into misery, businessmen rallied around Herbert Hoover to proclaim that private enterprise would get the country moving again. But things fell apart, and Hoover faced increasingly radical opposition. Membership in the Socialist and Communist parties surged, and more and more Americans contemplated desperate measures. By 1932, the depression had nearly brought the nation to its knees. America faced its greatest crisis since the Civil War, and citizens demanded new leaders who would save them from the “Hoover Depression.”

Chapter Review

��

Teapot Dome Five-Power Naval Treaty of 1922 welfare capitalism prohibition new woman New Negro Johnson-Reed Act Ku Klux Klan Scopes trial Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) Bonus Marchers Scottsboro Boys

�� Postwar Developments

What place did big business hold in the politics and culture of the 1920s?

How did the economic changes of the 1920s contribute to challenges to social, cultural, and ethical norms?

Resistance to Change

What explains the rising anti-immigrant mood of America in the 1920s?

What cultural divisions between rural and urban America were highlighted by the election of 1928?

The Crash and the Great Depression

What underlying weaknesses in the American and world economies led to the Great Depression?

How did Herbert Hoover respond to the economic crisis that engulfed his presidency? Why were his efforts unsuccessful?

What was the human toll of the Great Depression?

�� , ��

Were the 1920s truly a New Era? Why or why not?

How were American life and culture challenged by the economic collapse of 1929? Why did economic disaster make political change possible?

��

1920 Warren G. Harding elected president. Prohibition begins. Women get right to vote.

1921 Sheppard-Towner Act enacted. Congress restricts immigration.

1922 Teapot Dome scandal breaks. Five-Power Naval Treaty signed.

1923 Harding dies; Vice President Calvin Coolidge becomes president. Equal Rights Amendment defeated in Congress.

1924 Dawes Plan effected. Coolidge elected president. Johnson-Reed Act enacted. Indian Citizenship Act enacted.

1925 Scopes trial held.

1927 Charles Lindbergh flies nonstop across Atlantic.

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti executed. 1928

Kellogg-Briand pact signed. Herbert Hoover elected president.

1929 Middletown published. St. Valentine’s Day murders occur. Stock market collapses.

1930 Congress authorizes $420 million for public works projects. Hawley-Smoot tariff passed.

1931 Scottsboro Boys arrested. Harlan County, Kentucky, coal miners strike.

1932 Reconstruction Finance Corporation established. River Rouge factory demonstration takes place. National Farmers’ Holiday Association formed.

�� 24 �� 1932–1939

�� This chapter will explore the following questions:

Why was Franklin D. Roosevelt elected president in 1932? What were the goals and achievements of the first New Deal? Who opposed the New Deal? Why did the New Deal begin to create a welfare state? Why did the New Deal lose support during Roosevelt’s second term as president? Conclusion: What were the achievements and limitations of the New Deal?

�� IN MARCH 1936, FLORENCE OWENS PILED HER SEVEN CHILDREN INTO her old Hudson. They had been picking beets in southern California, near the Mexican border, but the harvest was over now. Owens headed north, where she hoped to find work picking lettuce. About halfway there, her car broke down. She coasted into a labor camp of more than two thousand migrant workers who were hungry and out of work. Owens set up a lean-to shelter and prepared food for her family while two of her sons worked on the car. They ate half-frozen peas from the field and small birds killed by the children. Owens recalled later, “I started to cook dinner for my kids, and all the little kids around the camp came in. ‘Can I have a bite?…’ And they was hungry, them people was.”

Florence Owens was born in 1903 in Indian Territory, which became the state of Oklahoma. Both of Florence’s parents were Cherokee. When she was seventeen, she married a farmer who moved his growing family to California, where he died of tuberculosis in 1931, leaving Florence a widow with young children.

To support herself and her children, Florence began to work as a farm laborer in California’s Central Valley. She picked cotton, earning about $2 a day. “I’d leave home before daylight and come in after dark,” she explained. “We just existed!” To survive, she worked nights as a waitress, making “50-cents a day and the leftovers.” Sometimes, she

remembered, “I’d carry home two water buckets full” of leftovers for her children.

Like tens of thousands of other migrant laborers, Owens followed the crops along the West Coast from California to Oregon and Washington. Joining Owens and other migrants — many of whom were Mexicans and Filipinos — were Okie refugees from the Dust Bowl, the large swath of Great Plains states that suffered drought, failed crops, and foreclosed mortgages during the 1930s.

Soon after Florence Owens fed her children at the pea pickers’ camp, a car pulled up, and a woman with a camera got out and began to take photographs of Owens. The woman was Dorothea Lange, a photographer employed by a New Deal agency to document conditions among farmworkers in California. Lange snapped six photos of Owens, and climbed back in her car and headed to Berkeley. Owens and her family, their car now repaired, drove off to look for work in the lettuce fields.

Lange’s last photograph of Owens, subsequently known as Migrant Mother, became an icon of the desperate Americans that President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal sought to help. Migrant Mother became Dorothea Lange’s most famous photograph. But neither the publicity nor the New Deal did anything for Florence Owens. She continued to work in the fields, “ragged, hungry, and broke,” as a San Francisco newspaper noted.

Unlike Owens, her children, and other migrant workers, many Americans received government help from Roosevelt’s New Deal. They benefited from New Deal policies designed to provide relief for the needy, to speed economic recovery, and to reform basic institutions of the government and economy. The New Deal provoked bitter opposition from critics on the right and the left. It failed to satisfy fully its own goals of relief, recovery, and reform. But it helped millions of Americans withstand the hardships of the Great Depression. It also energized a powerful political coalition within the Democratic Party that supported Roosevelt and the New Deal. In the process, the federal government became a major presence in the daily lives of most Americans.

Why was Franklin D. Roosevelt elected president in 1932? Unlike most Americans, Franklin Roosevelt came from a wealthy family. His privileged background separated him from the struggles of ordinary people, but in his political career, he sought to help Americans who were less fortunate. During the twelve years he served as president (1933–1945), many rich and powerful people came to hate him as a traitor to his class. Yet millions of Americans, especially those who were poor and unemployed, revered him because he cared about them and their problems.

The Making of a Politician Born in 1882, Franklin D. Roosevelt grew up in a mansion on the Hudson River, north of New York City. Roosevelt planned to go into politics. He hoped to follow in the political footsteps of his cousin, Theodore Roosevelt. When he married another cousin, Eleanor Roosevelt, the current president of the United States — Theodore Roosevelt — gave the bride away. Unlike cousin Teddy, Franklin Roosevelt joined the Democratic Party. In 1920, Democrats chose him as their candidate for vice president on the ticket of their presidential nominee, James M. Cox. Cox lost the election (see chapter 22), but Roosevelt’s energy as a campaigner impressed Democratic Party leaders.

In 1921, when he was thirty-nine, Roosevelt caught polio, which paralyzed both his legs. For the rest of his life, he used a wheelchair. He wore heavy steel braces that allowed him to walk only by leaning on another person.

Tireless physical therapy helped him regain his strength and ambition for high political office.

After his polio attack, Roosevelt went to a therapy center at Warm Springs, Georgia. There he got to know southern Democrats, which helped make him a rare political creature: a New Yorker from the Democratic Party’s urban immigrant, northern wing who got along with white people from the party’s powerful, rural southern wing. By 1928, Roosevelt had recovered enough to campaign successfully for governor of New York. His term as governor showcased his activist policies and became a dress rehearsal for the New Deal.

Governor Roosevelt believed that government should take steps to protect citizens from economic hardships caused by the Great Depression rather than wait passively and hope that the law of supply and demand would eventually improve the economy. According to the laissez-faire views of many conservatives — especially Republicans, but also numerous Democrats — the depression was the result of the market punishing losers and protecting survivors, as the market was supposed to do.

Unlike Roosevelt, conservatives believed that government help for the needy sapped individual initiative and blocked the self-correcting forces of the market. Government help, they claimed, rewarded weak people who were losing the economic struggle to survive. Roosevelt lacked a full- fledged counterargument to these conservative claims, but he sympathized with the plight of poor people. “To these unfortunate citizens,” he declared, “aid must be extended by governments, not as a matter of charity but as a

matter of social duty…. [No one should go] unfed, unclothed, or unsheltered.”

Roosevelt Campaigning During the 1932 presidential campaign, Franklin Roosevelt visited a hospital in Seattle, Washington, and invited some children to meet him. Roosevelt had a special affection for victims of crippling disease, like the girl in the wheelchair shaking his hand. Roosevelt campaigned while sitting in an open car because polio made it extremely difficult for him to stand unassisted. He routinely used a wheelchair when out of the public eye.

To his supporters, Roosevelt seemed to be a leader determined to attack the economic crisis without deviating from democracy or capitalism, unlike the fascists gaining strength in Europe and the Communists in the Soviet

Union. Roosevelt’s ideas about how to revive the economy were vague. A prominent journalist described him in 1931 as “a kind of amiable boy scout … who, without any important qualifications for the office, would very much like to be president.” Roosevelt’s many supporters, however, appreciated his energy and his conviction that government should do something to help Americans who were suffering from the economic collapse.

The Election of 1932 Democrats knew that President Herbert Hoover was very unpopular among voters. That gave the Democratic Party a historic opportunity to recapture the White House in 1932. Since Abraham Lincoln’s election back in 1860, Republican presidents had occupied the White House three-fourths of the time, a trend Democrats hoped to reverse. Democrats, however, had to overcome warring factions that divided their own party by region, religion, culture, and commitment to the status quo. The conservative wing of the Democratic Party included southern, native-born, white, rural Protestants. These Democrats found little common ground with the party’s liberal wing, whose voters were mostly northern, urban, and immigrants, many of them Catholics. Eastern-establishment Democratic dignitaries shared few goals with angry urban factory workers or midwestern and southern farmers. Still, this unruly coalition managed to agree that Franklin Roosevelt should be the Democrats’ presidential candidate.

In a series of speeches, Roosevelt vowed to help “the forgotten man at the bottom of the pyramid” with “bold, persistent experimentation.”

Highlighting his differences with Hoover and the Republicans, he pledged “a new deal for the American people.” Few details about what Roosevelt meant by “a new deal” surfaced in the presidential campaign. He declared that “the people of America want more than anything else … two things: work … and a reasonable measure of security … for themselves and for their wives and children.” Voters decided that whatever Roosevelt’s new deal might be, it was better than reelecting Hoover.

Roosevelt won the 1932 presidential election in a historic landslide. He received 57 percent of the nation’s votes, the first time a Democrat had won a majority of the popular vote since 1852 (Map 24.1). He piled up 472 electoral votes to Hoover’s 59, carrying state after state that had voted Republican for years (Map 24.2). Roosevelt’s coattails swept Democrats into control of Congress by large margins. The popular mandate for change was loud and clear.

MAP 24.1 The Election of 1932

Description “The map shows the following:

Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democrat): New York, 47; Massachusetts, 17; Rhode Island, 4; New Jersey, 16; Maryland, 8; Virginia, 11; West Virginia, 8; Ohio, 26; North Carolina, 13; Kentucky, 11; South Carolina, 8; Georgia, 8; Tennessee, 11; Florida, 7; Alabama, 11; Michigan, 19; Indiana, 14; Wisconsin, 12; Illinois, 29; Missouri, 15; Arkansas, 9; Mississippi, 9; Louisiana, 10; Minnesota, 11; Iowa, 11; North Dakota, 4; South Dakota, 4; Nebraska, 7; Kansas, 9; Oklahoma, 11; Texas, 23; Montana, 4; Wyoming, 3; Colorado, 6; New Mexico, 3; Arizona 3; Idaho, 4; Utah, 6; Nevada, 3; California, 22; Oregon, 5; and Washington, 8.

Electoral vote: 472; Popular Vote, 22,821,857; Percent of popular vote, 57.4 percent.

Herbert C. Hoover (Republican): Maine, 5; New Hampshire, 4; Vermont, 3; Pennsylvania, 36; and Delaware, 3.

Electoral vote: 59; Popular Vote, 15,761,841; Percent of popular vote, 39.7 percent.

Norman Thomas (Socialist):

Electoral vote: 0; Popular Vote, 881,951; Percent of popular vote, 2.2 percent.

William Z. Foster (Communist):

Electoral vote: 0; Popular Vote, 102,991; Percent of popular vote, 0.3 percent.”

MAP 24.2 Electoral Shift, 1928–1932

The Democratic victory in 1932 signaled the rise of a New Deal coalition within which women and minorities, many of them new voters, made the Democrats the majority party for the first time in the twentieth century.

Description

“The map shows the following data:

States that switched from Republican in 1928 to Democrat in 1932: New York; New Jersey; Delaware; Maryland; Virginia; West Virginia; Ohio; North Carolina; Florida; Tennessee; Kentucky; Michigan; Indiana; Illinois; Wisconsin; Missouri; Minnesota; Iowa; North Dakota; South Dakota; Nebraska; Kansas; Oklahoma; Texas; Montana; Wyoming; Colorado; New Mexico; Idaho; Utah; Arizona; Nevada; California; Oregon; and Washington.

States that remained Republican, 1928 and 1932: Maine; New Hampshire; Vermont; Connecticut; and Pennsylvania.

States that remained Democrat, 1928 and 1932: Massachusetts; Rhode Island; South Carolina; Georgia; Alabama; Mississippi; Arkansas; and Louisiana.”

Roosevelt’s victory represented the emergence of what came to be known as the New Deal coalition. Attracting support from farmers, factory workers, immigrants, city folk, African Americans, women, and progressive intellectuals, Roosevelt launched a realignment of the nation’s political loyalties. The New Deal coalition dominated American politics throughout Roosevelt’s presidency and remained powerful long after his death in 1945. United less by their ideas or support for specific policies, voters in the New Deal coalition came together around their faith in Roosevelt’s promise of a government that would somehow change things for the better.

Nobody, including Roosevelt, knew exactly what the New Deal would change or whether the changes would revive the nation’s ailing economy and improve Americans’ lives. But as he said during the presidential campaign, “It is high time to admit with courage that we are in the midst of an emergency at least equal to that of war. Let us mobilize to meet it.”

Roosevelt and many others knew that the future of American capitalism and democracy was at stake.

��

Why did Roosevelt win by a landslide in 1932?

What were the goals and achievements of the first New Deal? At noon on March 4, 1933, Americans gathered around their radios to hear Roosevelt’s inaugural address. He began by declaring his “firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” He promised “direct, vigorous action.” The first months of his administration, termed “the Hundred Days,” fulfilled that promise in a whirlwind of New Deal initiatives.

Roosevelt and his advisers had three related objectives: First, they wanted to provide relief to poor people, especially the one out of four Americans who were unemployed; second, they hoped to stimulate the economic recovery of farms and businesses, thereby creating jobs and reducing the need for relief; and third, they intended to reform the government and economy in order to reduce the risk of future economic depressions and thereby strengthen capitalism. The New Deal never fully achieved these goals of relief, recovery, and reform. But by aiming for them, Roosevelt’s experimental programs greatly expanded government’s role in the nation’s economy and society.

The New Dealers To design and implement the New Deal, Roosevelt needed ideas and people. He convened a “Brains Trust” of economists and other leaders to offer suggestions and advice about the problems facing the nation. He

consulted Democratic leaders throughout the nation. But no New Dealers were more important than the president and his wife, Eleanor. The popular president radiated charm and good cheer, giving the New Deal’s bureaucratic programs a friendly human face.

Eleanor Roosevelt became the New Deal’s unofficial ambassador. As she said, she served as “the eyes and ears of the New Deal,” traveling throughout the nation meeting Americans of all colors and creeds. A North Carolina women’s rights activist recalled, “One of my greatest pleasures was meeting Mrs. Roosevelt…. She was so free of prejudice … and she was always willing to take a stand, and there were stands to take about blacks and women.”

As Roosevelt’s programs swung into action, the millions of people who benefited from the New Deal became grassroots supporters who expressed their appreciation by voting Democratic on election day. In this way, the New Deal created a durable political coalition that reelected Roosevelt in 1936, 1940, and 1944, making him the only four-term president in American history.

Four guiding ideas shaped New Deal policies. First, Roosevelt and his advisers sought capitalist solutions to the economic crisis. They had no desire to eliminate private property or impose socialist programs, such as government ownership of productive resources. Instead, they hoped to save the capitalist economy by correcting its flaws.

Second, Roosevelt’s Brains Trust persuaded him that the greatest flaw of America’s capitalist economy was underconsumption, the root cause of the current economic paralysis. Underconsumption, New Dealers argued, resulted from the gigantic productive success of capitalism. Factories and farms produced more than they could sell to consumers, causing factories to lay off workers and farmers to lose money on bumper crops. Workers without wages and farmers without profits shrank consumption and choked the economy. Somehow, the balance between consumption and production needed to be restored.

Third, New Dealers believed that the immense size and economic power of American corporations needed to be counterbalanced by government and by organizations of workers and small producers. Unlike progressive trustbusters, New Dealers did not seek to splinter big businesses. Roosevelt and his advisers hoped to counterbalance big economic institutions with government programs that focused on protecting individuals and the public interest.

Fourth, New Dealers believed that government must somehow moderate the imbalance of wealth created by American capitalism. Wealth concentrated in a few hands reduced consumption by most Americans and thereby contributed to the current economic gridlock. Government needed to find a way to permit ordinary working people to share more fully in the fruits of the economy. “Our task now,” Roosevelt declared during the presidential campaign, “is … meeting the problem of underconsumption, … adjusting production to consumption, … [and] distributing wealth and products more equitably.”

Banking and Finance Reform Roosevelt wasted no time making good on his inaugural pledge of “action now.” When he took the oath of office, the nation’s banking system was on the brink of collapse. Roosevelt immediately worked to save banks and restore depositors’ confidence. Working round the clock, New Dealers drafted the Emergency Banking Act, which propped up banks with federal funds and required them to follow federal rules and regulations.

To secure the confidence of depositors, Congress passed the Glass-Steagall Banking Act, which started the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). The FDIC guaranteed that if a bank failed, the federal government would reimburse people who had deposited their money in the bank. In addition, the Glass-Steagall Act required commercial banks (which accept deposits and make loans to individuals and small businesses) to be separated from investment banks (which make speculative investments with their funds). This provision tried to protect the finances of Main Street America from the risky speculations of Wall Street wheeler-dealers.

On Sunday night, March 12, while the banks were still closed, Roosevelt broadcast the first of his fireside chats. Speaking in a friendly, informal manner, he explained the new banking legislation that made it “safer to keep your money in a reopened bank than under the mattress.” With such plain talk, Roosevelt translated complex matters into common sense. His fireside chats forged a direct connection — via radio — between the president and millions of Americans. A man from Paris, Texas, expressed that connection by writing Roosevelt, “You are the one & only President

that ever helped a Working Class of People…. Please help us some way I Pray to God for relief.”

The banking legislation and fireside chat worked. Within a few days, most of the nation’s major banks reopened, and they remained open as newly confident depositors switched funds from their mattresses to their bank accounts (Figure 24.1). One New Dealer boasted, “Capitalism was saved in eight days.”

FIGURE 24.1 Bank Failures and Farm Foreclosures, 1932–1942

New Deal legislation to stabilize the economy had its most immediate effect in preventing banks and their depositors from going under and farmers from losing their land.

Description “The graph has years along the horizontal axis and the number of failures and foreclosures along the vertical axis. In 1932, over 1,500 bank failures accounted for 7.6 percent of total bank failures. It shot to 27.4 percent by 1933 marking the failure of over 4,000 banks and recording the highest number of failures. The bank failures reduced to 0.36 percent in 1934 and then to 0.21 percent in 1935. It fluctuated between 0.28 percent and 0.36 percent between 1936 and 1938. It then declined to 0.15 percent by 1940, 0.05 percent by 1941, and to 0.06 percent by 1942.

The farm foreclosures in 1932 stood at 7.7 percent with almost 5,000 farms undergoing foreclosure and by 1933, with 6,000 farms under foreclosure it shot to 8.9 percent. However, it reduced to 8 percent by 1934, 7.7 percent in 1935, and continued to reduce over the years until 1939 when it was 3.2 percent, which accounted for nearly 1,500 farms. It again showed a steep ascent to 5 percent in 1940 and dropped along the subsequent years to 3.9 percent in 1942.”

In his inaugural address, Roosevelt criticized financiers for their greed and incompetence. To prevent the fraud, corruption, and insider trading that had tainted Wall Street and contributed to the crash of 1929, the New Deal set up the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 1934 to oversee financial markets. The SEC licensed investment brokers, monitored all stock transactions, and required corporations to make full disclosures about their finances, opening a new era of public information about corporate balance sheets that persists today. To lead the SEC, Roosevelt appointed a successful Wall Street financier, Joseph P. Kennedy (father of the future president John F. Kennedy). Under Kennedy’s leadership, the SEC helped clean up and regulate Wall Street.

Relief and Conservation Programs Patching the nation’s financial structure gave little relief to hungry and unemployed citizens. A poor man from Nebraska asked Eleanor Roosevelt “if the folk who was borned here in America … are this Forgotten Man, the President had in mind, [and] if we are this Forgotten Man then we are still Forgotten.” The federal government had never assumed responsibility for needy people, except in moments of natural disaster or in emergencies such as the Civil War.

Instead, churches, private charities, county and municipal governments, and occasionally states shouldered the burden of poor relief, usually with meager payments. The crisis of the depression demanded new federal relief efforts, according to New Dealers. A New Yorker who still had a job described the plight of millions: “We work, ten hours a day for six days. In the grime and dirt of a nation [for] … low pay [making us] … slaves — slaves of the depression!”

The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), established in 1933, supported four million to five million households with grants of $20 or $30 a month. FERA also created jobs for the unemployed on thousands of public works projects. Organized under the Civil Works Administration (CWA), these jobs put paychecks worth more than $800 million into the hands of previously jobless workers. Laborers earned wages between 40 and 60 cents an hour working to renovate schools, dig sewers, and rebuild roads and bridges.

The most popular work relief program was the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), set up in 1933. The CCC offered unemployed young men a chance to earn wages while working to conserve natural resources, a lifelong interest of Roosevelt. Women were excluded from the CCC until Eleanor Roosevelt demanded that a token number of women be hired. By the end of the program in 1942, three million CCC workers had left a legacy of vast new parks and recreation areas, along with roads that allowed millions of Americans to enjoy the outdoors. Just as important, the CCC, CWA, and other work relief efforts replaced the disgrace of welfare with the dignity of jobs. As one woman said about her husband’s work relief job, “We aren’t on relief anymore. My husband is working for the Government.”

The New Deal’s most ambitious and controversial natural resources project was the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). Created in 1933, the TVA built dams along the Tennessee River to supply poverty-stricken rural communities with cheap electricity (Map 24.3). The TVA sought to demonstrate that the federal government and local residents could make efficient use of abundant natural resources through a partnership that overcame the barriers erected by state governments and private enterprises. The TVA improved the lives of millions in the region with electric power, flood protection, soil reclamation, and jobs. Many Americans, however, believed the TVA violated the principles of free enterprise through the public ownership of dams and electricity-generating equipment.

MAP 24.3 The Tennessee Valley Authority

The New Deal created the Tennessee Valley Authority to modernize a vast impoverished region with hydroelectric power dams and, at the same time, to reclaim eroded land and preserve old folkways.

Description The Tennessee Valley region encompasses the southern part of Tennessee as well as the southwestern region of Virginia, the western extent of North Carolina, the northern extent of Georgia and Alabama, and the northeastern extent of Mississippi. The areas marked on the map are as follows: A dam and a power plant are constructed along the Tennessee River on the south, near Muscle Shoals. Dams and power plants are marked along the Hiwassee River on the East. The cities marked in the Tennessee Valley region are Paducah

on the northwest; Muscle Shoals on the west; Chattanooga in the south; and Knoxville, Asheville, Bristol, and Virginia on the east.

New sources of hydroelectric power helped the New Deal bring the wonders of electricity to country folk, fulfilling an old progressive dream. When Roosevelt became president, 90 percent of rural Americans lacked electricity. Private electric companies refused to build transmission lines into the sparsely settled countryside when they had a profitable market in more densely populated urban areas.

Beginning in 1935, the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) made low-cost loans available to rural communities for power plants and transmission lines. Within ten years, the REA delivered electricity to nine out of ten farms, giving rural Americans access for the first time to modern conveniences like lightbulbs and electric appliances that urban people had enjoyed for decades.

Agricultural Initiatives Farmers had been mired in agricultural depression since the end of World War I. New Dealers diagnosed the farmers’ plight as a classic case of overproduction and under-consumption. Following age-old practices, farmers tried to compensate for low crop prices by growing more crops. Of course, producing more crops pushed prices lower still. By 1932, a farmer’s income sank to $167 a year, barely one-tenth of the national average.

New Dealers tried to cut agricultural production, thereby raising crop prices and farmers’ income. With more money in their pockets, farm families — who made up one-third of all Americans — would then buy more goods and lift consumption in the entire economy. To reduce production, the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA), passed in 1933, authorized the “domestic allotment plan.” The plan paid farmers not to grow crops. Individual farmers who agreed not to plant crops on a portion of their fields (their “allotment”) received a government payment that compensated them for the crops they did not grow. To qualify for their allotment payments during the first year of the AAA, farmers slaughtered livestock and destroyed crops while millions of Americans went to bed hungry.

The Commodity Credit Corporation gave federal loans to farmers who held their harvested crops off the market and waited for a higher price. New Dealers also sponsored the Farm Credit Act (FCA) to give long-term credit on farm mortgages, allowing debt-ridden farmers to avoid foreclosures that were driving so many off their land (see Figure 24.1).

Crop allotments, commodity loans, and mortgage credit made farmers major beneficiaries of the New Deal. Crop prices rose impressively. Farm income jumped 50 percent by 1936, and FCA loans financed 40 percent of farm mortgage debt by the end of the decade. These gains were distributed fairly equally among farmers in the corn, hog, and wheat region of the Midwest.

In the South’s cotton belt, however, landlords controlled the distribution of New Deal agricultural benefits and shamelessly rewarded themselves. They

took the land worked by black and white sharecroppers and tenant farmers out of production and assigned it to the allotment program. The president of the Oklahoma Tenant Farmers’ Union explained that large farmers who got “Triple-A” payments often used the money to buy tractors and then “forced their tenants and [share] croppers off the land,” causing these “Americans to be starved and dispossessed of their homes in our land of plenty.”

Industrial Recovery Unlike farmers, industrialists cut production with the onset of the depression. Between 1929 and 1933, industrial production fell more than 40 percent as businesses tried to maintain prices. But cutting industrial production meant that millions of workers lost their jobs. Unlike farmers, most urban factory workers needed jobs to eat. Mass unemployment also reduced consumer demand for industrial products, contributing to a downward spiral in both production and jobs, with no end in sight.

Businesses responded by cutting wages for employees who still had jobs, further reducing demand. Competition among industrial producers made the trend worse as one company after another cut labor costs to lower the prices they charged for their products. New Dealers struggled to find a way to break this cycle of unemployment and underconsumption — a way consistent with corporate profits and capitalism.

The New Deal’s National Industrial Recovery Act offered a government- sponsored form of industrial self-government through the National Recovery Administration (NRA), established in 1933. The NRA

encouraged companies in every industry to agree on rules, known as “codes,” that defined fair working conditions, set prices, and ideally reduced competition. The idea behind codes was to stabilize existing industries and save the jobs of their workers. Industry after industry wrote elaborate codes with detailed rules about production, pricing, and competition. In exchange for relaxing federal antitrust laws that prohibited such business agreements, participating companies promised to recognize the right of their workers to organize and engage in collective bargaining. To encourage consumers to patronize businesses with NRA codes, posters with the NRA’s Blue Eagle appeared in shop windows throughout the nation.

New Dealers hoped that NRA codes would protect businesses who operated with a social conscience by treating workers and consumers fairly and promoting the nation’s general economic welfare. Instead, NRA codes tended to strengthen existing business practices. Large corporations wrote codes that primarily served their own interests, rather than the needs of workers or the welfare of the national economy. The failure of codes to cover the millions of workers not employed by industrial businesses, such as domestic workers and agricultural laborers, led one woman to complain to Roosevelt that the NRA “never mentioned the [depression’s] robbery of the Housewives.”

Many business leaders criticized NRA codes as heavy-handed government regulation of private enterprise. In reality, compliance with NRA codes was voluntary, and government enforcement efforts were weak to nonexistent. The NRA did little to reduce unemployment, raise consumption, or relieve

the depression. In effect, the NRA was a New Deal peace offering to business leaders intended to show that Roosevelt did not want to wage war against profits or private enterprise. The peace offering failed, however. Most corporate leaders became bitter opponents of Roosevelt and the New Deal.

A second major industrial recovery initiative was far more successful. In 1933, the New Deal’s Public Works Administration (PWA) launched a massive effort to construct dams, bridges, schools, post offices, and courthouses. These infrastructure projects supported heavy construction companies and employed thousands of workers in all but three of the nation’s 3,071 counties. Spending on public works accounted for more than two-thirds of New Deal budgets. In addition to relieving unemployment, the PWA and its successor the WPA changed the built environment of America, a legacy that persists to the present.

��

How did the New Deal try to attack the Great Depression?

Who opposed the New Deal? New Deal programs provoked fierce criticism. From the right, Republicans and business people charged that the New Deal was too radical, undermining private property, economic stability, and democracy. Critics on the left faulted the New Deal for its failure to relieve the human suffering caused by the depression and for its caution in attacking corporate power and greed.

Resistance to Business Reform New Deal programs rescued capitalism, but business leaders lambasted Roosevelt, even though their economic prospects improved more than those of most other Americans during the 1930s. Republicans and business leaders denounced New Deal efforts to regulate or reform what they considered their private enterprises.

By 1935, two major business organizations, the National Association of Manufacturers and the Chamber of Commerce, openly campaigned against the New Deal. Their criticisms were echoed by the American Liberty League, founded in 1934, which blamed the New Deal for betraying basic constitutional guarantees of freedom and individualism. One League spokesman proclaimed that, “This administration has copied the autocratic tactics of fascism, Hitlerism and communism at their worst.”

Economists who favored rational planning in the public interest and union organizers who sought to raise wages and improve working conditions attacked the New Deal from the left. In their view, the NRA stifled

competition by permitting monopolistic practices. They pointed out that industrial trade associations twisted NRA codes to suit their private interests and raise prices. Labor leaders especially resented the NRA’s willingness to allow businesses to form company-controlled unions while blocking workers from organizing their own unions to bargain for themselves.

The Supreme Court stepped into this cross fire of criticisms in May 1935 and declared that the NRA unconstitutionally conferred powers on an administrative agency that only Congress possessed. NRA codes soon lost the little authority they had. The failure of the NRA demonstrated many Americans’ deep resistance to economic planning and most business leaders’ stubborn refusal to accept government regulations and reforms.

Casualties in the Countryside The AAA weathered opposition better than the NRA. Allotment checks for keeping land unplanted and crop prices high built loyalty among farmers with enough acreage to participate. As a white farmer in North Carolina said, “I stand for the New Deal and Roosevelt …, the AAA … and crop control.”

Protests stirred, however, among those who did not qualify for allotments. The Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union argued passionately that the AAA enriched large farmers while it impoverished small farmers who rented rather than owned their land. One black sharecropper explained why few New Deal agricultural subsidies trickled down to her: “De landlord is

landlord, de politicians is landlord, de judge is landlord, de shurf [sheriff] is landlord, ever’body is landlord, en we [sharecroppers] ain’ got nothin’!” Like the NRA, the AAA tended to help most those who least needed help. Roosevelt’s political dependence on southern Democrats caused him to avoid confronting the economic and racial inequities in the South.

Evicted Sharecroppers The New Deal’s Agricultural Adjustment Administration often resulted in the eviction of tenant farmers when the land they worked was left idle. These African American sharecroppers protested AAA policies that caused cotton farmers to evict them from their homes. They were among the many rural laborers whose lives were made worse by New Deal agricultural policies.

Displaced tenants often joined the army of migrant workers like Florence Owens who straggled across rural America during the 1930s, some to flee Great Plains dust storms. Many migrants came from Mexico to work Texas cotton, Michigan beans, Idaho sugar beets, and California crops of all kinds. But since the number of people willing to take agricultural jobs usually exceeded the number of jobs available, wages fell and native-born white migrants fought to reserve even these low-wage jobs for themselves.

Hundreds of thousands of “Okies” streamed out of the Dust Bowl of Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, and Colorado, where chronic drought and harmful agricultural practices blasted crops and hopes. Parched, poor, and windblown, Okies migrated to the lush fields and orchards of California, living in labor camps and hoping to find work and a future. But migrant laborers seldom found steady work. As one Okie said, “When they need us they call us migrants, and when we’ve picked their crop, we’re bums and we got to get out.”

Politics on the Fringes Politically, the New Deal’s staunchest opponents were in the Republican Party. Republicans were organized, well-heeled, mainstream, and determined to challenge Roosevelt at every turn. But the New Deal also faced challenges from the political fringes, fueled by the hardship of the depression and the hope for a cure.

Socialists and Communists accused the New Deal of being the handmaiden of business elites and of rescuing capitalism from its self-inflicted crisis.

Socialist author Upton Sinclair ran for governor of California in 1934 on a plan that the state take ownership of idle factories and unused land and then give them to cooperatives of working people, a first step toward putting the needs of people above profits. Sinclair lost the election, ending the most serious electoral challenge to the New Deal by socialists.

Some intellectuals and artists sought more radical change by joining left- wing organizations, including the American Communist Party. At its high point in the 1930s, the Communist Party had only about thirty thousand members, most of them immigrants, especially Scandinavians in the upper Midwest and eastern European Jews in major cities. Individual Communists worked to organize labor unions, protect the civil rights of black people, and help the destitute.

But party leaders preached the destruction of capitalism and the overthrow of “bourgeois democracy” in favor of Soviet-style communism. Such talk attracted few followers among the nation’s millions of poor and unemployed. They wanted jobs and economic security within American capitalism and democracy, not violent revolution to establish a dictatorship of the Communist Party.

More powerful radical challenges to the New Deal sprouted from homegrown roots. Many Americans felt overlooked by New Deal programs that concentrated on finance, agriculture, and industry but did not do enough to create jobs or aid the poor. The merciless reality of the depression also eroded the security of people who had jobs but worried

constantly that they, too, might be pushed into the ranks of the unemployed and penniless.

Charles Coughlin, a Catholic priest in Detroit, spoke to and for many worried Americans in his weekly radio broadcasts, which reached a nationwide audience of forty million. He expressed outrage at the suffering and inequities that he blamed on Communists, bankers, and “predatory capitalists.” Coughlin appealed to widespread anti-Semitic sentiments with false claims that the economic predators were mostly Jews. At first, he championed the New Deal, proclaiming, “I will never change my philosophy that the New Deal is Christ’s deal.” Coughlin soon became frustrated by Roosevelt’s refusal to grant him influence, and he turned against the New Deal. In 1935 he founded the National Union for Social Justice, or Union Party, to challenge Roosevelt in the 1936 presidential election.

Dr. Francis Townsend, of Long Beach, California, also criticized the timidity of the New Deal. Angry that many of his retired patients lived in misery, Townsend proposed in 1934 the creation of the Old Age Revolving Pension, which would pay every American over age sixty a pension of $200 a month. To receive the pension, senior citizens had to agree to spend the entire amount within thirty days, thereby stimulating the economy. Townsend organized pension clubs and petitioned the federal government to enact his scheme. When the major political parties ignored his impractical plan, he merged his forces with Coughlin’s Union Party in time for the 1936 election.

A more potent challenge to the New Deal came from the powerful southern wing of the Democratic Party. Huey Long, son of a backcountry Louisiana farmer, was elected governor of the state in 1928 with his slogan “Every man a king, but no one wears a crown.” Unlike nearly all other southern white politicians who harped on white supremacy, Long championed the poor over the rich, country people over city folk, and the humble over elites. As governor, “the Kingfish” — as he liked to call himself — delivered on his promises to provide jobs and build roads, schools, and hospitals.

Long delighted his supporters, who elected him to the U.S. Senate in 1932, where he introduced a sweeping “soak the rich” tax bill that would outlaw personal incomes of more than $1 million and inheritances of more than $5 million. When the Senate rejected his proposal, he decided to run for president, mobilizing more than five million Americans behind his “Share Our Wealth” plan. “Is that right,” Long asked, “when … more [is] owned by 12 men than … by 120,000,000 people? … They own the banks, they own the steel mills, they own the railroads, they own the bonds, they own the mortgages, they own the stores, and they have chained the country from one end to the other.” Like Townsend’s scheme, Long’s program promised far more than it could deliver. The Share Our Wealth campaign died when Long was assassinated in 1935, but his constituency and the wide appeal of a more equitable distribution of wealth persisted.

The challenges to the New Deal from both right and left stirred Democrats to preserve their winning coalition. In the midterm congressional elections of 1934 — normally a time when a president loses support — voters gave

New Dealers a landslide victory. Democrats increased their majority in the House of Representatives and gained a two-thirds majority in the Senate.

��

Why did right-wing and left-wing groups criticize the New Deal?

Why did the New Deal begin to create a welfare state? The popular mandate for the New Deal revealed by the congressional elections persuaded Roosevelt to press ahead with bold new efforts to achieve relief, recovery, and reform. Despite the initiatives of the Hundred Days, the depression still strangled the economy. In 1935, Roosevelt used his congressional majorities to enact major new programs that became the foundation of an American welfare state.

Taken together, these New Deal efforts stretched a safety net under the lives of millions of ordinary Americans. Landmark legislation included Social Security, which provided modest pensions for the elderly, and the Wagner Act, which encouraged the organization of labor unions. New Deal programs helped millions more with jobs, relief, and government support, although many citizens did not qualify for such help. Knitting together the safety net was the idea that when individual Americans suffered because of forces beyond their control, the federal government had the responsibility to support and protect them. The safety net of welfare programs tied the political loyalty of working people to the New Deal and the Democratic Party. As a North Carolina mill worker said, “Mr. Roosevelt is the only man we ever had in the White House who would understand that my boss is a sonofabitch.”

Relief for the Unemployed

First and foremost, Americans still needed jobs. Since the private economy left eight million people jobless by 1935, Roosevelt and his advisers launched a massive work relief program. Roosevelt believed that direct government handouts crippled recipients with “spiritual and moral disintegration … destructive to the human spirit.” Jobs, by contrast, bolstered individuals’ “self-respect, … self-reliance and courage and determination.” With a congressional appropriation of nearly $5 billion — more than all government revenues in 1934 — the New Deal created the Works Progress Administration (WPA) to give unemployed Americans government-funded jobs on public works projects. The WPA put millions of jobless citizens to work on roads, bridges, parks, public buildings, and more. In addition, over Roosevelt’s veto, Congress passed the bonus that gave World War I veterans an average of $580, thereby stimulating the economy.

By 1936, the WPA provided jobs for 7 percent of the nation’s labor force. In effect, the WPA made the federal government the employer of last resort, creating useful jobs when the capitalist economy failed to do so. In hiring, WPA officials tended to discriminate in favor of white men and against women and racial minorities. Still, the WPA made major contributions to both relief and recovery, putting thirteen million men and women to work earning paychecks worth $10 billion.

About three out of four WPA jobs involved construction and renovation of the nation’s physical infrastructure. WPA workers built 572,000 miles of roads, 78,000 bridges, 67,000 miles of city streets, 40,000 public buildings, and much else. In addition, the WPA gave jobs to thousands of artists,

musicians, actors, journalists, poets, and novelists. The WPA also organized sewing rooms for jobless women, giving them work and wages. These sewing rooms produced more than 100 million pieces of clothing that were donated to the needy. Throughout the nation, WPA projects displayed visible evidence of the New Deal’s commitment to public welfare.

Empowering Labor During the Great Depression, factory workers who managed to keep their jobs often had their wages and working hours cut, and they worried constantly about being laid off. When workers tried to organize labor unions to protect themselves, municipal and state governments usually sided with employers. Since the Gilded Age, state and federal governments had been far more effective at busting unions than at busting trusts. The New Deal dramatically reversed the federal government’s stance toward unions. With legislation and political support, the New Deal encouraged the organization of the nation’s working people into unions.

When the head of the United Mine Workers, John L. Lewis, told coal miners that “the President wants you to join a union,” he exaggerated only a little. New Dealers believed that unions would counterbalance the organized power of big corporations by defending working people, maintaining wages, and providing economic peace and commercial stability in place of the bloody violence that often accompanied labor strikes.

Violent battles on the nation’s streets and docks showed the determination of militant labor leaders to organize unions that would protect jobs and

wages. In 1934, striking workers in Toledo, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and elsewhere were beaten and shot by police and the National Guard.

In Congress, labor leaders lobbied for the National Labor Relations Act, a bill sponsored by Senator Robert Wagner of New York that authorized the federal government to intervene in labor disputes and supervise the organization of labor unions. Roosevelt signed the Wagner Act in July 1935, for the first time providing federal support for labor organization — the most important New Deal reform of the industrial order. The Wagner Act guaranteed industrial workers the right to organize unions, putting the might of federal law behind the efforts of labor leaders. If the majority of workers at a company voted for a union, then the union became the sole bargaining agent for the entire workplace, and the employer was legally required to negotiate with the elected union leaders.

The achievements that flowed from the Wagner Act and renewed labor militancy were impressive. When Roosevelt became president in 1933, union membership stood at three million men who were almost entirely skilled workers in trade unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL). With the support of the Wagner Act, union membership expanded to fourteen million by 1945. By then, 30 percent of the industrial workforce was unionized, the highest percentage in American history.

Most of the new union members were factory workers and unskilled laborers, many of them immigrants, women, and African Americans. For decades, established AFL unions had no desire to organize unskilled factory workers. In 1935, under the aggressive leadership of the mine workers’

John L. Lewis and the head of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, Sidney Hillman, a coalition of unskilled workers formed the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). The CIO, helped by the Wagner Act, mobilized organizing drives in major industries, including the bitterly anti- union automobile and steel industries.

The bloody struggle by the CIO-affiliated United Auto Workers (UAW) to organize workers at General Motors climaxed in January 1937. Striking workers occupied the main assembly plant in Flint, Michigan, in a sit-down strike that slashed the plant’s production of 15,000 cars a week to only 150. Stymied, General Motors eventually surrendered and agreed to make the UAW the sole bargaining agent for all the company’s workers and to refrain from interfering with union activity. The UAW expanded its campaign until, after much violence, the entire auto industry was unionized by 1941.

The CIO hoped to ride organizing success in auto plants to victory in the steel mills. After unionizing the giant U.S. Steel, the CIO ran up against determined opposition from smaller steel companies. Following a police attack that killed ten strikers at Republic Steel outside Chicago in May 1937, the battered steelworkers halted their organizing campaign. In steel and other major industries, such as the stridently anti-union southern textile mills, organizing efforts stalled until after 1941, when military mobilization created labor shortages that gave workers greater bargaining power.

Social Security and Tax Reform

The single most important feature of the New Deal’s emerging welfare state was Social Security. An ambitious, far-reaching, and permanent reform, Social Security was designed to provide a modest income to relieve the poverty of elderly people. Only about 15 percent of older Americans had private pension plans. During the depression, corporations and banks often failed to pay the meager pensions they had promised. Corporations routinely fired or demoted employees to avoid or reduce pension payments. Prompted by the popular but impractical proposals of Dr. Townsend, Father Coughlin, and Huey Long, Roosevelt told Congress that “it is our plain duty to provide for that security upon which welfare depends … and undertake the great task of furthering the security of the citizen and his family through social insurance.”

The political struggle for Social Security highlighted class differences among Americans. Support for the measure came from a coalition of groups advocating for the elderly and the poor, as well as from traditional progressives, leftists, social workers, and labor unions. Against them were economic conservatives, including the American Liberty League, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Chamber of Commerce, and the American Medical Association. Enact the Social Security system, these conservatives and other Republicans warned, and the government will ruin private property, destroy initiative, and reduce proud individuals to spineless loafers.

The large New Deal majority in Congress passed the Social Security Act in August 1935. The act took contributions from workers and their employers used them to fund pensions for the elderly, giving workers who paid into

the system a personal and political stake in the success of the program. When eligible workers reached retirement age, they did not have to prove that they were impoverished. Instead, they had earned Social Security benefits based on their contributions and years of work. Social Security also set up unemployment insurance that provided small benefits for workers who lost their jobs.

Millions of workers did not qualify to participate in Social Security. Domestic and agricultural workers like Florence Owens were excluded. In fact, about half of all African Americans and more than half of all employed women, plus workers in religious and nonprofit organizations such as schools and hospitals, were not eligible to participate in Social Security.

Social Security also gave states multimillion-dollar grants to help support dependent children, blind people, and public health services. After the Supreme Court approved Social Security in 1937, the program was expanded to include benefits for dependent survivors of deceased recipients. The first Social Security check (for $41.30) was not issued until 1940. But the system gave millions of working people a guarantee that they would receive a small income from the federal government when they became too old to work. This safety net protected many ordinary working people from fears of a penniless and insecure old age.

Fervent opposition to Social Security persuaded New Dealers that rich people had learned little from the depression. Roosevelt had contempt for the moneyed elite who ignored the suffering of the poor. He looked for a

way to redistribute wealth that would weaken conservative opposition, advance the cause of social equity, and defuse political challenges from Huey Long and Father Coughlin. Roosevelt declared in 1935 that large fortunes put “great and undesirable concentration of control in [the hands of] relatively few individuals.” He urged a graduated tax on corporations, an inheritance tax, and an increase in maximum personal income taxes. Congress endorsed Roosevelt’s basic principle by increasing taxes on those with high incomes.

Neglected Americans and the New Deal The patchwork of New Deal reforms built a two-tier welfare state. In the top tier, farmers and organized workers in major industries were the greatest beneficiaries of New Deal initiatives. In the bottom tier, millions of neglected Americans fell through the New Deal safety net, including women, children, and the elderly, along with the unorganized, unskilled, uneducated, and unemployed. Many working people remained more or less untouched by New Deal benefits. The average unemployment rate for the 1930s stayed high — 17 percent. Workers in industries that resisted unions received little help from the Wagner Act or the WPA. Tens of thousands of women in southern textile mills, for example, commonly received wages of less than ten cents an hour and were fired if they protested. Domestic workers, almost all of them women, and agricultural workers — many of them minorities — were neither unionized nor eligible for Social Security.

The New Deal neglected few citizens more than African Americans. About half of black Americans in cities were jobless, more than double the unemployment rate among whites. In the rural South, where the vast majority of African Americans lived, conditions were worse. New Deal agricultural policies such as the AAA favored landowners, who often pushed blacks off the land they farmed. Only eleven of more than ten thousand WPA supervisors in the South were black, even though African Americans accounted for one-third of the region’s population. Violence and intimidation prevented southern blacks from protesting their plight at the ballot box. Protesters risked ruthless retaliation from local whites. Bitter critics charged that the New Deal’s NRA stood for “Negro Run Around” or “Negroes Ruined Again.”

Roosevelt responded to such criticisms with great caution, since New Deal reforms required the political support of powerful, conservative segregationist, southern white Democrats who opposed programs that aided blacks. A white Georgia relief worker expressed the common view that “any Nigger who gets over $8 a week is a spoiled Nigger, that’s all.” Stymied by the political clout of entrenched white racism, New Dealers still attracted support from black voters. Roosevelt’s overtures to African Americans prompted many northern black voters in the 1934 congressional elections to shift from the Republican to the Democratic Party, helping elect New Deal Democrats.

Eleanor Roosevelt sponsored the appointment of Mary McLeod Bethune — the energetic cofounder of the National Council of Negro Women — as head of the Division of Negro Affairs in the National Youth Administration.

The highest-ranking black official in Roosevelt’s administration, Bethune used her position to guide a small number of black professionals and civil rights activists to posts within New Deal agencies. Ultimately, about one in four African Americans got access to New Deal relief programs.

Despite these gains, by 1940 African Americans still suffered severe handicaps. Most of the thirteen million black workers toiled at low-paying menial jobs, unprotected by the New Deal safety net. Segregated and unequal schools were the norm, and only 1 percent of black students earned college degrees. In southern states, vigilante violence against blacks went unpunished. For black Americans, the New Deal offered few remedies.

Hispanic Americans fared no better. About a million Mexican Americans lived in the United States in the 1930s, most of them first- or second- generation immigrants who worked crops throughout the West. During the depression, field workers saw their low wages plunge lower still, to about a dime an hour. Ten thousand Mexican American pecan shellers in San Antonio, Texas, earned only a nickel an hour. To preserve scarce jobs for U.S. citizens, the federal government choked off immigration from Mexico, while state and local officials deported tens of thousands of Mexican Americans, many with their American-born children. New Deal programs throughout the West often discriminated against Hispanics and other people of color. A New Deal study concluded that “the Mexican is … segregated from the rest of the community as effectively as the Negro … [by] poverty and low wages.”

Mexican Migrant Farmworkers These Mexican immigrants are harvesting sugar beets in 1937 in northwestern Minnesota. Between 1910 and 1940, when refugees from the Mexican revolution poured across the American border, the Hispanic-American Alliance and other organizations sought to protect Mexican Americans’ rights against nativist fears and hostility. The alliance emphasized Mexican Americans’ desire to receive permanent legal status in the United States.

Asian Americans had similar experiences. Asian immigrants were still excluded from U.S. citizenship and in many states were not permitted to own land. By 1930, more than half of Japanese Americans had been born in the United States, but they were still liable to discrimination. One young Asian American expressed the frustration felt by many others: “I am a fruit- stand worker. I would much rather it were doctor or lawyer … but my

aspirations [were] frustrated long ago by circumstances…. I am only what I am, a professional carrot washer.”

Native Americans also suffered neglect from New Deal agencies. As a group, they remained the poorest of the poor. Since the Dawes Act of 1887 (see chapter 17), the federal government had encouraged Native Americans to abandon their Indian identities and adopt the cultural norms of the majority society.

Under the leadership of the New Deal’s commissioner of Indian affairs, John Collier, the New Deal’s Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) of 1934 largely reversed that policy. Collier claimed that “the most interesting and important fact about Indians” was that they “do not expect much, often they expect nothing at all; yet they are able to be happy.” Given such views, the IRA provided little economic aid to Native Americans, but it did restore their right to own land communally and to have greater control over their own affairs. The IRA brought little immediate benefit to Native Americans, but it provided an important foundation for Indians’ economic, cultural, and political resurgence a generation later.

Voicing common experiences among Americans neglected by the New Deal, singer and songwriter Woody Guthrie traveled the nation for eight years during the 1930s and heard other rambling men tell him “the story of their life”: “how the home went to pieces, how … the crops got to where they wouldn’t bring nothing, work in factories would kill a dog … and — always, always [you] have to fight and argue and cuss and swear … to try to get a nickel more out of the rich bosses.”

��

What did the New Deal’s two-tier welfare state accomplish?

Why did the New Deal lose support during Roosevelt’s second term as president? To accelerate the sputtering economic recovery, Roosevelt shifted the emphasis of the New Deal in the mid-1930s. Instead of seeking cooperation from conservative business leaders, he decided to rely on the growing New Deal coalition to enact reforms over the entrenched opposition of the Supreme Court, Republicans, and corporate interests. Roosevelt’s conservative opponents reacted by intensifying their opposition to the welfare state.

While Roosevelt continued to lose conservatives’ support, he added new allies on the left in farm states and big cities. Throughout Roosevelt’s first term, socialists and Communists denounced the slow pace of change and accused the New Deal of failing to serve the interests of the workers who produced the nation’s wealth. But in 1935, the Soviet Union, worried about the threat of fascism in Europe, instructed Communists throughout the world to join hands with non-Communist progressives in a “Popular Front” to advance the fortunes of the working class. Many radicals soon switched from opposing the New Deal to supporting its relief programs and encouraging labor unions.

Roosevelt won reelection in 1936 in another landslide and soon concluded mistakenly that the economy was improving. He reduced government

spending in 1937, triggering a sharp recession that undermined economic recovery and prolonged the depression.

The Election of 1936 Roosevelt believed that the presidential election of 1936 would test his leadership and progressive ideals. The depression still choked the economy. Conservative leaders believed that the New Deal’s failure to lift the nation out of the depression showed that Americans were ready for a change. Left- wing critics insisted that the New Deal had missed the opportunity to displace capitalism with a socialist economy and that voters would favor candidates who recommended more radical remedies.

Republicans turned to Kansas governor Alfred (Alf) Landon as their presidential nominee, a moderate who stressed mainstream Republican proposals to balance the federal budget and to reduce government bureaucracy. Landon recommended that the perils of sickness and old age should be eased by old-fashioned neighborliness instead of a government program like Social Security.

Roosevelt put his faith in the growing New Deal coalition, whose members shared his hope that the New Deal would liberate the nation from the long era of privilege and wealth for a few and “economic slavery” for the rest. He proclaimed that “the forces of selfishness and lust for power met their match” in his first term as president, and he hoped it would be said about his second term that “these forces met their master.”

Roosevelt triumphed spectacularly. He won 60.8 percent of the popular vote, making it the widest margin of victory in a presidential election to date. Third parties — including the Socialist and Communist parties — fell pitifully short of the support they expected and never again mounted a significant challenge to the New Deal. Congressional results were equally lopsided, with Democrats outnumbering Republicans more than three to one in both houses of Congress. In his inaugural address, Roosevelt announced, “I see one third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, [and] ill- nourished,” and he promised to devote his second term to helping them.

Court Packing In the afterglow of his reelection, Roosevelt pondered how to remove the remaining obstacles to New Deal reforms. He decided to target the Supreme Court. Conservative justices appointed by Republican presidents had declared unconstitutional eleven New Deal measures. Now, Social Security, the Wagner Act, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and other New Deal programs were about to be considered by the Supreme Court.

To prevent the Supreme Court from dismantling these vital New Deal programs, Roosevelt proposed a court-packing plan. The plan would add one new Supreme Court justice for each current justice over the age of seventy who had served for at least ten years. This proposed plan gave Roosevelt the power to pack the Supreme Court with up to six New Dealers who could then outvote the elderly, conservative Republicans on the Court.

Roosevelt had not reckoned with Americans’ deeply rooted belief in the constitutional separation of executive and judicial powers and the independent authority of the Supreme Court. More than two-thirds of Americans believed that the Court should be free from political interference by the president. Even some New Dealers were disturbed by the court- packing scheme. Many elderly members of Congress in both parties were offended by the plan’s suggestion that officials older than seventy were mentally handicapped. The many opponents soundly defeated Roosevelt’s plan in 1937.

Supreme Court justices still got the message. The four most conservative of the elderly justices — the “four horsemen of reaction,” according to one New Dealer — retired. Roosevelt eventually named eight justices to the Court — more than any other president — ultimately giving New Deal laws safe passage through the Court despite the failure of the court-packing plan.

Reaction and Recession Emboldened by their defeat of the court-packing plan, Republicans and southern Democrats rallied around their common conservatism to obstruct additional reforms. Former president Herbert Hoover proclaimed that the New Deal was the “repudiation of Democracy” and that “the Republican Party alone [was] the guardian of … the charter of freedom.” Democrats’ arguments over whether the New Deal needed to be expanded — and if so, how — undermined the coalition among reformers and sparked antagonism between Congress and the White House. The ominous rise of belligerent regimes in Germany, Italy, and Japan also slowed reform as some

Americans began to worry more about defending the nation than changing it.

Roosevelt himself favored slowing the pace of the New Deal. He believed that existing New Deal measures had steadily boosted the economy and largely eliminated the depression crisis. He failed to appreciate the stubborn realities of unemployment and poverty. In fact, the gross national product in 1937 briefly equaled the 1929 level before dropping lower for the rest of the decade.

Unemployment declined to 14 percent in 1937 but quickly spiked upward and stayed higher until 1940. Even at the high-water mark of recovery in the summer of 1937, seven million people lacked jobs. In the following months, national income and production slipped so steeply that almost two- thirds of the economic gains since 1933 were lost by June 1938.

Roosevelt’s mistaken optimism about the economic recovery persuaded him that additional deficit spending by the federal government was no longer necessary. But the reduction in federal spending pushed the improving economy into recession.

This economic reversal hurt the New Deal politically. Conservatives argued that this recession proved that New Deal measures produced only an illusion of progress. The way to weather the recession was to tax and spend less and wait for the natural laws of supply and demand to restore prosperity. Many New Dealers insisted instead that the continuing depression demanded that Roosevelt revive federal spending and redouble

efforts to stimulate the economy. In 1938, Congress heeded such pleas and enacted a massive new program of federal spending.

The recession scare of 1937–1938 taught the president the lesson that economic growth had to be nurtured carefully. The English economist John Maynard Keynes argued that only government intervention could pump enough money into the economy to restore prosperity, a concept that became known as Keynesian economics. Roosevelt never had the interest or time to master Keynesian thought. But in a commonsense way, he understood that escape from the depression required a plan for large-scale spending to alleviate distress and stimulate economic growth (Figure 24.2).

FIGURE 24.2 Global Comparison: National Populations and Economies, ca. 1938

Throughout the Great Depression, the United States remained more productive than any other nation in the world. By 1938, the United States produced more than twice as much as its closest

competitors, Germany and the USSR. If Germany had gained control of the other European nations listed here, it would have become the biggest economy in the world. What do these data suggest about the relationship between population and product?

Description “The table shows the Population and Gross Domestic Product in millions respectively for the following countries:

United States: 131 million; 800 million dollars.

Britain: 47.5 million; 285 million dollars.

British Colonies: 455 million; 285 million dollars.

France: 41 million; 186 million dollars.

French Colonies: 71 million; 50 million dollars.

Italy: 41 million; 140.5 million dollars.

Italian Colonies: 8 million; 2.5 million dollars.

Netherlands: 9 million; 45 million dollars.

Dutch Colonies: 69 million; 78 million dollars.

U S S R: 166 million; 357 million dollars.

Japan: 71 million; 170 million dollars.

Japanese Colonies: 60 million; 62 million dollars.

Germany: 69 million; 351 million dollars.

Austria: 8 million; 23 million dollars.

Czechoslovakia: 13 million; 30 million dollars.

Poland: 34 million; 78 million dollars.

Hungary: 9 million; 25 million dollars.

Yugoslavia: 15 million; 20 million dollars.

romania: 15 million; 20 million dollars.

All data are approximate.”

The Last of the New Deal Reforms From the moment he was sworn in, Roosevelt sought to expand the powers of the presidency. He believed that the president needed more authority to meet emergencies such as the depression and to administer the sprawling federal bureaucracy. Combined with a Democratic majority in Congress, a now-friendly Supreme Court, and the revival of deficit spending, the newly empowered White House seemed to be in a good position to move ahead with a revitalized New Deal.

Resistance to further reform was also on the rise, however. Conservatives argued that the New Deal had pressed government centralization too far. Even the New Deal’s friends became tired of one emergency program after another while economic woes continued to shadow New Deal achievements. By the midpoint of Roosevelt’s second term, many members of Congress balked at new initiatives. But enough support remained for one last burst of reform.

Agriculture still had strong claims on New Deal attention in the face of drought, declining crop prices, and impoverished sharecroppers and tenants. In 1937, the Agriculture Department created the Farm Security Administration (FSA) to provide housing and loans to help tenant farmers

become independent. A black tenant farmer in North Carolina who received an FSA loan told a New Deal interviewer, “I wake up in the night sometimes and think I must be half-dead and gone to heaven.” For those who owned farms, the New Deal offered renewed prosperity with a second Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) in 1938, which placed production quotas on cotton, tobacco, wheat, corn, and rice while issuing food stamps to allow poor people to obtain surplus food. The AAA of 1938 brought stability to American agriculture and ample food to most — but not all — tables.

Advocates for the urban poor also made modest gains after decades of neglect. New York senator Robert Wagner convinced Congress to pass the National Housing Act in 1937. By 1941, some 160,000 residences had been made available to poor people at affordable rents. The program did not come close to meeting the need for affordable housing, but for the first time, the federal government took an active role in providing decent urban housing.

The last major piece of New Deal labor legislation, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, honored the New Deal pledge to provide workers with a decent standard of living. The new law set wage and hours standards and at long last curbed the use of child labor. The minimum-wage level was twenty-five cents an hour for a maximum of forty-four hours a week.

Critics of the minimum-wage law said it was “government interference,” to which one New Dealer responded, “It was. It interfered with the fellow running that pecan shelling plant … [and] told him he couldn’t pay that

little widow seven cents an hour.” To attract enough conservative votes, the act did not apply to domestic help and farm laborers, thereby not raising the wages of most women and African Americans. Enforcement of the minimum-wage standards was weak and haphazard. Still, the Fair Labor Standards Act slowly advanced Roosevelt’s inaugural promise to improve the living standards of the poorest Americans.

The final New Deal reform effort failed to make much headway against the hide-bound system of racial injustice. Although Roosevelt denounced lynching as murder, he would not jeopardize his base of southern political support by demanding anti-lynching legislation. Congress voted down proposals to make lynching a federal crime. Laws to eliminate the poll tax — used to deny blacks the opportunity to vote — encountered the same overwhelming resistance. The New Deal refused to confront racial injustice with the same vigor it brought to bear on economic hardship.

By the end of 1938, the New Deal had lost steam and encountered stiff opposition. In the congressional elections of 1938, Republicans made gains that gave them more congressional influence than they had enjoyed since 1932. New Dealers could claim unprecedented achievements since 1933, but nobody needed reminding that those achievements had not ended the depression. In his annual message to Congress in January 1939, Roosevelt signaled a halt to New Deal reforms by speaking about preserving the progress already achieved rather than extending it. Roosevelt pointed to the ominous threats posed by fascist aggressors in Germany and Japan, and he proposed defense expenditures that surpassed New Deal appropriations for relief and economic recovery.

��

Why did political support for New Deal reforms decline?

Conclusion: What were the achievements and limitations of the New Deal? The New Deal demonstrated that a growing majority of Americans agreed with Roosevelt that the federal government should help those in need. Through programs that sought relief, recovery, and reform, the New Deal greatly expanded the size and influence of the federal government and changed the way many Americans viewed Washington. New Dealers achieved significant victories, such as Social Security, labor’s right to organize, and guarantees that farm prices would be maintained through controls on production and marketing. New Deal measures marked the emergence of a welfare state, but its limits left millions of needy Americans with little aid.

The New Deal did not achieve full-scale relief, recovery, and reform. Even though millions of Americans benefited from its initiatives, both relief and recovery were limited and temporary. In 1940, the depression still plagued the economy. Perhaps the most impressive achievement of the New Deal was what did not happen. Although authoritarian governments and anti- capitalist policies were common outside the United States during the 1930s, they were shunned by the New Deal. The greatest economic crisis the nation had ever faced did not cause Americans to abandon democracy, as happened in Germany, where Adolf Hitler seized dictatorial power. Nor did the nation turn to radical alternatives such as socialism or communism.

Republicans and other conservatives claimed that the New Deal amounted to a form of socialism that threatened democracy and capitalism. But rather than attack capitalism, Roosevelt sought to save it, and he succeeded. That success also marked the limits of the New Deal’s achievements. The New Deal stopped far short of challenging capitalism either by undermining private property or by imposing strict national planning. Roosevelt believed that a shift of authority toward the federal government would allow capitalist enterprises to be balanced by the nation’s democratic traditions.

New Dealers repeatedly described their programs as a kind of warfare against the depression of the 1930s. In the next decade, Roosevelt had to turn from the economic crisis at home to participate in a worldwide conflagration to defeat the enemies of democracy abroad.

Today, New Deal reforms still structure the basic institutions of banking, the stock market, union organizations, agricultural markets, Social Security, minimum-wage standards, and more. Opponents of these measures and of the New Deal notion of an activist government remain powerful, especially in the Republican Party. They claim that government is the problem, not the solution — a slogan that Republicans have championed since the 1980s. With the cooperation of some Democrats, Republicans have tried to dismantle New Deal programs that they believe interfere with the free market and stifle individual responsibility with government hand outs. Although the New Deal was built during the 1930s, it continues to influence political debate eighty years later.

Chapter Review

��

New Deal coalition underconsumption Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) fireside chats Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) National Recovery Administration (NRA) Works Progress Administration (WPA) Wagner Act Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) Social Security court-packing plan

�� Franklin D. Roosevelt

Why was Franklin Roosevelt so popular? Why did he win the elections of 1932 and 1936?

Why was Eleanor Roosevelt a part of her husband’s political career?

The New Deal

What were the greatest achievements of the New Deal?

How and why did the first phase of the New Deal differ from the second phase?

The Opposition

Who initially opposed the New Deal, and why?

Why did general support for the New Deal decline?

�� , ��

How did the New Deal compare to reforms enacted during the Progressive Era?

What was the long-term significance of the New Deal?

��

1933 Franklin D. Roosevelt becomes president. Roosevelt’s “Hundred Days” launches New Deal. Roosevelt declares four-day “bank holiday.” Federal Emergency Relief Administration created.

1934 Securities and Exchange Commission created. Upton Sinclair loses California governorship bid. American Liberty League founded. Dr. Francis Townsend devises Old Age Revolving Pension scheme. Indian Reorganization Act enacted.

1935 Father Charles Coughlin begins National Union for Social Justice. Works Progress Administration created. Wagner Act enacted. Congress of Industrial Organizations founded. Social Security Act enacted.

1936 Franklin Roosevelt reelected by a landslide.

1937 Sit-down strike organized at General Motors plant in Flint, Michigan. Roosevelt’s court-packing legislation defeated. Economic recession deepens.

1938 Second Agricultural Adjustment Act enacted. Fair Labor Standards Act enacted. Congress rejects anti-lynching bill.

�� 25 �� 1939–1945

�� This chapter will explore the following questions:

How did isolationism shape American foreign policy in the 1930s? How did war in Europe and Asia influence U.S. foreign policy? How did the United States mobilize for war? How did the Allies reverse Axis advances in Europe and the Pacific? How did war change the American home front? How did the Allies win the war? Conclusion: Why did the United States emerge as a superpower at the end of the war?

�� ON A SUN-DRENCHED FLORIDA AFTERNOON IN 1927, TWELVE-YEAR-OLD Paul Tibbets climbed into the front seat of the open cockpit of a biplane for his first airplane ride. While the pilot brought the plane in low over a racetrack in Miami, Florida, Tibbets pitched Baby Ruth candy bars tethered to small paper parachutes to racing fans below. After repeating this stunt, sales of Baby Ruths soared, and Tibbets was hooked on flying.

In 1937, Tibbets became a military pilot. Shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 brought the United States into World War II, Tibbets flew anti-submarine patrols against German U-boats lurking along the East Coast. When heavily armored B-17 Flying Fortress bombers became available early in 1942, he took a squadron of the new planes to England. In August 1942, he led the first American daytime bombing raid on German-occupied Europe, releasing the first of 700,000 tons of explosives dropped by American bombers during the air war in Europe.

After numerous raids over Europe, Tibbets was reassigned to the North African campaign. After eight months of combat missions, he returned to the United States to test the new B-29 Super Fortress being built in Wichita, Kansas. The B-29 was much bigger than the B-17 and could fly higher and faster, making it ideal for the campaign against Japan. Tibbets’s mastery of the B-29 caused him to be singled out in

September 1944 to command a top-secret unit training for a special mission.

The mission was to be ready to drop on Japan a bomb so powerful that it might end the war. No such bomb existed, but American scientists and engineers were working around the clock to build one. In May 1945, Tibbets and his men went to Tinian Island in the Pacific, where they trained for their secret mission by flying raids over Japanese cities and dropping ordinary bombs. The atomic bomb arrived on Tinian on July 26, just ten days after a successful test explosion in the New Mexico desert. Nicknamed “Little Boy,” the bomb packed the equivalent of forty million pounds of TNT, or two hundred thousand of the 200-pound bombs Tibbets and other American airmen had dropped on Europe.

On August 6, 1945, Tibbets, his crew, and their atomic payload took off in the B-29 bomber Enola Gay and headed for Japan. Less than seven hours later, over the city of Hiroshima, Tibbets and his men released Little Boy from the Enola Gay’s bomb bay. Three days later, airmen from Tibbets’s command dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, and within five days, Japan surrendered.

Paul Tibbets’s experiences traced an arc followed by millions of Americans during World War II. Like Tibbets, Americans joined their allies to fight the Axis powers in Europe and Asia. Like his Enola Gay crewmen — who hailed from New York, Texas, California, New Jersey, New Mexico, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and

Nevada — Americans from all regions united to help defeat the fascist aggressors in Asia and Europe. American industries mobilized to produce advanced bombers, along with enough other military equipment to supply the American armed forces and their allies. At enormous cost in human life and suffering — including millions of civilians killed in military actions and millions more exterminated in the Holocaust of the Nazis’ racist death camps — the war resulted in employment and prosperity for most Americans at home, ending the depression, providing new opportunities for women and African Americans, and ushering the nation into the postwar world as a triumphant economic and atomic superpower.

How did isolationism shape American foreign policy in the 1930s? The First World War left a dangerous and deadly legacy. The victors — especially Britain, France, and the United States — sought to avoid future wars at almost any cost. The defeated nation, Germany, aspired to avenge its losses by renewed war. Italy and Japan felt humiliated by the Versailles peace settlement and believed war would increase their global power. Japan invaded the northern Chinese province of Manchuria in 1931, with ambitions to expand throughout Asia. Italy, led by the fascist Benito Mussolini since 1922, hungered for an empire in Africa. In Germany, National Socialist Adolf Hitler rose to power in 1933, the first step in his quest to dominate Europe and the world. These aggressive, militaristic, antidemocratic governments seemed a smaller threat to most people in the United States during the 1930s than the economic crisis at home. Shielded from external threats by the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, Americans hoped to avoid entanglement in foreign disputes and to concentrate on climbing out of the Great Depression.

Roosevelt and Reluctant Isolation Like most Americans during the 1930s, Franklin Roosevelt believed that the nation’s highest priority was to attack the domestic causes and consequences of the depression. But unlike most Americans, Roosevelt had long believed the United States should actively engage in international relations.

The depression forced Roosevelt to retreat from his previous internationalism. He came to believe that foreign affairs threatened to divert resources and political support from New Deal efforts to promote domestic recovery. Once in office, Roosevelt sought to combine domestic economic recovery with a low-profile foreign policy that encouraged free trade and disarmament.

Roosevelt’s pursuit of international cooperation was hindered by economic circumstances and American popular opinion. After an opinion poll demonstrated popular support for recognizing the Soviet Union — an international outcast since the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 — Roosevelt established formal diplomatic relations in 1933. But when the League of Nations condemned Japanese and German aggression, Roosevelt did not support the league’s attempts to keep the peace. He feared isolationists would withdraw support for New Deal measures in Congress. America watched from the sidelines when Japan withdrew from the league and ignored the limitations on its navy imposed after World War I. The United States also looked the other way when Hitler rearmed Germany and recalled its representative to the league in 1933. Roosevelt worried that German and Japanese actions threatened world peace, but he told Americans that the nation would not “use its armed forces for the settlement of any [international] dispute anywhere.”

The Good Neighbor Policy In 1933, Roosevelt announced that the United States would pursue “the policy of the good neighbor” in international relations. This policy declared

that no nation had the right to intervene in the internal or external affairs of another. Roosevelt emphasized that the good neighbor policy applied specifically to Latin America, where U.S. military forces had often intervened. The policy did not indicate a U.S. retreat from empire in Latin America, though. Instead, it declared that, unlike in the past, the United States’ influence in the region would not depend on military force.

Roosevelt refrained from sending troops to defend the interests of American corporations when Mexico nationalized American oil properties and revolutions boiled over in Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Cuba during the 1930s. In 1934, Roosevelt withdrew American Marines from Haiti, where they had been stationed since 1916. Roosevelt’s hands-off policy honored the principle of national self-determination, but it also permitted the rise of dictators in Nicaragua, Cuba, and elsewhere who exploited and terrorized their nations with private support from U.S. businesses.

Military nonintervention also did not prevent the United States from exerting its economic influence in Latin America. In 1934, Congress gave the president the power to reduce tariffs on goods imported into the United States from nations that agreed to lower their own tariffs on U.S. goods. By 1940, twenty-two nations had agreed to such reciprocal tariff reductions, helping to double U.S. exports to Latin America, a policy that planted seeds of friendship and hemispheric solidarity while contributing to the New Deal’s goal of boosting the domestic economy through free trade.

The Price of Isolation

In Europe, fascist governments in Italy and Germany threatened military aggression. Britain and France made only verbal protests. Encouraged, Hitler plotted to recapture territories with German inhabitants, all the while accusing Jews of polluting the purity of the Aryan master race. The wild- eyed anti-Semitism of Hitler and the Nazi Party unified non-Jewish Germans and attracted sympathizers among many other Europeans, even in France and Britain.

In Japan, a militaristic government planned to follow the invasion of Manchuria in 1931 with conquests extending throughout Southeast Asia. The Manchurian invasion bogged down in a long and vicious war when Chinese Nationalists rallied around their leader, Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai- shek), to fight against the Japanese. Preparations for new Japanese conquests continued, however. In 1936, Japan openly violated naval limitation treaties and began to build a battle-ready fleet to seek naval superiority in the Pacific.

In the United States, the hostilities in Asia and Europe reinforced isolationist sentiments. Popular disillusionment with the failure of Woodrow Wilson’s idealistic goals caused many Americans to question the nation’s participation in World War I. In 1933, Gerald Nye, a Republican from North Dakota, chaired a Senate committee that declared greedy “merchants of death” — American weapons makers, bankers, and financiers had dragged the nation into the war to line their own pockets. International tensions and the Nye committee report prompted Congress to pass a series of neutrality acts between 1935 and 1937 designed to keep

the nation out of foreign wars. The neutrality acts prohibited making loans and selling weapons to nations at war.

By 1937, the growing conflicts overseas caused some Americans to call for a total embargo on all trade with warring countries. The Neutrality Act of 1937 imposed a “cash-and-carry” policy that required nations at war to pay cash for nonmilitary goods and to transport them in their own ships. This policy benefited the nation’s economy, but it also helped foreign aggressors by supplying them with goods and thereby undermining peace.

The desire for peace in France, Britain, and the United States led Germany, Italy, and Japan to launch military offensives because they believed that Western democracies lacked the will to oppose them. In March 1936, Nazi troops marched into the industry-rich Rhineland on Germany’s western border, a blatant violation of the Versailles peace treaty. A month later, Italian armies completed their conquest of Ethiopia, projecting fascist power into Africa. In December 1937, Japanese invaders captured Nanjing (Nanking) and celebrated their triumph in the “Rape of Nanking,” a deadly rampage that killed two hundred thousand Chinese civilians.

In Spain, a bitter civil war broke out in July 1936 when the Nationalists — who were fascist rebels led by General Francisco Franco — attacked the democratically elected Republicans — who were called Loyalists. Both Germany and Italy reinforced Franco, while the Soviet Union provided much less aid to the Republican Loyalists. The Loyalists did not receive help from European democracies or the U.S. government. But more than three thousand individual Americans fought alongside Republican Loyalists

in the Russian-sponsored Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Abandoned by the Western democracies, the Republican Loyalists were defeated in 1939, and Franco built a fascist bulwark in Spain.

Hostilities in Europe, Africa, and Asia alarmed Roosevelt and some Americans. The president sought to persuade most Americans to moderate their isolationism and find a way to support the victims of fascist aggression. He warned that an “epidemic of world lawlessness is spreading” and pointed out that “mere isolation or neutrality” offered no remedy. The popularity of isolationist sentiment caused Roosevelt to remark, “It’s a terrible thing to look over your shoulder when you are trying to lead and find no one there.” Roosevelt knew he needed to maneuver carefully to help prevent fascist aggressors from conquering Europe and Asia, which would leave the United States an isolated island of democracy.

��

Why did isolationism during the 1930s concern Roosevelt?

How did war in Europe and Asia influence U.S. foreign policy? Between 1939 and 1941, fascist victories overseas slowly eroded American isolationism. At first, U.S. involvement in the war was limited to providing material support to Britain, China, and the Soviet Union, the principal enemies of Germany and Japan. But Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor caused the nation to declare war and mobilize for an all-out assault on its European and Asian enemies.

Nazi Aggression and War in Europe Under the spell of isolationism, Americans watched Hitler’s campaign to dominate Europe (Map 25.1). In 1938, Hitler incorporated Austria into Germany and turned his attention to the Sudetenland, which had been granted to Czechoslovakia by the World War I peace settlement. Hoping to avoid war, British prime minister Neville Chamberlain offered Hitler terms of appeasement that would give the Sudetenland to Germany if Hitler agreed to leave the rest of Czechoslovakia alone. Hitler accepted the terms but did not keep his promise.

MAP 25.1 Axis Aggression through 1941

Through a series of surprise strikes before 1942, Mussolini sought to re-create the Roman empire in the Mediterranean while Hitler aimed to annex Austria and reclaim German

territories occupied by France after World War I. World War II broke out when the German dictator attacked Poland.

Description “The map shows the Axis powers, Allied powers, Neutral nations, extent of Axis control in December 1941, limit of German advances in December 1941, and the course of Italian and German aggression as follows:

The Allied powers highlighted on the map include Great Britain; Northern Ireland; the eastern part of Soviet Union including Leningrad and Moscow; Iraq; Syria (French); Lebanon (French); Transjordan (Britain); Palestine (Britain); Egypt; and Iceland while the Axis Powers shown on the map include Germany; East Prussia; Italy including Sicily and Sardinia; and Libya (Italy).

The extent of Axis control, December, 1941 covered France; Belgium; Netherlands; Denmark; Norway; Finland; Estonia; Latvia Lithuania; Poland; Czechoslovakia; Austria; Hungary; Yugoslavia; Romania; Bulgaria; Greece; Soviet Union extending from Sevastopol in the south across Ukraine to the south of Leningrad; Morocco (France); Spanish Morocco; Algeria (Vichy France); Tunisia (Vichy France); Corsica; and Crete. The Neutral nations comprised of Spain (fall of the Spanish Republic, March 1939); Portugal; Switzerland; Ireland; Sweden; Turkey; and Saudi Arabia.

The Axis powers Germany, East Prussia (Germany), and Italy set forth on offensives from 1936 through 1941 predominantly to strengthen their control of Europe. In March 1936, the German forces marched to Rhineland in Western Germany. In 1938, they moved eastward to Austria in March and to Sudetenland in September followed by their attack on Czechoslovakia later in March 1939 and on Warsaw, Poland in September 1939. From East Prussia, Germany invaded Latvia in March 1939. 1940 had German forces push through Ardennes in France to Dunkirk, Paris and eastern France to Vichy besides their advancement on Luxembourg, Belgium, and further north. Germany invaded Norway through the North Sea and headed to Finland from where they attacked Estonia. The German invasion of Denmark and Norway also took place via a different sea route in 1940, while on the west they also advanced to London in Britain. The advancements widened throughout Europe in 1941 as they headed from Lithuania to Leningrad; from Poland to the Soviet Union and Ukraine; from Romania along the southern region of Ukraine to the east; from Austria to Yugoslavia; and from Bulgaria to Greece. The limit of German

advances extended until Vichy France in Western Europe; from Leningrad southward along Moscow to Ukraine in Eastern Europe; and Bulgaria–Turkey border on the southeast. On the other hand, Italy made advances to Ethiopia navigating the Mediterranean Sea in 1935 and to Albania via the Adriatic Sea in 1939. The Maginot Line ran from the Swiss-French border on the south and to Saar on the north.”

By 1939, Hitler had annexed Czechoslovakia and demanded that Poland return the German territory it had gained after World War I. Recognizing that appeasement of Hitler had failed, Britain and France promised Poland that they would go to war with Germany if Hitler attacked. In turn, Hitler tried to prevent the Soviet Union from joining Britain and France in support of Poland. Despite the enduring hatred between fascist Germany and the Communist Soviet Union, the two nations signed the Nazi-Soviet treaty of nonaggression in August 1939, exposing Poland to an onslaught by both the German and Soviet armies.

At dawn on September 1, 1939, Hitler unleashed his blitzkrieg (literally, “lightning war”) on Poland. “Act brutally!” Hitler exhorted his generals. “Send [every] man, woman, and child of Polish descent and language to their deaths, pitilessly and remorselessly.” The attack triggered Soviet attacks on eastern Poland and declarations of war from France and Britain two days later, igniting a conflict that raced around the globe. In September 1939, Germany seemed invincible, causing many people to fear that all of Europe would soon share Poland’s fate.

After the Nazis overran Poland, Hitler soon launched a westward blitzkrieg. In the first six months of 1940, German forces smashed through Denmark,

Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. The speed of the German attack trapped more than 300,000 British and French soldiers, who retreated to the port of Dunkirk, where an improvised armada of British vessels ferried them to safety across the English Channel. One observer noted that the British rescued “hardly enough tanks to fight a regiment of well armed Boy Scouts.”

By mid-June 1940, France had surrendered the largest army in the world, signed an armistice that gave Germany control of nearly two-thirds of the countryside, and installed a collaborationist government at Vichy. With an empire that stretched across Europe from Poland to France, Hitler was poised to attack Britain.

The new British prime minister, Winston Churchill, vowed that Britain, unlike France, would never surrender to Hitler. “We shall fight on the seas and oceans [and] … in the air,” he proclaimed, “whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, … and in the fields and in the streets.” Churchill’s defiance stiffened British resolve against Hitler’s attack, which began in mid-June 1940, when wave after wave of German bombers targeted British military installations and cities, killing tens of thousands of civilians. The outgunned Royal Air Force fought as doggedly as Churchill had predicted and finally won the Battle of Britain by November, clearing German bombers from British skies and handing Hitler his first defeat. Churchill praised the valiant British pilots, declaring that “never … was so much owed by so many to so few.” Advance knowledge of German plans aided British pilots, who had access to the new technology of radar and to decoded top-secret German military communications. Battered and

exhausted by German attacks, Britain needed American help to continue to fight, as Churchill repeatedly wrote Roosevelt in private.

From Neutrality to the Arsenal of Democracy Most Americans condemned German aggression and favored Britain and France, but isolationism remained powerful. Roosevelt feared that if Congress did not repeal the arms embargo required by the Neutrality Act of 1937, France and Britain would soon fall to the Nazi onslaught. “What worries me,” Roosevelt wrote a friend, “is that public opinion … is patting itself on the back every morning and thanking God for the Atlantic Ocean (and the Pacific Ocean),” and ignoring “the serious implications” of the European war “for our own future.” Congress agreed in November 1939 to allow warring nations to buy arms and nonmilitary supplies on a cash-and- carry basis.

In practice, the revised neutrality law permitted Britain and France to purchase American war supplies and carry them across the Atlantic in their own ships, thereby shielding American vessels from attack by German submarines. Roosevelt searched for a way to aid Britain short of a formal alliance or declaring war against Germany. Churchill pleaded for American destroyers, aircraft, and munitions, but he had no money to buy them under the prevailing cash-and-carry neutrality law. As the Battle of Britain raged late in the summer of 1940, Roosevelt agreed to deliver fifty old destroyers to Britain in exchange for American access to British bases in the Western

Hemisphere, the first step toward building a firm Anglo-American alliance against Hitler.

The Anglo-American allies quickly cooperated to advance radar technology. The British had invented a top-secret radio-wave transmitter that allowed radar to identify an object as small as a few inches. British leaders desperately needed to use the new radar to attack German bombers and submarines, but they lacked the resources to develop the technology quickly and make it widely available to the military. In September 1940, the British shared their technology with American scientists, who soon received the support of Roosevelt to organize a top-secret group of physicists and engineers in universities and corporate research labs to learn how to adapt the new radar to help fight the war.

One American scientist explained the significance of the new radar technology by saying, “If automobiles had been similarly improved, modern cars would cost about a dollar and go a thousand miles on a gallon of gas.” With headquarters at the Radiation Lab of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, American scientists across the nation worked feverishly to improve radar. Eventually their efforts helped airplanes and ships to navigate and identify enemy aircraft and targets on land and sea, directed antiaircraft fire against enemy planes, and made possible the radar- based proximity fuse which caused antiaircraft and artillery shells to explode when they got near a target. For example, a proximity fuse caused the atomic bomb used at Hiroshima to detonate at an altitude that created maximum destruction. These and many other military uses of radar technology contributed greatly to Allied military campaigns.

While German Luftwaffe (air force) pilots bombed Britain, Roosevelt decided to run for an unprecedented third term as president in 1940. Roosevelt was reelected, and the voters sent a message of support for American involvement in the European war. The Republican presidential candidate, Wendell Willkie, who was ridiculed by New Dealers as a “simple, barefoot Wall Street lawyer,” attacked Roosevelt as a warmonger. Willkie’s accusations caused the president to promise voters, “Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars,” a pledge counterbalanced by his repeated warnings during the campaign about the threats to America posed by Nazi aggression.

Once reelected, Roosevelt maneuvered to support Britain in every way short of a declaration of war against Germany. In a fireside chat shortly after Christmas 1940, Roosevelt proclaimed that the United States had to become “the great arsenal of democracy” and send “every ounce and every ton of munitions and supplies that we can possibly spare to help the defenders who are in the front lines.”

In January 1941, Roosevelt proposed the Lend-Lease Act, which allowed the British to obtain weapons from the United States without paying cash, but with the promise to reimburse the United States when the war ended. The purpose of Lend-Lease, Roosevelt proclaimed, was to defend democracy and human rights throughout the world, specifically the Four Freedoms: “freedom of speech and expression … freedom of every person to worship God in his own way … freedom from want … [and] freedom from fear.” Isolationist opponents accused Roosevelt of concocting a “Triple A foreign policy” that would lead to war and “plow under every

fourth American boy.” After fierce debates, Congress approved Lend- Lease, starting a flow of support to Britain that totaled more than $50 billion during the war, far more than all federal expenditures combined since Roosevelt had become president in 1933.

Hindered in his plans to invade Britain, Hitler turned his massive army eastward and on June 22, 1941, began a surprise attack on the Soviet Union, his ally in the 1939 Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact. Neither Roosevelt nor Churchill had any love for Joseph Stalin or communism, but they both welcomed the Soviet Union to the anti-Nazi cause. Both Western leaders understood that Hitler’s attack on Russia would provide relief for the hard- pressed British. Roosevelt quickly persuaded Congress to extend Lend- Lease to the Soviet Union, beginning the shipment of millions of tons of trucks, jeeps, and other equipment that in all supplied about 10 percent of Russian war materiel.

As Hitler’s army raced across the Russian plains and Nazi U-boats tried to choke off supplies to Britain and the Soviet Union, Roosevelt met with Churchill aboard a ship near Newfoundland to cement the Anglo-American alliance. In August 1941, the two leaders issued the Atlantic Charter, pledging the two nations to freedom of the seas and free trade as well as the right of national self-determination.

Japan Attacks America Although Roosevelt worried about war with Germany, Hitler avoided directly provoking the United States. Japanese ambitions in Asia clashed

more openly with American interests and commitments, especially in China and the Philippines. Unlike Hitler, the Japanese high command planned to attack the United States in order to allow Japan to rule an Asian empire it termed the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

The Japanese appealed to widespread Asian bitterness toward white colonial powers such as the British in India and Burma, the French in Indochina (now Vietnam), and the Dutch in the East Indies (now Indonesia). The Japanese claimed that they would preserve “Asia for the Asians.” However, Japan’s invasion of China — which had lasted for ten years by 1941 — proved that its true goal was Asia for the Japanese (Map 25.2). Japan coveted the raw materials available from China and Southeast Asia, and it ignored American demands to stop its campaign of aggression.

MAP 25.2 Japanese Aggression through 1941

Beginning with the invasion of Manchuria in 1931, Japan sought to extend its imperialist control over most of East Asia. Japanese aggression was driven by the need for raw materials for the country’s expanding industries and by the government’s devotion to militaristic values.

Description

“The map highlights the islands Sumatra, Java, Celebes, southern Borneo, Western New Guinea as Dutch East Indies; India, present-day Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Burma, Malaya, and northern Borneo as British Colonies; and Alaska and Philippines as American colonies.

The extent of Japanese control through 1941 ran from French Indochina with its prominent cities of Hanoi and Saigon; the cities along the eastern coastal belt of China comprising Swatow (Shantou), Canton (Guangzhou), Hong Kong, and Amoy (Xiamen); Formosa; the eastern and northeastern part of China along the banks of the Yangtze River and the Yellow River comprising of the cities Nanchang, Nanjing, and Beijing; Manchuria; Korea; the southern half of Sakhalin Island and Kuril Island on the North Pacific Ocean; Japan; and a quadrilateral comprising of the Mariana island; Caroline Island, and Marshall Island in the southern Pacific Ocean.

The map identifies the islands of Guam, Wake, Hawaii, and Aleutian on the Pacific Ocean as U. S. colonies and the Bougainville Island and eastern New Guinea as Australian Mandate.”

In 1940, Japan entered a defensive alliance with Germany and Italy — the Tripartite Pact. To obstruct Japanese plans to invade the Dutch East Indies, in July 1941 Roosevelt announced a trade embargo that denied Japan access to oil, scrap iron, and other goods essential for its war machine. Roosevelt hoped the embargo would strengthen factions within Japan that opposed the militarists.

Instead, the American embargo played into the hands of Japanese militarists headed by General Hideki Tojo, who seized control of the government in October 1941 and persuaded other leaders, including Emperor Hirohito, that swift destruction of American naval bases in the Pacific would leave Japan free to achieve its war aims. On December 7, 1941, 183 aircraft lifted off from six Japanese carriers and attacked the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl

Harbor on the Hawai’ian island of Oahu. The devastating surprise attack sank all of the fleet’s battleships, killed more than 2,400 Americans, and almost crippled U.S. war-making capacity in the Pacific. Luckily for the United States, Japanese pilots failed to destroy oil storage facilities at Pearl Harbor and the nation’s aircraft carriers, which happened to be at sea during the attack.

The Japanese scored a stunning tactical victory at Pearl Harbor. In the long run, however, the attack proved a colossal blunder. The victory made many Japanese commanders overconfident about their military strength. Worse for the Japanese, Americans instantly united in their desire to fight and avenge the attack. Roosevelt vowed that “this form of treachery shall never endanger us again.” On December 8, Congress endorsed the president’s call for a declaration of war. Both Hitler and Mussolini declared war against America three days later, bringing the United States into all-out war with the Axis powers in both Europe and Asia.

��

How did American isolationism influence Roosevelt’s policies toward military aggression by Germany and Japan?

How did the United States mobilize for war? The time had come, Roosevelt announced, for the prescriptions of “Dr. New Deal” to be replaced by the stronger medicines of “Dr. Win-the-War.” Military and civilian leaders rushed to protect the nation against possible attacks, causing Americans with Japanese ancestry to be stigmatized and sent to internment camps. Roosevelt and his advisers lost no time enlisting millions of Americans in the armed forces to bring the isolationist-era military to fighting strength for a two-front war. The war emergency also required economic mobilization unparalleled in the nation’s history. As Dr. Win-the-War, Roosevelt set aside the New Deal goal of reform and plunged headlong into transforming the American economy into the world’s greatest military machine. Wartime mobilization achieved full employment and economic recovery, goals the New Deal had never reached.

Home-Front Security Shortly after declaring war against the United States, Hitler sent German submarines to hunt American ships along the Atlantic coast, where Paul Tibbets and other American pilots tried to destroy them. The U-boats had devastating success for about eight months, sinking hundreds of U.S. ships and threatening to disrupt the Lend-Lease lifeline to Britain and the Soviet Union. By mid-1942, the U.S. Navy protected the U.S. coast and chased German submarines into the mid-Atlantic.

Within the continental United States, Americans remained sheltered from the chaos and destruction the war brought to hundreds of millions in Europe and Asia. The government worried constantly about espionage and internal subversion. Posters warned Americans that “Loose lips sink ships” and “Enemy agents are always near; if you don’t talk, they won’t hear.” The campaign for patriotic vigilance focused on German and Japanese foes, but Americans of Japanese descent became targets of persecution because of Pearl Harbor and long-standing racial prejudice against people of Asian descent.

About 320,000 people of Japanese ancestry lived in U.S. territory in 1941, two-thirds of them in Hawai’i, where they largely escaped wartime persecution because they were essential and valued members of society. On the mainland, however, Japanese Americans were a tiny minority — even along the West Coast, where most of them worked on farms and in small businesses. Although an official military survey concluded that Japanese Americans posed no danger, popular hostility fueled a campaign to round up all mainland Japanese Americans — two-thirds of them U.S. citizens. “A Jap’s a Jap…. It makes no difference whether he is an American citizen or not,” one official declared.

On February 19, 1942, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which sent all Americans of Japanese descent to ten makeshift internment camps located in remote areas of the West and South (Map 25.3). Allowed little time to sell or protect their property, Japanese Americans lost homes and businesses worth about $400 million and lived out the war penned in by barbed wire and armed guards.

MAP 25.3 Western Relocation Authority Centers

Responding to prejudice and fear of sabotage, President Roosevelt authorized the relocation of all Americans of Japanese descent in 1942. Taken from their homes in the cities and farmland of the far West, more than 120,000 Japanese Americans were confined in camps scattered as far east as the Mississippi River.

Description “The map shows the following:

W R A relocation camp: Rohwer and Jerome in Arkansas; Granada (Amache) in Colorado; Topaz in Utah; Minidoka in Idaho; Manzanar and Tule Lake in California; Heart Mountain in Wyoming; Posten and Gila River in Arizona.

States with more than 1,000 internees: Colorado; Utah; California; Idaho; Oregon; and Washington.”

Several thousand Japanese Americans served with distinction in the U.S. armed forces, and no case of subversion by a Japanese American was ever uncovered. Still, the Supreme Court’s 1944 Korematsu decision upheld Executive Order 9066’s clear violation of Japanese Americans’ constitutional rights as justified by “military necessity.”

Building a Citizen Army As war raged in Europe and Asia, “the U.S. Army looked like a few nice boys with BB guns,” according to one observer. In 1940, Roosevelt urged Congress to prepare for war by passing the Selective Service Act, which registered men of military age who could be drafted if the need arose. More than six thousand local draft boards registered more than thirty million men. When the war came, more than sixteen million men and women served in uniform, two-thirds of them draftees and most of them young men. Women were barred from combat duty, but they worked at nearly every noncombat task, eroding barriers to women’s military service.

The Selective Service Act prohibited discrimination “on account of race or color.” Almost one million African American men and women donned uniforms, as did half a million Mexican Americans, 25,000 Native Americans, and 13,000 Chinese Americans. The racial insults and discrimination suffered by all people of color made some soldiers ask, as a Mexican American GI did on his way to the European front, “Why fight for America when you have not been treated as an American?”

African American Machine Gunners Soldiers William Adam Leak and Adam Parham, shown here in May 1944, were among the first African American combat troops in the Pacific theater. They and thousands of other black soldiers fought in the Bougainville campaign, which continued until August 1945, to retake the Japanese-occupied portions of the Solomon Islands, just north of Australia.

Black Americans were trained in segregated camps, confined in segregated barracks, and assigned to segregated units. Most black soldiers were assigned to manual labor. Few served in combat until late in 1944, when the need for military manpower in Europe increased. Then, as General George

Patton told black soldiers in a tank unit in Normandy, “I don’t care what color you are, so long as you go up there and kill those Kraut sonsabitches.”

Homosexuals also served in the armed forces, although in much smaller numbers than black Americans. Allowed to serve as long as their sexual preferences remained covert, gay Americans, like other minorities, sought to demonstrate their worth under fire. “I was superpatriotic,” a gay combat veteran recalled. Another gay GI remarked, “Who in the hell is going to worry about [homosexuality]” in the midst of the life-or-death realities of war?

Conversion to a War Economy In 1940, the American economy remained mired in the depression. Nearly one worker in seven was still unemployed, factories operated far below their productive capacity, and the total federal budget was less than $10 billion. Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt announced the goal of converting the economy to produce “overwhelming …, crushing superiority of equipment in any theater of the world war.” Factories were converted to assembling tanks and airplanes, and production soared to record levels. By the end of the war, jobs exceeded workers, plants operated at full capacity, and the federal budget topped $100 billion.

To organize and oversee this tidal wave of military production, Roosevelt called upon business leaders to come to Washington and accept a token payment of a dollar a year to head new government agencies, such as the War Production Board, which set production priorities and pushed for

maximum output. Contracts flowed to large corporations, often on a basis that guaranteed their profits. During the first half of 1942, the government issued contracts worth more than the entire gross national product in 1941.

Booming wartime employment swelled union membership. To speed production, the government asked unions to pledge not to strike. Despite the relentless pace of work, union members mostly kept their no-strike pledge. An important exception was the United Mine Workers, who walked out of the coal mines in 1943, demanding a pay hike and earning hostility from many Americans.

Overall, conversion to war production achieved Roosevelt’s ambitious goal of “crushing superiority” in military goods. At a total cost of $304 billion (equivalent to about $4 trillion today) during the war, the nation produced an avalanche of military equipment, more than double the combined production of Germany, Japan, and Italy (Figure 25.1). This outpouring of military goods supplied not only U.S. forces but also America’s allies, giving tangible meaning to Roosevelt’s pledge to make America the “arsenal of democracy.”

FIGURE 25.1 Global Comparison: Weapons Production by the Axis and Allied Powers during World War II

U.S. weapons dominated the air and the sea during World War II. Together, the three Allied powers produced about three times as many aircraft and five to eight times as many warships as the two Axis powers. The Soviet Union led the other Allies in the production of tanks and artillery. What does the chronology of weapons production suggest about the kind of warfare emphasized by each belligerent nation and the course of the war?

Description “The data compares the type of production of Artillery, Tanks, Warships, and Aircraft from 1939 to 1940, 1941 to 1942, and 1943 to 1945.

1939 to 1940

During this period, the Allies produced 42,000 aircraft of which the U. S. and Great Britain made an almost equal amount while the Axis powers produced 49,000 aircraft of which Germany and the U S S R contributed almost equally and Japan produced 12,000. All of the 200 warships produced by the Allies were solely from Great Britain while the 140 warships produced by the Axis powers had Japan as the major producer followed by Germany and the U S S R. The Allies produced a total of 3,000 tanks; more than two- thirds were from Great Britain and the remaining from the United States whereas the Axis powers produced 11,000 warships with the U S S R accounting for almost 7,000, Germany accounting for almost 2,800, and Japan for 1,200. The artillery production of the Allies amounted to 5,000. 2,900 belonged to Great Britain and 2,100 to the United States. The Axis powers, on the other hand, produced 40,000 with the U S S R contributing the majority and Germany the rest of it.

The U S S R was allied with Germany between 1939 and 1940 and no reliable data existed for Japan concerning its Artillery production.

1941 to 1942

The Allies produced 159,000 aircraft of which over 100,000 were produced by the United States, and nearly 29,500 were produced each by Great Britain and the U S S S R. On the other hand, the Axis powers accounted for 41,000 aircraft with over 26,000 were from Germany and 15,000 from Japan. As for warships, 1,800 were made by the United States,

900 by Great Britain and 300 by the U S S R, a total of 3,000. Germany produced over 400 warships; less than 200 were produced by Japan, amounting to a total of 600. The U S S R and the United States produced almost 35,000 tanks each and Great Britain accounted for the remaining 6,000. The Axis powers produced 17,000 tanks with Germany contributing nearly 15,000 and Japan 2,000. The U S S R was a major producer of artillery of almost 144,000 followed by the United States which produced 100,000 and Great Britain producing 40,000. The Axis powers, on the other hand, produced 19,000 with Germany as the sole contributor.

1943 to 1945

The United States produced almost two-thirds of the total 393,000 aircraft followed by the U S S R and Great Britain who were almost equal contributors while the combined production of Germany and Japan was 128,000. While Japan and Germany contributed more or less equally to the total of 900 warships of the Axis powers, of the 7,000 warships produced by the Allies, the United States was yet again the major producer with Great Britain and the U S S R accounting for less than one-quarter of the total production. The Allies produced 143,000 tanks with the U S S R and the U. S. being the major contributors followed by Great Britain. Germany produced over 44,700 tanks and Japan accounted for the remaining 300. The total production of artillery was 430,000 by the Allies in that the U S S R was the major producer followed by the United States and Great Britain being a minor producer. Germany was the sole power engaged in artillery production accounting for 68,000.

All data are approximate.”

��

How did the Roosevelt administration mobilize the human and industrial resources necessary to fight a two-front war?

How did the Allies reverse Axis advances in Europe and the Pacific? The United States confronted an intimidating military challenge in December 1941. The attack on Pearl Harbor destroyed much of its Pacific Fleet. In the Atlantic, Hitler’s U-boats sank American ships, while German armies occupied most of western Europe and steadily advanced into the Soviet Union. Roosevelt and his military advisers believed that defeating Germany took top priority. That meant the United States had to support its allies, Britain and the Soviet Union.

If they fell, Hitler would command all the resources of Europe and would be ready for an assault on the United States. To fight back against Germany and Japan, the United States had to coordinate military and political strategy with its allies and muster all its human and economic assets. Victory over the Japanese fleet at the Battle of Midway, the successful elimination of Germany’s menace to Allied shipping in the prolonged Battle of the Atlantic, and the Allied assault on North Africa and then Italy established Allied naval superiority in the Atlantic and Pacific and began to challenge German domination of southern Europe.

Turning the Tide in the Pacific In the Pacific theater, Japan’s leading military strategist, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, believed that if his forces did not quickly conquer and secure the territories they targeted, Japan would eventually lose the war because of

America’s far greater resources. Swiftly, the Japanese assaulted American airfields in the Philippines and captured U.S. outposts on Guam and Wake Island. After occupying Singapore and Burma, Japan sought to complete its domination of the southern Pacific with an attack in January 1942 on the American stronghold in the Philippines (Map 25.5). American defenders surrendered to the Japanese in May. The Japanese victors sent captured American and Filipino soldiers on the infamous Bataan Death March to a concentration camp, causing thousands to die. By the summer of 1942, the Japanese had conquered the Dutch East Indies and were poised to strike Australia and New Zealand.

In the spring of 1942, U.S. forces launched a major two-pronged counteroffensive that military officials hoped would reverse Japanese advances. Forces led by General Douglas MacArthur, commander of the U.S. armed forces in the Pacific, moved north from Australia and eventually attacked the Japanese in the Philippines. Far more decisively, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz sailed his battle fleet west from Hawai’i to retake Japanese-held islands in the southern and mid-Pacific. On May 7–8, 1942, in the Coral Sea just north of Australia, the American fleet and carrier-based warplanes defeated a Japanese armada that was sailing around the coast of New Guinea.

Nimitz then learned from an intelligence intercept that the Japanese were massing an invasion force aimed at Midway Island, an outpost guarding the Hawai’ian Islands. Nimitz maneuvered his fleet to surprise the Japanese at the Battle of Midway. In a furious battle that raged from June 3 to June 6, American ships and planes delivered a crushing blow to the Japanese navy.

The Battle of Midway reversed the balance of naval power in the Pacific and put the Japanese at a disadvantage for the rest of the war. Japan managed to build only six more large aircraft carriers during the war, while the United States launched dozens, proving the wisdom of Yamamoto’s prediction. But the Japanese still occupied and defended the many places they had conquered.

The Campaign in Europe After Pearl Harbor, Hitler’s eastern-front armies marched ever deeper into the Soviet Union while his western-front forces prepared to invade Britain. As in World War I, the Germans tried to starve the British into submission by destroying their seaborne lifeline. In 1941 and 1942, they sank Allied ships faster than new ones could be built. Overall, this U-boat campaign sank 4,700 merchant vessels and almost 200 warships and killed 40,000 Allied seamen.

Until mid-1943, the outcome of the war in the Atlantic remained in doubt. Then, newly invented radar detectors and production of sufficient destroyer escorts for merchant vessels allowed the Allies to prey upon the lurking U- boats. After suffering a 75 percent casualty rate among U-boat crews, Hitler withdrew German submarines from the North Atlantic in late May 1943, allowing thousands of American supply ships to cross the Atlantic safely. Winning the Battle of the Atlantic allowed the United States to supply its British and Soviet allies for the duration of the war and to reduce the threat of a German invasion of Britain.

The most important strategic questions confronting the United States and its allies were when and where to open a second front against the Nazis. Stalin demanded that America and Britain mount an immediate and massive assault across the English Channel into western France to force Hitler to divert his armies from the eastern front and relieve the pressure on the Soviet Union. Churchill and Roosevelt instead delayed opening a second front, allowing the Germans and the Soviets to slug it out. This drawn-out conflict weakened both the Nazis and the Communists and made an eventual Allied attack on western France more likely to succeed. Churchill and Roosevelt decided to strike first in North Africa to help secure Allied control of the Mediterranean.

In October and November 1942, British forces at El-Alamein in Egypt halted German general Erwin Rommel’s drive to capture the Suez Canal, Britain’s lifeline to the oil of the Middle East and to British colonies in India and South Asia (Map 25.4). In November, an American army under General Dwight D. Eisenhower landed far to the west, in French Morocco. Propelled by American tank units commanded by General George Patton, the Allied armies defeated the Germans in North Africa in May 1943. The North African campaign pushed the Germans out of Africa, made the Mediterranean safe for Allied shipping, and opened the door for an Allied invasion of Italy.

MAP 25.4 The European Theater of World War II, 1942–1945

The Russian reversal of the German offensive at Stalingrad and Leningrad, combined with Allied landings in North Africa and Normandy, trapped Germany in a closing vise of Allied armies on all sides.

Description “The Allied powers highlighted on the map shows Great Britain; the northern part of Ireland; the Soviet Union extending from Murmansk in the north, along Leningrad to Archangel and Moscow in the center and further southward; Iraq; Syria; Lebanon (French); Cyprus (British); Transjordan; Palestine (Britain); Egypt; Algeria; French North Africa (Vichy France, Joined Allies November 1942); and Iceland. The Axis Powers, including annexed territory shown on the map include Germany; Austria; Slovakia; Italy

including Sicily and Sardinia; Slovakia; Albania (Italy); Montenegro; Libya (Italy); and Rhodes (Italy). The extent of Axis control, early November 1942 covered France; Vichy France; Belgium; Luxembourg; Netherlands; Denmark; Norway; Finland; Poland; Hungary; Croatia; Serbia; Romania; Bulgaria; Greece; Soviet Union extending from Sevastopol in the south across Ukraine to Leningrad in the north; Morocco; Tunisia; Corsica; and Crete. The Neutral nations comprised of Spain; Portugal; Switzerland; Ireland; Sweden; Turkey; and Saudi Arabia.

The Battle of Stalingrad took place between August 21, 1942 and January 31, 1943 and the Allied forces proceeded westward through the south of Ukraine while Leningrad was besieged between September 1942 and January 1943. The forces moved across the Soviet Union to Warsaw in Poland along different courses during March and July of 1944, they also moved to the Baltic Sea coast in September 1944 and Romania in August 1944. The Allied forces advanced to Tunisia in 1942 from Casablanca in Morocco and from Alexandria through Libya (Italy) to occupy Tunis (Tunisia) on May 12, 1943. A major battle resulted in the Allied victory at El-Alamein, Egypt between October 23 and November 5, 1942. The Allies were victorious at the battle in Kasserine Pass, Tunisia from February 14 to 26, 1943. From Tunis, the forces moved to Italy via the Mediterranean and Rome was liberated on June 4, 1943. The Forces took an alternative route from Tunis to Italy via Sicily in July, 1943. From Rome, the Forces led a route that launched their advancements to Vichy France on the west, and to Austria and Eastern Europe. In 1944, they advanced to Vichy France from the Mediterranean Sea and moved across France to join the route set forth by the Forces from London to Normandy. The resulting victory of the Forces at Normandy on the D Day, June 6, 1944 also led to the liberation of Paris on August 25, 1944. Following this, they advanced to Germany through Paris and a parallel route across Luxembourg and Belgium ensuing in the Battle of the Bulge between December 16, 1944 and January 31, 1945. This propelled their advancement to Germany in April 1945 and their subsequent capture of Berlin on May 2, 1945.”

In January 1943, while the North African campaign was still under way, Roosevelt and Churchill met in Casablanca and announced that they would accept nothing less than the “unconditional surrender” of the Axis powers, ruling out peace negotiations. They agreed that they should strike next

against Italy, forcing the Soviet Union to continue to bear the brunt of the Nazi war machine.

In July 1943, American and British forces landed in Sicily. Soon afterward, Mussolini was deposed in Italy, ending the reign of Italian fascism. Quickly, the Allies invaded the mainland, and the Italian government surrendered unconditionally. The Germans responded by rushing reinforcements to Italy, turning the Allies’ Italian campaign into a series of battles to liberate Italy from German occupation.

German troops dug into strong fortifications and fought to defend every inch of Italy’s rugged terrain. Allied forces continued to battle against stubborn German defenses for the remainder of the war, making the Italian campaign the war’s deadliest for American infantrymen. One soldier in Italy wrote that his buddies “died like butchered swine.”

��

How did U.S. military strategy against the Japanese and the Germans differ?

How did war change the American home front? The war effort mobilized Americans as never before. Factories churned out bombs, bullets, tanks, ships, and airplanes, which workers rushed to assemble, leaving their farms and small towns and congregating in cities. Women took jobs with wrenches and welding torches, boosting the nation’s workforce while violating traditional notions that a woman’s place was in the home rather than on the assembly line. Despite rationing and shortages, gigantic government expenditures for war production brought prosperity to many Americans after years of depression-era poverty.

Although Americans in uniform risked their lives on battlefields in Europe and Asia, Americans on the U.S. mainland enjoyed complete immunity from foreign attack — in sharp contrast to their Soviet and British allies. Wartime ideology contrasted Allied support for human rights with Axis tyranny and provided justification for the many sacrifices Americans were required to make. The ideology also established a standard of basic human equality that became a potent weapon in the campaign for equal rights at home and in condemning atrocities such as the Nazis’ Holocaust.

Women and Families, Guns and Butter Millions of American women gladly took their places on assembly lines in defense industries. At the start of the war, about one-quarter of adult women worked outside the home, but few women worked in factories, except for

textile mills and sewing industries. Wartime mobilization and the enlistment of millions of men in the armed forces left factories begging for women workers.

Government advertisements urged women to take industrial jobs by assuring them that their household chores had prepared them for work on the “Victory Line.” One billboard proclaimed, “If you’ve sewed buttons, or made buttonholes, on a [sewing] machine, you can learn to do spot welding on airplane parts.” Millions of women responded. Advertisers often referred to a woman who worked in a war industry as “Rosie the Riveter,” a popular wartime term.

By the end of the war, women working outside the home numbered 50 percent more than in 1939. Contributing to the war effort also paid off in wages. A Kentucky woman remembered her job at a munitions plant, where she earned “the fabulous sum of $32 a week. To us it was an absolute miracle. Before that we made nothing.” Although men were paid an average of $54 for similar wartime work, women accepted the pay difference and welcomed their chance to earn wages and help win the war at the same time.

Riveting Rosies Dora Miles (left) and Dorothy Johnson (right) were among the millions of women (nicknamed “Rosie the Riveter”) who flocked to work in war industries at jobs formerly held by men. Like many other women war workers, Miles and Johnson helped build airplanes. Here they are depicted riveting the frame of an aircraft at a plant in Long Beach, California.

The majority of married women remained at home, occupied with domestic chores and child care. But they, too, supported the war effort, planting Victory Gardens, saving tin cans and newspapers for recycling into war materiel, and buying war bonds. Many families scrimped to cope with the 30 percent inflation during the war, but men and women in manufacturing industries enjoyed wages that grew twice as fast as inflation.

The war influenced how all families spent their earnings. Buying a new washing machine or car was out of the question since factories that formerly built them now made military goods. Many other consumer goods — such as tires, gasoline, shoes, and meat — were rationed at home to meet military needs overseas. But most Americans readily found things to buy, including movie tickets, cosmetics, and music recordings.

The wartime prosperity and abundance enjoyed by most Americans contrasted with the experiences of their hard-pressed allies. Personal consumption fell by 22 percent in Britain, and food output plummeted to just one-third of prewar levels in the Soviet Union, creating widespread hunger and even starvation. Few went hungry in the United States as farm output grew 25 percent annually during the war, providing a food surplus for export to the Allies.

The Double V Campaign Fighting against Nazi Germany and its ideology of white racial supremacy, Americans confronted extensive racial prejudice in their own country. The Pittsburgh Courier, a leading black newspaper, asserted that the wartime emergency called for a Double V campaign seeking “victory over our enemies at home and victory over our enemies on the battlefields abroad.” As a Mississippi-born African American combat veteran of the Pacific theater recalled, “We had two wars to fight: prejudice … and those Japs.”

In 1941, black organizations demanded that the federal government require companies receiving defense contracts to integrate their workforces. A.

Philip Randolph, head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, promised that one hundred thousand African American protesters would march on Washington if the president did not eliminate discrimination in defense industries. Roosevelt decided to risk offending his white allies in unions and in the South, and in mid-1941 issued Executive Order 8802, which created the Committee on Fair Employment Practices to investigate and prevent racial discrimination in employment.

Progress came slowly, however. In 1940, nine out of ten black Americans lived below the federal poverty line. Those who worked earned an average of just 39 percent of whites’ wages. In search of better jobs and living conditions, 5.5 million black Americans migrated from the South to war- industry jobs in the North and West. For the first time in U.S. history, the migration made a majority of African Americans city dwellers. Severe labor shortages and government fair employment standards opened assembly-line jobs in defense plants to African Americans, causing black unemployment to drop by 80 percent during the war. But more jobs did not mean equal pay for blacks. The average income of black families rose during the war, but by the end of the conflict it still stood at only half of what white families earned.

Blacks’ migration to defense jobs intensified racial antagonisms, which boiled over in the hot summer of 1943 when 242 race riots erupted in forty- seven cities. The worst mayhem occurred in Detroit, where a long- simmering conflict between whites and blacks over racially segregated housing ignited into a race war. In two days of violence, twenty-five blacks and nine whites were killed, and scores more were injured.

Racial violence created the impetus for the Double V campaign, officially supported by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Double V activists argued that black Americans deserved the same rights and privileges enjoyed by all other Americans, an argument that was reinforced by the Allies’ wartime ideology of freedom and democracy. The NAACP focused largely on court challenges to segregation, while a new organization founded in 1942, the Congress of Racial Equality, organized picketing and sit-ins against racially segregated restaurants and theaters. Despite these efforts, the Double V campaign achieved only limited success against racial discrimination during the war.

Wartime Politics and the 1944 Election Americans rallied around the war effort almost unanimously. In June 1944, Congress recognized the sacrifices made by millions of veterans and unanimously passed the landmark GI Bill of Rights, which gave military veterans government funds for education, housing, and health care, as well as providing loans to start businesses and buy homes. The GI Bill put the financial resources of the federal government behind the abstract goals of freedom and democracy for which veterans were fighting, and it empowered millions of GIs to better themselves and their families after the war.

After twelve turbulent years in the White House, Roosevelt was exhausted and ill with heart disease. Still, he was determined to remain president until the war ended. His poor health made the selection of a vice presidential candidate unusually important. Convinced that many Americans had soured

on liberal reform, Roosevelt chose Senator Harry S. Truman of Missouri as his running mate. A reliable party man from a southern border state, Truman satisfied urban Democratic leaders while not worrying white southerners, who were nervous about challenges to racial segregation.

The Republicans, confident of a strong conservative upsurge in the nation, nominated Thomas E. Dewey as their presidential candidate. The governor of New York, Dewey had made his reputation as a tough crime fighter. In the 1944 presidential campaign, Dewey failed to persuade most voters that the New Deal was a creeping socialist menace. Roosevelt’s failing health alarmed many observers, but it was outweighed by Americans’ unwillingness to change presidents in the midst of the war. In his narrowest presidential victory, voters gave Roosevelt a 53.5 percent majority, confirming his leadership as Dr. Win-the-War.

Reaction to the Holocaust Since the 1930s, the Nazis had persecuted Jews in Germany and every German-occupied territory, causing many Jews to seek asylum beyond Hitler’s reach. Thousands of Jews sought to immigrate to the United States, but 82 percent of Americans opposed admitting them, and they were turned away. In 1942, numerous reports reached the United States that Hitler was sending Jews, Gypsies, religious and political dissenters, homosexuals, and others to concentration camps, where old people, children, and others deemed too weak to work were systematically killed and cremated, while the able-bodied were put to work at slave labor until they died of starvation and abuse.

Other camps were devoted almost exclusively to murdering and cremating Jews. Despite reports of the brutal slave labor and death camps, U.S. officials refused to grant asylum to Jewish refugees. Most Americans, including top officials, believed that reports were exaggerated. Only 152,000 of Europe’s millions of Jews managed to gain refuge in the United States before America’s entry into the war. Afterward, the number of Jewish refugees dropped to just 2,400 by 1944.

Mass Execution of Jewish Women and Children On October 14, 1942, Jewish women and children from the village of Mizocz in present-day Ukraine were herded into a ravine, forced to undress and lie facedown, and then shot at point-blank range by German officials. To centralize

such executions, the Nazis built death camps, where they systematically slaughtered millions of Jews and other “undesirables.”

Desperate to stop the atrocities, the World Jewish Congress appealed to the Allies to bomb the death camps and the railroad tracks leading to them. Intent on achieving military victory as soon as possible, the Allies repeatedly turned down such bombing requests, arguing that the air forces could not deviate from their military missions.

The nightmare of the Holocaust was all too real. When Russian troops arrived at Auschwitz in Poland in January 1945, they found emaciated prisoners, skeletal corpses, gas chambers, pits filled with human ashes, and loot the Nazis had stripped from the dead, including hair, gold fillings, and false teeth. At last, the truth about the Holocaust began to be known beyond the murdered men, women, and children and the Germans who had tolerated and participated in this genocide. By then, it was too late for the eleven million civilian victims — mostly Jews — of these Nazi crimes against humanity.

��

How did the war influence American society?

How did the Allies win the war? By February 1943, Soviet defenders had defeated the massive German offensive against Stalingrad, turning the tide of the war in Europe. After gargantuan sacrifices in fighting that lasted for eighteen months, the Red Army forced Hitler’s Wehrmacht to turn back toward the west. In the Pacific, the Allies halted the expansion of the Japanese empire and now had the deadly task of dislodging Japanese defenders from the outposts they still occupied. Allied military planners adopted a strategy to annihilate Axis resistance by taking advantage of America’s industrial superiority. A secret plan to develop a superbomb that harnessed atomic power developed too late to use against Germany. But when the atomic bomb devastated the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan finally surrendered, canceling the planned assault on the Japanese homeland by hundreds of thousands of American soldiers and sailors and their allies.

From Bombing Raids to Berlin As an airborne substitute for the delayed second front on the ground, British and American pilots flew bombing missions from England to German- occupied territories and to Germany itself. During night raids, British bombers targeted general areas, hoping to hit civilians, create terror, and undermine morale. Beginning with Paul Tibbets’s flight in August 1942, American pilots flew heavily armored B-17s from English airfields in daytime raids on industrial targets vital for the German war machine.

German air defenses took a fearsome toll on Allied pilots and aircraft. In 1943, two-thirds of American airmen did not survive to complete their

twenty-five-mission tours of duty. In all, 85,000 American airmen were killed in the skies over Europe. Many others were shot down and held as prisoners of war. In February 1944, the arrival of America’s durable and deadly P-51 Mustang fighter gave Allied bombers superior protection. The Mustangs slowly began to sweep the Luftwaffe from the skies, allowing Allied bombers to penetrate deep into Germany and pound civilian and military targets around the clock.

In November 1943, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin met in Tehran to discuss wartime strategy and the second front. Roosevelt agreed to Stalin’s demand that the Soviet Union would exercise control of the Eastern European countries that the Red Army occupied as it rolled back the still- potent German Wehrmacht. Stalin agreed to enter the war against Japan once Germany finally surrendered, in effect promising to open a second front in the Pacific theater. Roosevelt and Churchill told Stalin that they would at last launch a massive second-front assault in northern France, code-named Overlord, in May 1944.

General Eisenhower was assigned overall command of Allied forces, and mountains of military supplies were stockpiled in Britain. Most of Hitler’s armies were in the east, trying to halt the Red Army’s westward offensive. Relatively few German troops were stationed to defend against an Allied attack on occupied France. More decisive, years of Allied air raids had decimated the German Luftwaffe, which could send aloft only three hundred fighter planes against twelve thousand Allied aircraft.

After frustrating delays caused by stormy weather, Eisenhower launched the largest amphibious assault in world history on D Day, June 6, 1944 (see Map 25.4). Allied soldiers finally succeeded in securing the beachhead. An officer told his men, “The only people on this beach are the dead and those that are going to die — now let’s get the hell out of here.” They did, finally surmounting the cliffs that loomed over the beach and destroying the German defenses. One GI who made the landing recalled the soldiers “were exhausted and we were exultant. We had survived D Day!”

Within a week, a flood of soldiers, tanks, and other military equipment pushed Allied forces toward Germany. On August 25, the Allies liberated Paris from four years of Nazi occupation. As the giant pincers of the Allied and Soviet armies closed on Germany in December 1944, Hitler ordered a counterattack to capture the Allies’ essential supply port at Antwerp, Belgium. In the Battle of the Bulge (December 16, 1944, to January 31, 1945), as the Allies termed it, German forces drove fifty-five miles into Allied lines before being stopped at Bastogne. The battle caused nearly 90,000 American casualties, more than in any other battle of the war. An American lieutenant recalled the macabre scene of “all the bodies … frozen stiff … many dead Americans and Germans … [many with] the ring finger … cut off in order to get the ring.” The battle cost the Nazis hundreds of tanks and more than 100,000 men, fatally depleting Hitler’s reserves.

In February 1945, while Allied armies pushed German forces backward, Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt met secretly at the Yalta Conference (named for the Russian resort town where it was held) to discuss their plans for the postwar world. Roosevelt managed to secure Stalin’s promise to

permit votes of self-determination in the Eastern European countries occupied by the Red Army. The Allies pledged to support Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek) as the leader of China. The Soviet Union obtained a role in the postwar governments of Korea and Manchuria in exchange for entering the war against Japan after the defeat of Germany.

The “Big Three” also agreed on the creation of a new international peacekeeping organization, the United Nations (UN). All nations would have a place in the UN General Assembly, but the Security Council would wield decisive power. The Security Council’s permanent representatives from the Allied powers — China, France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States — would possess a veto over UN actions. The Senate ratified the United Nations Charter in July 1945 by a vote of 89 to 2, demonstrating the triumph of internationalism over isolationism during the war.

While Allied armies sped toward Berlin, Allied warplanes dropped more bombs after D Day than in all the previous European bombing raids combined. By April 11, Allied armies reached the banks of the Elbe River and paused while the Soviets smashed into Berlin. The Red Army captured Berlin on May 2. Hitler had committed suicide on April 30, and the provisional German government surrendered unconditionally on May 7. The war in Europe was finally over, with the sacrifice of 135,576 American soldiers, nearly 250,000 British troops, and 9 million Russian combatants.

Roosevelt did not live to witness the end of the war. On April 12, he suffered a fatal stroke. Americans grieved for the man who had led them

through years of depression and war, and they worried about his untested successor, Vice President Harry Truman.

The Defeat of Japan After punishing defeats in the Coral Sea and at Midway, Japan had to fend off Allied naval and air attacks. In 1943, British and American forces, along with Indian and Chinese allies, launched an offensive against Japanese outposts in southern Asia, pushing through Burma and into China, where Jiang’s armies continued to resist conquest. In the Pacific, Americans and their allies attacked Japanese strongholds by sea, air, and land, moving island by island toward the Japanese homeland (see Map 25.5).

MAP 25.5 The Pacific Theater of World War II, 1941–1945

To drive the Japanese from their far-flung empire, the Allies launched two combined naval and military offensives — one to recapture the Philippines and then attack Japanese forces in China, the other to hop from island to island in the Central Pacific toward the Japanese mainland.

Description “The Soviet Union, China, India, present-day Sri Lanka, Nepal, Alaska (U. S.), northern Sakhalin Island, Aleutian Island (U. S.), Australia, southern New Guinea, New Hebrides (French-British), New Caledonia (France), Fiji Island (Britain) constituted Allies while Mongolia, Tibet, and countries to the west of the Indian subcontinent stood as Neutral nations.

The extent of Japanese control (August 1942) ran from Malaya, Burma, French Indochina; Thailand; the eastern coastal belt of China comprising Hong Kong and Nanjing; Manchuria; Korea; southern Sakhalin Island on the North Pacific Ocean; Japan; and the islands Sumatra, Java, Celebes, Borneo; the Philippines, Dutch East Indies; northern New Guinea; Rabaul; the Bougainville Island; Solomon Island; Guadalcanal; and a quadrilateral comprising of Mariana Island, Caroline Island, and Marshall Island on the southern Pacific Ocean.

While the Allied Forces advanced from the Aleutian Islands to Attu Islands on the North Pacific Ocean in May 1943, in the South Pacific, the Allies took a route from the Pearl Harbor that bifurcated to Eniwetok and the Bougainville Island to the south and north of Marshall Island in the Japanese Mandate in November 1943 following their advancement to the Bougainville Island and Rabaul in August 1942. Another Pacific route in April 1944 took them to the Leyte Gulf under Commander MacArthur in October and Bataan and Corregidor in the Philippines Islands and to Okinawa situated to the south of Japan besides deflecting to Borneo from the Philippine Islands. In April 1945, the Allied launched attacks to Leyte Gulf, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa from Guam.

On land, the Allies headed to Thailand from Burma in 1944 and set forth to Manchuria in 1945 from Mongolia and the Soviet Union.

The major battles on the Pacific Ocean are listed as follows: Bataan and Corregidor (January 2 to May 6, 1942); Guam (July 21 to August 10, 1945); Okinawa (April 1 to June 21, 1945); Iwo Jima (February 19 to March 16, 1945); Leyte Gulf (October 23 to 26, 1944); Coral Sea (May 7 to 8, 1942); Guadalcanal (August 7, 1942 to February 8, 1943); Solomon Island; Midway Island (June 3 to 6, 1942); Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941). Atomic explosions took place in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.

The map identifies the islands of Guam, Wake, Hawaii, in the Pacific Ocean as American colonies.”

This island-hopping campaign began in August 1942, when American Marines landed on Guadalcanal in the southern Pacific. For the next six months, a savage battle raged for control of the island. Finally, during the

night of February 8, 1943, Japanese forces withdrew. The terrible losses on both sides indicated to the Marines how costly it would be to defeat Japan. After the battle, Joseph Steinbacher, a twenty-one-year-old from Alabama, sailed from San Francisco to New Guinea, where, he recalled, “all the cannon fodder waited to be assigned” to replace the killed and wounded.

In mid-1943, Allied forces launched offensives in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands that gradually secured the South Pacific. In the Central Pacific, amphibious forces conquered the Gilbert and Marshall islands, which served as forward bases for air assaults on the Japanese home islands. As the Allies attacked island after island, Japanese soldiers were ordered to refuse to surrender no matter how hopeless their plight.

While the island-hopping campaign kept pressure on Japanese forces, the Allies invaded the Philippines in the fall of 1944. In the four-day Battle of Leyte Gulf, one of the greatest naval battles in world history, the American fleet crushed the Japanese armada, clearing the way for Allied victory in the Philippines. While the Philippine campaign was under way, American forces captured two crucial islands — Iwo Jima and Okinawa — from which they planned to launch an attack on the Japanese homeland. To defend Okinawa, Japanese leaders ordered thousands of suicide pilots, known as kamikaze, to crash their bomb-laden planes into Allied ships. But instead of destroying the American fleet, the kamikaze demolished the Japanese air force. By June 1945, the Japanese were nearly defenseless on the sea and in the air. Still, their leaders prepared to fight to the death for their homeland.

Joseph Steinbacher and other GIs who had suffered “horrendous” casualties in the Philippines were now told by their commanding officer, “Men, in a few short months we are going to invade [Japan]…. We will be going in on the first wave and are expecting ninety percent casualties the first day…. For the few of us left alive the war will be over.” Steinbacher later recalled his thoughts at that moment: “I know that I am now a walking dead man and will not have a snowball’s chance in hell of making it through the last great battle to conquer the home islands of Japan.”

Atomic Warfare In mid-July 1945, as Allied forces prepared for the final assault on Japan, American scientists tested a secret weapon at an isolated desert site near Los Alamos, New Mexico. In 1942, Roosevelt had authorized the top-secret Manhattan Project to find a way to convert nuclear energy into a superbomb before the Germans added such a weapon to their arsenal. More than one hundred thousand Americans, led by scientists, engineers, and military officers, worked frantically to win the race for an atomic bomb. Germany surrendered two and a half months before the test on July 16, 1945, when scientists first witnessed an atomic explosion that sent a mushroom cloud of debris eight miles into the atmosphere. After watching the successful test of the bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer, the head scientist at Los Alamos, remarked soberly, “Lots of boys not grown up yet will owe their life to it.”

President Truman saw no reason not to use the atomic bomb against Japan if doing so would save American lives. Despite numerous defeats, Japan

still had more than six million reserves at home for a last-ditch defense against the anticipated Allied assault, which U.S. military advisers estimated would kill at least 250,000 Americans. But first Truman issued an ultimatum: Japan must surrender unconditionally or face utter ruin. When the Japanese failed to respond by the deadline, Truman ordered that an atomic bomb be dropped on a Japanese city. The bomb that Colonel Paul Tibbets and his crew released over Hiroshima on August 6 leveled the city and incinerated about 80,000 people, and many thousands more died later from injuries and radiation. Three days later, after the Japanese government still refused to surrender, the second atomic bomb killed nearly as many civilians at Nagasaki.

With America’s promise that the emperor could retain his throne after the Allies took over, Japan surrendered on August 14. On a troopship departing from Europe for what would have been the final assault on Japan, an American soldier spoke for millions of others when he heard the wonderful news that the killing was over: “We are going to grow to adulthood after all.”

While all Americans welcomed peace, some worried about the consequences of unleashing atomic power. Almost every American believed that the atomic bomb had brought peace in 1945, but nobody knew what it would bring in the future.

��

Why did Truman decide to use the atomic bomb against Japan?

Conclusion: Why did the United States emerge as a superpower at the end of the war? At a cost of 405,399 American lives, the nation united with its allies to crush the Axis aggressors into unconditional surrender. Almost all Americans believed they had won a “good war” against totalitarian evil. The Allies saved Asia and Europe from enslavement and finally halted the Nazis’ genocidal campaign against Jews and many others whom the Nazis considered inferior. To secure human rights and protect the world against future wars, the Roosevelt administration took the lead in creating the United Nations.

Wartime production lifted the nation out of the Great Depression. The gross national product soared to four times what it had been when Roosevelt became president in 1933. Jobs in defense industries eliminated chronic unemployment, provided wages for millions of women workers and African American migrants from southern farms, and boosted Americans’ prosperity. Ahead stretched the challenge of maintaining that prosperity while reintegrating millions of uniformed men and women, with help from the benefits of the GI Bill.

By the end of the war, the United States had emerged as a global superpower. Wartime mobilization made the American economy the strongest in the world, protected by the military clout of the nation’s nuclear monopoly. Although the war left much of the world a rubble-strewn

wasteland, the American mainland had remained safe from attack. The Japanese occupation of China had left fifty million people without homes, and millions more dead, maimed, or orphaned. The German offensive against the Soviet Union had killed more than twenty million Russian soldiers and civilians. Germany and Japan lay in ruins, their economies and societies as shattered as their military forces. But in the gruesome balance sheet of war, the Axis powers had inflicted far more grief, misery, and destruction on the global victims of their aggression than they had suffered in return.

As the dominant Western nation in the postwar world, the United States asserted its leadership in the reconstruction of Europe while occupying Japan and overseeing its economic and political recovery. America soon confronted new challenges in the tense aftermath of the war, as the Soviets seized political control of Eastern Europe, a Communist revolution swept China, and national liberation movements emerged in the colonial empires of Britain and France. The forces unleashed by World War II would shape the United States and the rest of the world for decades to come. Before the ashes of World War II had cooled, America’s wartime alliance with the Soviet Union fractured, igniting a Cold War between the superpowers. To resist global communism, the United States became in effect the policeman of the free world, leaving behind the pre–World War II legacy of isolationism.

Chapter Review

��

good neighbor policy neutrality acts appeasement Lend-Lease Act internment camps Selective Service Act Battle of Midway Double V campaign GI Bill of Rights Holocaust D Day Manhattan Project

�� The Onset of World War II

Why were the American people as a whole reluctant to become involved in World War II?

How did Roosevelt aid Britain and the Soviet Union, despite strong American isolationism?

The Home Front

How did wartime mobilization influence the American home front?

What were the most important social consequences of America’s involvement in World War II?

Victory in World War II

How did the Allies achieve victory?

What led to the decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan?

�� , ��

How did America’s experience of World War I shape U.S. involvement in World War II?

How did World War II set the stage for the postwar period?

��

1935–1937 Neutrality acts passed.

1936 Nazi Germany occupies Rhineland. Italian armies conquer Ethiopia. Spanish civil war begins.

1937 Japanese troops capture Nanjing.

1938 Hitler annexes Austria.

1939 German troops occupy Czechoslovakia. Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact formed. Germany’s attack on Poland begins World War II.

1940 Germany invades Denmark, Norway, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Netherlands. British and French troops evacuate from Dunkirk. Battle of Britain fought. Tripartite Pact formed. Congress passes Selective Service Act.

1941 Lend-Lease Act passes. Germany invades Soviet Union. Japanese attack Pearl Harbor.

1942 Japanese Americans moved to internment camps.

Japan captures the Philippines. Battles of Coral Sea and Midway fought. U.S. forces invade North Africa. Congress of Racial Equality founded.

1943 Allied leaders demand unconditional surrender of Axis powers. U.S. and British forces invade Sicily. Two hundred forty-two race riots erupt in forty-seven American cities.

1944 GI Bill of Rights enacted. Roosevelt reelected to fourth term. D Day executed.

1945 Yalta Conference held. Roosevelt dies; Vice President Harry Truman becomes president. Germany surrenders. United States joins United Nations. United States drops atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan surrenders, ending World War II.

�� 26 �� 1945–1960

�� This chapter will explore the following questions:

How did the Cold War begin? How did anticommunism drive U.S. policy at home and abroad? Why did the United States go to war in Korea? How did Truman’s and Eisenhower’s approaches to the superpower struggle differ? Conclusion: What were the costs and consequences of the Cold War?

�� MEMBER OF CONGRESS HELEN GAHAGAN DOUGLAS WAS A RARE SIGHT in the U.S. Capitol. A former Broadway star and opera singer, she was one of only ten female representatives in the 435-seat body. Douglas served in Congress from 1945 to 1951, when the fate of the New Deal hung in the balance and the nation charted an unprecedented course in foreign policy.

Born in 1900, Helen Gahagan grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and left college early for the stage. She quickly won fame on Broadway, starring in show after show until she married one of her leading men, Melvyn Douglas, in 1931. She followed him to Hollywood, where he hoped to advance his movie career, and the couple had two children.

Helen Gahagan Douglas admired Franklin D. Roosevelt’s leadership during the depression. She visited migrant camps where she saw “faces stamped with poverty and despair.” Her work on behalf of poor migrant farmworkers led her to testify before Congress and become a friend of the Roosevelts. In 1944, she won election to Congress, representing not the posh Hollywood district where she lived but a multiracial district in downtown Los Angeles, which cemented her dedication to progressive politics.

Like many liberals, Douglas was devastated by Roosevelt’s death and unsure of his successor. “Who was Harry Truman anyway?” she asked. A compromise choice for the vice presidency, this “accidental

president” lacked the charisma and political skills with which FDR had forged a winning Democratic Party coalition. Truman would confront domestic problems that the New Deal had not solved. He also faced major international challenges.

By 1947, a new term described the hostility that had emerged between the United States and its wartime ally, the Soviet Union: the Cold War. Truman and his advisers insisted that the Soviet Union posed a major threat to the United States, and they gradually shaped a policy to contain Soviet power and influence. As a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Douglas initially urged cooperation with the Soviet Union, but she would become Truman’s loyal ally, supporting the Marshall Plan, the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and the war in Korea. What came to be known as containment policy was successful in Europe, but communism spread in Asia, and the Truman and Eisenhower administrations alike sought to thwart its expansion in the “third world.” Some critics decried this “ideological crusade,” but a second Red scare stifled dissent and debate at home.

Douglas’s earlier links with leftist groups and her advocacy of civil rights and social welfare programs made her an easy target for conservative politicians exploiting anti-Communist fervor. Running for the U.S. Senate in 1950, she faced Republican Richard M. Nixon, who had gained national attention for his efforts to expose Communists in government. Nixon’s campaign labeled Douglas as “pink right down to her underwear” and sent thousands of voters the anonymous message, “I think you should know Helen Douglas is a Communist.” Douglas’s

political career ended in defeat, just as much of Truman’s domestic agenda would fall victim to the Red scare.

How did the Cold War begin? After Japan’s surrender in August 1945, Americans looked forward to the end of international crises and the dismantling of the large military establishment. Postwar realities played out differently. The wartime alliance of the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union crumbled, giving birth to the Cold War. As tensions grew, the United States began to develop new policies to “contain” the spread of Soviet power around the globe, including a military buildup, new alliances, covert actions, and an enormous aid program for Europe.

U.S.-Soviet Tensions Emerge “The guys who came out of World War II were idealistic,” reported Harold Russell, a young paratrooper who had lost both hands in a training accident. “We felt the day had come when the wars were all over.” But such hopes were dashed as old antagonisms between the Soviet Union and the West resurfaced. No longer bound by a common enemy, the former allies would clash over their very different visions of the postwar world.

The Western Allies’ delay in opening a second front in western Europe had aroused Soviet suspicions even during the war. The Soviet Union made deep sacrifices, losing more than twenty million citizens and vast portions of its agricultural and industrial capacity. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin wanted to make Germany pay for Soviet economic reconstruction. Having been attacked on its borders in both world wars, the USSR also desired friendly governments in neighboring countries in Eastern Europe. A ruthless dictator who jailed or murdered his critics and sought to purge all

his political opponents, Stalin aimed both to expand Soviet influence and to maintain his own power.

By contrast, American losses were light. The United States emerged from the war as the most powerful nation on the planet, with a vastly expanded economy and a monopoly on atomic weapons. That global position, along with U.S. economic interests and a belief in the superiority of American institutions and intentions, affected how American leaders approached the Soviet Union and its system of state socialism.

With the depression still fresh in their minds, U.S. officials were intent on preserving economic opportunities abroad for American businesses. These included access to raw materials, markets for U.S. goods, and security for overseas investments. Believing Communist rule and state-controlled economies posed a fundamental threat, President Harry S. Truman urged in 1947 that “the American system can survive in America only if it becomes a world system.”

U.S. leaders and citizens alike regarded their foreign policy not as a self- interested campaign for economic advantage, but rather as a plank of national security and even a noble mission to extend freedom, democracy, and capitalism around the globe. Laura Briggs, a woman from Idaho, spoke for many Americans who believed “it was our destiny to prove that we were the children of God and that our way was right for the world.”

Recent history also shaped postwar foreign policy. Many thought that World War II could have been avoided had Britain and France resisted

rather than appeased Hitler’s initial aggression. Navy Secretary James V. Forrestal opposed trying to “buy [the Soviets’] understanding and sympathy. We tried that once with Hitler.” The man with ultimate responsibility for U.S. policy was a keen student of history but had little international experience beyond his service in World War I. Harry S. Truman was willing to cooperate with the Soviets so long as the USSR conformed to U.S. plans for the postwar world. Proud of his ability to make quick decisions and confident in America’s nuclear advantage, Truman was determined to block Soviet expansion.

The Cold War first emerged over clashing Soviet and American interests in Eastern Europe. Stalin insisted that wartime agreements gave him a free hand in the countries defeated or liberated by the Red Army, just as the United States had moved to reconstruct governments in Italy and Japan. In early 1946, however, Stalin responded to Western pressure and removed troops from Iran on the Soviet Union’s southwest border, allowing U.S. access to the rich oil fields there.

The Soviet dictator initially tolerated non-Communist governments in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, but he would use harsh methods to install one-party rule in neighboring Poland and Bulgaria. Stalin saw hypocrisy when U.S. officials demanded democratic elections in Eastern Europe while supporting dictatorships friendly to U.S. interests in Latin America. In fact, the Western Allies were unwilling to match tough words with military force against the largest army in the world. Their protests did not prevent the Soviet Union from establishing Communist rule in satellite countries throughout Eastern Europe (Map 26.1).

MAP 26.1 The Division of Europe after World War II

The “iron curtain,” a term coined by Winston Churchill to refer to the Soviet grip on Eastern Europe, divided the continent for nearly fifty years. Communist governments controlled the countries along the Soviet Union’s western border, except for Finland, which remained neutral.

Description “The following regions are marked on the map.

European members of NATO, 1955: Norway including Oslo; Denmark including Copenhagen; the Netherlands including Amsterdam; Belgium including Brussels; North Ireland; West Germany including Bonn; Luxemburg including Luxembourg; France including Paris; Portugal including Lisbon; Italy including Rome and Sicily on the southwest; Sardinia; Corsica; Greece including Athens on the southeast; and Turkey including Ankara.

Communist bloc countries: East Germany including Berlin; Czechoslovakia including Prague; Poland including Warsaw on the east; Soviet Union including Moscow; Hungary

including Budapest; Romania including Bucharest; Bulgaria including Sofia; Albania including Tirana.

Neutral countries: Sweden including Stockholm; Finland including Helsinki; Switzerland including Bern; Austria including Vienna; Spain including Madrid; Yugoslavia including Belgrade; and Ireland including Dublin.

Iron curtain: The Iron curtain separates Russia and the eastern half of Europe including Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania from the western half of Europe including West Germany, Austria, Yugoslavia, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxemburg, France, Italy, Great Britain, Spain, and Portugal. The Iron curtain also separates Albania from Yugoslavia and Greece in the south.

An inset map shows Berlin in East Germany. The western half and the eastern half of Berlin are distinguished as West Berlin and East Berlin respectively.

The southern part of West Berlin is marked as U. S. Zone, the central part is marked as British Zone, and the northern part is marked as French Zone. East Berlin is marked as Soviet Zone.”

In 1946, the wartime Allies sparred over Germany’s future. Both sides wanted to demilitarize the country. U.S. policymakers sought rapid industrial revival there to foster European economic recovery. The Soviet Union, by contrast, wanted Germany weak both militarily and economically, and Stalin demanded that the Germans pay heavy reparations to help rebuild the devastated Soviet economy. Unable to settle their differences, the Allies divided the country. The Soviet Union installed a puppet Communist government in the eastern section, and Britain, France, and the United States began to unify their occupation zones, establishing the Federal Republic of Germany — West Germany — in 1949.

Tensions between the two superpowers only escalated. Boasting of the superiority of the Soviet system in February 1946, Stalin told a Moscow audience that capitalism inevitably produced war. One month later, Truman sat beside Winston Churchill, the former British prime minister, who denounced Soviet interference in Eastern Europe. “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent,” Churchill warned. Stalin viewed Churchill’s proposal for joint British-American action to combat Soviet aggression as “a call to war against the USSR.”

In 1946, George F. Kennan, a career diplomat and expert on Russia, authored a rationale for what came to be called containment. Downplaying the influence of Communist ideology, he instead stressed Soviet insecurity and Stalin’s need to maintain authority at home as the prime forces behind efforts to expand Soviet power abroad. Kennan believed that the Soviet Union would retreat if the United States responded with “unalterable counterforce.” This approach, he predicted, would eventually end in “either the breakup or the gradual mellowing of Soviet power.”

Not all public figures agreed. In September 1946, Secretary of Commerce Henry A. Wallace urged greater understanding of the Soviets’ national security concerns, insisting that “we have no more business in the political affairs of Eastern Europe than Russia has in the political affairs of Latin America.” State Department officials were furious at Wallace for challenging the administration’s hard line against the Soviet Union, and Truman fired him.

The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan In 1947, the United States began to implement containment, a doctrine that would guide foreign policy for the next four decades. It was not an easy transition. Americans approved of resisting Soviet expansion, but wanted to keep their soldiers and tax dollars at home. Truman not only had to sell containment to the public; he also had to gain the support of a Republican- controlled Congress, which included those staunchly opposed to a strong U.S. presence in Europe.

Crises in Greece and Turkey helped Truman make his case. In February 1947, Britain informed the United States that it could no longer sustain military assistance to Greece, where the autocratic government faced economic disaster and a leftist uprising, and to Turkey, which was trying to resist Soviet pressures. Unaware that the Soviet Union had deliberately avoided aiding the Greek Communists, Truman promptly sought congressional authority to send both countries military and economic aid. Meeting with congressional leaders, Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson predicted that if Greece and Turkey fell, communism would soon consume three-fourths of the world. After a stunned silence, one senator warned that to get approval, Truman would have to “scare the hell out of the country.”

Truman did just that. He warned that if Greece fell to the rebels, “confusion and disorder might well spread throughout the entire Middle East” and create instability in Europe. According to the Truman Doctrine, the United States must not only resist Soviet military power but also “support free

peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.”

The president failed to convince some liberal members of Congress who wanted the United States to work through the United Nations and opposed propping up the authoritarian Greek government. But the administration won the day, setting a precedent for forty years of Cold War interventions that would aid any kind of government if the alternative appeared to be communism. Bipartisan support for this agenda helped Truman secure the presidency in 1948.

A much larger assistance program for Europe followed aid to Greece and Turkey. In May 1947, Acheson described a war-ravaged Western Europe, with “factories destroyed, fields impoverished, transportation systems wrecked, populations scattered and on the borderline of starvation.” Americans were sending generous amounts of private aid, but U.S. leaders were convinced that Europe needed large-scale assistance to keep desperate citizens from turning to socialism or communism.

In 1948, Congress approved the Marshall Plan, named for Secretary of State George C. Marshall, who proposed what a British official called “a lifeline to a sinking man.” Over the next five years the United States spent $13 billion ($137 billion in 2018 dollars) to restore the economies of sixteen Western European nations. Marshall invited all European nations and the Soviet Union to cooperate in a request for aid, but — as U.S. officials had expected — the Soviets rejected the offer and ordered their Eastern European satellites to do the same.

Humanitarian impulses and the goal of keeping Western Europe free of communism drove the enormous aid program. The Marshall Plan also helped boost the U.S. economy: Its beneficiaries used the aid to buy American products, and Europe’s economic recovery created new markets and opportunities for American investment. By insisting that the recipient nations work together, the Marshall Plan marked the first step toward the European Union.

In February 1948, while Congress was debating the Marshall Plan, the Soviets brutally installed a Communist regime in Czechoslovakia, the only remaining democracy in Eastern Europe. Next, Stalin threatened Western access to Berlin. The former capital of Germany lay within Soviet- controlled East Germany but was jointly occupied by all four Allies. As the Western Allies moved to organize West Germany as a separate nation, the Soviets retaliated by blocking roads and rail lines between West Germany and the Western-held sections of Berlin, cutting off food, fuel, and other essentials to two million inhabitants (see Map 26.1).

“We stay in Berlin, period,” Truman vowed. To avoid a confrontation with Soviet troops, U.S. and British pilots over the next year airlifted 2.3 million tons of goods to sustain the West Berliners. Stalin finally lifted the blockade in 1949. The city was then divided into East Berlin, under Soviet control, and West Berlin, which became part of West Germany.

Building a National Security State

During the Truman years, the United States fashioned a six-pronged defense strategy in the name of containment: (1) development of atomic weapons; (2) strengthened conventional military capacity; (3) military alliances; (4) military and economic aid to friendly nations; (5) an espionage network and covert actions to subvert Communist expansion; and (6) a global propaganda offensive.

The dawn of the nuclear age altered the nature of national defense. In September 1949, the Soviet Union detonated its own atomic bomb, ending the U.S. monopoly on atomic weapons. Truman then approved the development of a hydrogen bomb — equivalent to five hundred atomic bombs — rejecting the protests of several scientists who had worked on the atomic bomb and of George Kennan, who warned of an endless arms race. The “superbomb” was ready by 1954, but the U.S. advantage was brief. In November 1955, the Soviets exploded their own hydrogen bomb.

The Berlin Airlift At the peak of the Berlin airlift in 1948, U.S. or British planes landed every three minutes, twenty-four hours a day. These children, on top of a mountain of wartime rubble, may have been watching for air force pilot Gail S. Halvorsen, who, after meeting hungry schoolchildren, began to drop candy and gum as his plane approached the landing strip.

From the 1950s through the 1980s, deterrence formed the basis of American nuclear strategy. To deter a Soviet attack, the United States strove to maintain a nuclear force more powerful than that of the USSR. Because the Russians pursued a similar policy, the superpowers became locked in an escalating nuclear arms race, amassing weapons that could destroy the earth many times over. Albert Einstein, whose mathematical discoveries had helped lay the foundations for nuclear weapons, commented grimly that the war that came after World War III would of necessity “be fought with sticks and stones.”

A second U.S. strategy was to beef up conventional military power. The National Security Act of 1947 united the military branches under a single secretary of defense and created the National Security Council (NSC) to advise the president. During the Berlin crisis in 1948, Congress boosted military appropriations and enacted a peacetime draft. In addition, Congress granted permanent status to the women’s military branches, although it limited the number of women, the jobs they could do, and the rank they could attain. With 1.5 million men and women in uniform in 1950, the military strength of the United States had quadrupled since the 1930s, and defense expenditures claimed one-third of the federal budget.

Collective security, the third prong of containment strategy, marked a sharp reversal of the nation’s traditional foreign policy. In 1949, the United States joined Canada and Western European nations in its first peacetime military alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), designed to counter a Soviet threat to Western Europe. For the first time in its history, the United States pledged to go to war if any of its allies were attacked.

The fourth ingredient of defense strategy was foreign assistance programs to strengthen friendly countries, as with aid to Greece and Turkey and the Marshall Plan. In 1949, Congress approved $1 billion of military aid to its NATO allies, and the government pledged economic assistance to nations in other parts of the world.

The fifth element of containment provided for espionage and covert activities. The National Security Act of 1947 created the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to gather information and to take any actions “related to intelligence affecting the national security” that the NSC might authorize. Such functions included propaganda, sabotage, economic warfare, and support for “anti-communist elements in threatened countries of the free world.” Secret CIA operations helped defeat Italy’s Communist Party in 1948, and the agency would become an increasingly significant, if shadowy, player in U.S. foreign policy. Its agents would be implicated in toppling legitimate foreign governments as well as violating the rights of U.S. citizens.

Finally, the U.S. government created cultural exchanges and propaganda designed to win foreign populations’ “hearts and minds.” The Voice of

America, established during World War II to broadcast U.S. propaganda abroad, was expanded, and the State Department sent books, exhibits, jazz musicians, and other performers around the world as “cultural ambassadors.”

By 1950, the United States had abandoned many traditional tenets of its foreign policy. Isolationism and neutrality gave way to a peacetime military alliance and efforts to control events far beyond U.S. borders. Short of war, the United States could not raise the iron curtain, but it aggressively and successfully promoted economic recovery and a military shield for the rest of Europe.

��

What was the Cold War, and how did it alter U.S. foreign policy?

How did anticommunism drive U.S. policy at home and abroad? Anticommunism became a mainstay of U.S. foreign policy as well as domestic politics during the Cold War. It would color American reactions to anticolonial and independence movements around the world, leading the United States to retreat from its stated commitment to national self- determination. Vigilance against subversion, many argued, was as important within as beyond U.S. borders. As the fight against communism extended around the globe, it also led to a new set of policies and practices affecting U.S. citizens.

Superpower Rivalry around the Globe Containment policy soon expanded beyond Europe. In Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, World War II had accelerated a tide of national liberation movements against war-weakened imperial powers. By 1960, forty countries would win their independence. Unaligned with either the United States or the Soviet Union, they — along with Latin America — collectively came to be referred to as the “third world.” These nations had their own priorities and typically did not view their struggles through a Cold War framework. Yet they would often be treated by the United States and the Soviet Union alike as pawns in the superpower struggle.

Like Woodrow Wilson during World War I, Roosevelt and Truman each endorsed the ideal of national self-determination. The United States granted independence to the Philippines in 1946 and applauded the British

withdrawal from India. African American leaders and many on the left called upon the United States to back other liberation struggles and hasten the end of imperial rule. The United States, after all, had fought its own war for independence and sharply opposed the forcible installation of communism in Eastern Europe. As the Cold War intensified, however, American policymakers proved willing to set aside the principle of self- determination when it conflicted with U.S. interests.

American leaders did promote democracy in emerging nations. They were equally intent on promoting American-style capitalism and trade, with U.S. corporations particularly focused on the vast oil reserves in the Middle East. Yet leaders of many liberation movements were impressed by Russia’s rapid economic growth and professed commitment to improving the lot of the ordinary citizen. Some adopted socialist or Communist ideas, including the nationalization of industry and state control of the economy. Although few of these movements had formal ties with the USSR, American leaders viewed them as a threatening extension of Soviet power. Seeking to hold communism at bay by fostering economic development and political stability, in 1949 the Truman administration began a small program of aid to developing nations.

Meanwhile civil war raged in China, where the Communists, led by Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung), fought the official Nationalist government under Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek). While the Communists gained popular support for their land reforms, Jiang’s corrupt, incompetent government alienated much of the population, and his military forces had been devastated by the Japanese. Failing to achieve a settlement between Jiang

and Mao, the United States supplied $3 billion in aid to the Nationalists. Truman opted not to divert any further resources from Europe to China, however.

In October 1949, Mao established the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and the Nationalists fled to the island of Taiwan. Fearing a U.S.-supported invasion, Mao signed a mutual defense treaty with the Soviet Union. The United States refused to recognize the PRC, blocked its admission to the United Nations, and supported the Nationalist government in Taiwan. Only a massive U.S. military commitment could have shored up Jiang’s inept government and defeated the Chinese Communists, yet some Republicans charged that Truman and “pro-Communists in the State Department” had lost China. China became a political albatross for the Democrats, who resolved never again to be vulnerable to charges of being soft on communism.

With China in turmoil, the United States shifted to helping its former enemy, Japan, to reindustrialize. America’s official military occupation there ended when the two nations signed a peace treaty and a mutual security pact in September 1951. Like West Germany, Japan now sat squarely within the American orbit, ready to serve as an economic hub in a vital area.

The one place where Cold War considerations did not control American policy was Palestine. In 1943, then-senator Harry Truman spoke powerfully about Nazi Germany’s annihilation of the Jews, asserting, “This is not a Jewish problem, it is an American problem — and we must … face it

squarely and honorably.” As president, he made good on his words. Jews had been migrating to Palestine, their biblical homeland, since the nineteenth century, resulting in tension and hostilities with the Palestinian Arabs. After World War II, as hundreds of thousands of European Jews sought refuge and a national homeland there, fighting and terrorism escalated on both sides.

Truman’s foreign policy experts proposed cultivating Arab allies in order to contain Soviet influence in the Middle East and to secure access to Arabian oil. Defying his advisers, the president responded instead to pleas from Jewish organizations, a moral commitment to Holocaust survivors, and his interest in the American Jewish vote. When Jews in Palestine declared the state of Israel in May 1948, Truman quickly recognized the new country and made its defense the cornerstone of U.S. policy in the Middle East.

The Domestic Chill: McCarthyism The superpower struggle altered the political climate at home too, quieting dissenting ideas and quashing unpopular causes. “Red-baiting” — attempts to link individuals or ideas with communism — and official retaliation against leftist critics of the government had flourished during the Red scare at the end of World War I. Some Republicans had also attacked the New Deal as a plot of radicals. A renewed Red scare followed World War II, this time the product of foreign policy setbacks, reports of Soviet espionage, and partisan politics. From the late 1940s onward, anticommunism would weaken liberals and undermine Truman’s domestic agenda.

Republicans seized on events such as the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe and the Communist triumph in China to accuse Democrats of fostering internal subversion. Wisconsin senator Joseph R. McCarthy would catapult to fame based on his claim that the “traitorous actions of those who have been treated so well by this Nation,” including scores of “bright young men” in the State Department, were paving the way for Communist takeover. McCarthy’s charges — such as the allegation that retired general George C. Marshall belonged to a Communist conspiracy — were reckless and often ludicrous, but the press covered him avidly, and McCarthyism became a term synonymous with the anti-Communist crusade.

Revelations of Soviet espionage lent credibility to fears of internal subversion. A number of U.S. ex-Communists, including Whittaker Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley, testified that they and others had provided secret documents to the Soviets. Even more alarming, a British physicist working on the atomic bomb project confessed in 1950 that he was a spy and implicated several Americans, including Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. The Rosenbergs pleaded not guilty but were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage and electrocuted in 1953.

Records opened in the 1990s disclosed that the Soviet Union did receive secret documents from Americans that probably sped up its development of nuclear weapons by a year or two. Yet the vast majority of individuals targeted in the Red scare had done nothing more than join the Communist Party, associate with suspected Communists, or support radical causes — usually long before the Cold War had made the Soviet Union an enemy.

The hunt for subversives was conducted by both Congress and the executive branch. Stung by charges of being weak on communism, Truman issued Executive Order 9835 in 1947, establishing loyalty review boards to investigate every federal employee. “A nightmare from which there [was] no awakening” was how State Department employee Esther Brunauer described it when she and her husband, a chemist in the navy, both lost their jobs because he had joined a Communist youth organization in the 1920s and associated with suspected radicals.

Government investigators used anonymous informers and placed the burden of proof on the accused. More than two thousand civil service employees lost their jobs, and another ten thousand resigned as Truman’s loyalty program continued into the mid-1950s. Hundreds of homosexuals resigned or were fired over charges of “sexual perversion,” which anti-Communist crusaders said could subject them to blackmail. Years later, Truman privately conceded that the loyalty program had been a mistake.

The congressional House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) also investigated individuals’ political associations — and assumed the guilt of those who refused to name names. These “unfriendly witnesses” lost their jobs and suffered public ostracism. In 1947, HUAC investigated radical activity in Hollywood. Some actors and directors cooperated, but ten refused, citing their First Amendment rights. The “Hollywood Ten” served jail sentences for contempt of Congress and then found themselves blacklisted in the movie industry. Popular crooner Frank Sinatra, a defender of the Hollywood Ten, wondered if someone called for “a square deal for the underdog, will they call you a Commie?”

The Truman administration went after the Communist Party directly, prosecuting its leaders under a 1940 law that made it a crime to “advocate the overthrow and destruction of the [government] by force and violence.” Civil libertarians argued that the law violated First Amendment freedoms of speech, press, and association, but the Supreme Court ruled in 1951 that the Communist threat overrode constitutional guarantees.

The domestic Cold War spread beyond the nation’s capital. State and local governments investigated citizens, demanded loyalty oaths, fired employees suspected of disloyalty, banned “subversive” books from public libraries, and more. Left-leaning college professors and public school teachers, accused of planting dangerous ideas in the minds of youth, lost their jobs in New York and California. Because the Communist Party had helped organize unions and championed racial justice, labor and civil rights activists often became victims of McCarthyism as well. African American activist Jack O’Dell remembered that segregationists pinned the tag of Communist on “anybody who supported the right of blacks to have civil rights.”

Anti-Communist fervor outlasted the Truman years. The new Eisenhower administration intensified Truman’s loyalty program, allowing federal executives to dismiss thousands of employees on grounds of loyalty, security, or “suitability.” Some Americans investigated for disloyalty effectively pursued their rights. Annie Lee Moss, an Army Signal Corps communications clerk at the Pentagon suspected of past Communist Party membership, managed to appeal her case to the Army’s loyalty board and remain employed. At a public hearing before McCarthy’s committee in

1954, Moss’s declaration of her innocence roused cheers, and publicity about the case led to fresh criticism of the anti-Communist crusade.

Indeed, McCarthy began to destroy himself that year by hurling reckless charges of communism against military personnel in televised hearings, leading the army’s lawyer to demand of him, “Have you left no sense of decency?” A Senate vote in 1954 to censure McCarthy marked the end of his influence but not an end to the harassment of dissenters on the left. Annie Lee Moss’s story stands out against many more of law-abiding individuals who lost their livelihoods, friends, and families — and their constitutional rights to free speech and association — during the Red scare.

��

What impact did the Red scare have on U.S. citizens’ rights?

Why did the United States go to war in Korea? The Cold War erupted into a shooting war in June 1950 when troops from Communist North Korea invaded South Korea. For the first time, Americans would go into battle to implement containment. Confirming the global reach of the Truman Doctrine, U.S. involvement in Korea also marked the militarization of American foreign policy. The United States, in concert with the United Nations, ultimately held the line in Korea, but at a great cost in lives, dollars, and national unity.

Military Implementation of Containment The Korean War stemmed from the artificial division of Korea after World War II. Having expelled the Japanese, the United States and the Soviet Union created two occupation zones separated by the thirty-eighth parallel (Map 26.2), with the USSR in the north and the United States in the south. When Moscow and Washington were unable to agree on unification, the United Nations sponsored elections in South Korea in 1948, and the American-favored candidate, Syngman Rhee, was elected president.

MAP 26.2 The Korean War, 1950–1953

Although each side had plunged deep into enemy territory, the war ended in 1953 with the dividing line between North and South Korea nearly unchanged from where it had been before the fighting began.

Description “The places marked on the map are as follows:

International boundaries, 1950: A boundary labeled thirty eight parallel separates North and South Korea, which ran almost along the center of the Korean peninsula, flanked by the Sea of Japan on the east and the Yellow Sea on the west. The northern boundary of North Korea separated the nation from China along the Yalu River and the Soviet Union on the northeast.

North Korean invasion June to September 1950: A route starts from Seoul, moves southward, and then takes an eastward turn to Pusan. One route from the southern part of North Korea and another from Seoul moves to the southeast corner of the Korean Peninsula including Pusan.

U N offensive September to November 1950: A route across the Yellow Sea leads to Inchon landing on September 15, 1950 and an inland route from the U N defensive line (September 1950) along the southeast corner of the peninsula to Seoul take a northward turn to Panmunjom and move further north to Pyongyang. From Pyongyang, the routes move toward the Yalu River and along the Chosin Reservoir. The Chosin Reservoir is labeled Farthest U N advance, November 1950.

Communist Chinese offensive November 1950 to January 1951: A route moves from the Chosin Reservoir toward the east of North Korea. Another route from the northern part of North Korea moves toward South Korea passing the Thirty-eighth parallel boundary. A route from Pyongyang moves southward toward Seoul.

The demilitarized zone extended from Panmunjom on the western coast to the eastern coast, a few miles off the Thirty-eighth Parallel in North Korea.

The map also shows the Yellow Sea, China, Soviet Union, and the Sea of Japan.”

Although unsure whether Rhee’s repressive government could sustain popular support, U.S. officials prioritized his anticommunism. After the election, the United States provided economic and military aid to South Korea but withdrew most of its troops. That same year, the Soviets established the People’s Republic of North Korea under Kim Il-sung and also withdrew.

Skirmishes between North and South Korean troops at the thirty-eighth parallel began almost immediately. In June 1950, ninety thousand North Koreans swept into South Korea. Truman’s advisers assumed that the Soviet Union or China had instigated the attack, an assumption later proven incorrect. The president quickly decided to intervene, viewing Korea as “the Greece of the Far East.” With the Soviet Union absent from the Security Council, the United States obtained UN sponsorship of a collective effort to repel the attack. Truman’s choice for commander of the UN force was World War II hero General Douglas MacArthur.

Sixteen nations sent troops to Korea, but the United States furnished most of the weapons and personnel, deploying almost 1.8 million soldiers. By dispatching troops without asking Congress for a declaration of war, Truman violated the spirit if not the letter of the Constitution, contributing to the expansion of executive power that would characterize the Cold War.

The first American soldiers rushed to Korea were unprepared and ill equipped: “I didn’t even know how to dig a foxhole,” recalled a nineteen- year-old army reservist, who was told by his sergeant to “Make it like a grave.” As a result, U.S. forces suffered major defeats early in the war. The North Koreans took the capital of Seoul and drove deep into South Korea, forcing UN troops to retreat to Pusan. Then in September 1950, General MacArthur launched a bold counteroffensive at Inchon, 180 miles behind North Korean lines. By October, UN and South Korean forces had retaken Seoul and pushed the North Koreans back to the thirty-eighth parallel. Now Truman had to decide whether containment or reunification was the goal.

U.S. Troops Head to Korea These men were part of the 1st Cavalry, some of the first American troops sent to Korea in 1950. This photograph was taken as they departed from Japan, not yet aware of where they were shipping out to next.

From Containment to Rollback to Containment “Troops could not be expected … to march up to a surveyor’s line and stop,” remarked Secretary of State Dean Acheson. His comment reflected a transformation of the military objective from containment to elimination of the enemy and unification of Korea. It would be the only time during the entire Cold War that the United States tried to roll back communism by force. With UN approval, Truman authorized MacArthur to cross the thirty- eighth parallel. Concerned about possible intervention by China, the

president directed him to keep UN forces away from the Korean-Chinese border. MacArthur disregarded that order. The general moved troops within forty miles of China, whereupon 300,000 Chinese soldiers crossed into Korea. With Chinese help, the North Koreans recaptured Seoul.

After three months of grueling battle, UN forces fought their way back to the thirty-eighth parallel. At that point, Truman decided to seek a negotiated settlement. MacArthur was furious, considering mere containment a defeat. Taking his case to the public, he challenged both the president’s authority to conduct foreign policy and the principle of civilian control of the military. In response to this insubordination, Truman fired MacArthur in April 1951. All the top military leaders supported the president. Many Americans, however, agreed with the general. Why should Americans die simply to preserve the status quo? Why not destroy the enemy once and for all? Those siding with MacArthur blamed the stalemate in Korea on the government’s ineptitude or softness toward Communism.

Truman never recovered from the political fallout. Nor was he able to end the war. Negotiations began in July 1951, but peace talks dragged on for two years while twelve thousand more U.S. soldiers died.

Korea’s Political Fallout Truman had won the election of 1948 based on the continuing popularity of the New Deal and bipartisan consensus around foreign policy. The fall of China and the protracted war in Korea weakened both the president and the Democratic Party. Popular discontent with “Truman’s war” boosted

Republicans in the 1952 election. Their presidential nominee, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, was a popular hero. As supreme commander in Europe during World War II, he won widespread acclaim for leading the Allied armies to victory over Germany, and in 1950 he was Truman’s choice for the first supreme commander of NATO forces.

Although Eisenhower believed that professional soldiers should stay out of politics, he found compelling reasons to run in 1952. He largely agreed with Truman’s foreign policy, but he criticized Democrats for solving domestic problems with expensive federal programs. He also disliked the foreign policy views of leading Republican presidential contender Senator Robert A. Taft, who attacked containment and sought to cut defense spending.

Eisenhower won the nomination, but the old guard prevailed on the party platform. It condemned containment as immoral for its failure to turn back communism and charged the Truman administration with shielding “traitors to the Nation in high places.” By choosing the thirty-nine-year-old California senator and anti-Communist crusader Richard M. Nixon for his running mate, Eisenhower helped to appease the right wing of the party. Elected to Congress in 1946, Nixon had quickly made a name for himself as a member of HUAC, defeating Helen Gahagan Douglas in the Senate race of 1950.

His public approval ratings plummeting, Truman decided not to run for reelection. The Democrats nominated Adlai E. Stevenson, the popular governor of Illinois, but he could neither escape the domestic fallout from the Korean War nor match Eisenhower’s widespread appeal. Shortly before

the election, Eisenhower announced dramatically, “I shall go to Korea,” and voters registered their confidence in his ability to end the war. Cutting sharply into traditional Democratic territory, Eisenhower won several southern states and garnered 55 percent of the popular vote overall. His coattails carried a narrow Republican majority to Congress.

An Armistice and the War’s Costs Eisenhower made good on his pledge to end the Korean War. In July 1953, the two sides reached an armistice that left Korea divided, again roughly at the thirty-eighth parallel, with North and South separated by a two-and-a- half-mile-wide demilitarized zone. The war fulfilled the objective of containment, the United States backing up its promise to aid nations resisting communism. Truman and Eisenhower had managed to contain what amounted to a world war — involving twenty nations altogether — within a single country and to avoid the use of nuclear weapons.

Yet what was described as a “limited war” took the lives of 36,000 Americans and wounded more than 100,000. Thousands of U.S. soldiers suffered as prisoners of war. South Korea lost more than one million people to war-related causes, and 1.8 million North Koreans and Chinese were killed or wounded. The war also set a precedent for “police actions” that bypassed the traditional U.S. requirement of a congressional declaration of war, even in cases involving extensive commitments of U.S. troops and treasure.

The border separating North and South Korea may not have budged as a result of the war, but the conflict had a pronounced effect on American defense policy and spending. In 1950, just before the war began, the National Security Council completed a top-secret report, known as NSC 68, which urged that national survival required a massive military buildup. The Korean War triggered nearly all of the military expansion called for in that document, vastly increasing U.S. capacity to act as a global power. Military spending shot up from $14 billion in 1950 to $50 billion in 1953, and remained above $40 billion thereafter. By 1952, defense spending claimed nearly 70 percent of the federal budget, and the size of the armed forces had tripled.

For Eisenhower and other military leaders, one lesson of Korea was that U.S. forces should never again fight a land war in Asia. But even during the Korean War the Truman administration was expanding its role in that part of the world by increasing aid to the French, who were fighting to hang on to their colonial empire in Indochina. As U.S. Marines retreated from a battle against Chinese soldiers in 1950, they sang, prophetically, “We’re Harry’s police force on call, / So put back your pack on, / The next step is Saigon.”

��

What were the causes and consequences of the Korean War?

How did Truman’s and Eisenhower’s approaches to the superpower struggle differ? During the 1952 campaign, Republicans vowed not just to end the Korean War but to liberate “enslaved” peoples under Soviet rule. Some, such as the new Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, attacked containment as “negative, futile, and immoral.” In practice, however, President Eisenhower pursued a containment policy much like that of his predecessor. His administration did not attempt to roll communism back, but instead chose to intervene at the margins of Communist power in Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East, where U.S. economic interests were often also at stake. Eisenhower’s defense strategy relied more on nuclear weapons and secret CIA operations than had Truman’s. Toward the end of Eisenhower’s presidency, he was also able to seize on political changes in the Soviet Union to reduce tensions between the superpowers.

The “New Look” in Foreign Policy In his inaugural address, Eisenhower warned that the “forces of good and evil are massed and armed and opposed as rarely before in history.” Like Truman, he saw communism as a threat to the nation’s security and economic interests, and he was intent on maintaining U.S. power around the globe. Eisenhower’s foreign policy differed, however, in three areas: its rhetoric, its means, and, after Stalin’s death in 1953, its steps toward accommodation with the Soviet Union.

Eisenhower was determined to control military expenditures in order to balance the budget and cut taxes. Reflecting American confidence in technology as well as public opposition to a large peacetime army, Eisenhower’s “New Look” in defense concentrated U.S. military strength in nuclear weapons. Instead of maintaining large ground forces of its own, the United States would arm friendly nations and back them up with an ominous nuclear arsenal, providing, according to one defense official, “more bang for the buck.” Dulles believed that America’s willingness to “go to the brink” of war with nuclear weapons — a strategy termed “brinksmanship” — would block any Soviet efforts to expand.

There was no way for the United States to defend itself from a nuclear strike, but the certainty of “massive retaliation” was intended to deter the Soviets from launching an attack. Because the Soviet Union could respond similarly to an American first strike, this nuclear standoff became known as mutually assured destruction (MAD). Leaders of both nations joined an ever-escalating arms race, with the United States determined to outpace the Soviet Union in nuclear warheads and delivery missiles.

The growing U.S. nuclear stockpile did not alter the terms of the superpower struggle or reverse containment policy. When a revolt against the Soviet-controlled government broke out in Hungary in 1956, Dulles’s liberation rhetoric proved hollow. A radio plea from Hungarian freedom fighters professed their hope that “American troops will be here within one or two hours.” But help did not come. Eisenhower was unwilling to risk U.S. soldiers and possible nuclear war, and Soviet troops soon suppressed the insurrection, killing or wounding thousands of Hungarians.

Applying Containment to Vietnam A major challenge to U.S. containment policy came in Southeast Asia, and specifically in French-occupied Indochina. During World War II, Ho Chi Minh and his nationalist coalition, the Vietminh, fought both the occupying Japanese forces and French colonial rulers. In 1945, the Vietminh — citing the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen — claimed Vietnam’s independence from France. When France fought back, the area plunged into war. Because Ho declared himself a Communist, the Truman administration quietly funneled aid to the French. Once again, American rhetoric in support of national self-determination took a backseat to the battle against communism.

Eisenhower viewed the Communist threat in Vietnam much as Truman had regarded it in Greece and Turkey. In what became known as the domino theory, Eisenhower explained, “You have a row of dominoes, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly.” A Communist victory in Southeast Asia, he warned, could set off the fall of Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines. By 1954, the United States was paying 75 percent of the cost of France’s war in Vietnam. But with the Korean War fresh in his mind, Eisenhower resisted a larger role. When the French asked for American troops and planes to avert almost certain defeat in the battle for Dien Bien Phu, the president refused.

Dien Bien Phu fell to the Vietminh in May 1954, and two months later in Geneva, a truce was signed. The Geneva accords recognized Vietnam’s

independence and temporarily partitioned it at the seventeenth parallel, separating the Vietminh in the north from the puppet government established by the French in the south. Within two years, the Vietnamese people were to elect a unified government. Some officials warned against the continued American involvement in Vietnam, envisioning “nothing but grief in store for us if we remained in that area.” Eisenhower and Dulles nonetheless moved to shore up South Vietnam with a new alliance and put the CIA to work infiltrating and destabilizing North Vietnam. Fearing a Communist victory in the mandated elections, they supported South Vietnamese prime minister Ngo Dinh Diem’s refusal to hold the vote.

Between 1955 and 1961, the United States provided $800 million to the South Vietnamese army. Yet those troops proved grossly unprepared for the guerrilla warfare that began in the late 1950s. With help from Ho Chi Minh’s government in Hanoi, Vietminh rebels in the south stepped up their attacks on Diem’s government. The insurgents gained support from the largely Buddhist peasants, who were outraged by the repressive regime of the Catholic, Westernized Diem. Unwilling to abandon containment, Eisenhower left his successor with no clear path to resolution beyond the pledge to save South Vietnam from communism.

Interventions in Latin America and the Middle East The Eisenhower administration propped up friendly governments in Asia, but it also sought to topple unfriendly ones in Latin America and the Middle East. Officials regularly — and often mistakenly — interpreted internal

civil wars in terms of the Cold War conflict between the superpowers, treating homegrown nationalist movements as Communist challenges to democracy. The administration also acted forcefully against governments that threatened U.S. economic interests. Increasingly, such foreign policy decisions were enacted out of sight of Congress and the public, through the use of the CIA.

This was the case in Guatemala. Its government, under the popularly elected president Jacobo Arbenz, was not Soviet controlled, although it did accept support from the local Communist Party. In 1953, Arbenz moved to help landless, poverty-stricken peasants by nationalizing land owned, but not cultivated, by the United Fruit Company, a U.S. corporation whose annual profits were twice the size of Guatemala’s national budget. United Fruit rejected Arbenz’s offer to compensate the company. Equating Arbenz’s reformist government with a Communist threat, the CIA supplied pilots and other support to an opposition army that overthrew the elected government and installed a military dictatorship in 1954. United Fruit kept its land, and Guatemala was beset by destructive civil wars that lasted through the 1990s.

In 1959, when Cuban opposition to an authoritarian government erupted into a revolution led by Fidel Castro, a CIA agent promised “to take care of Castro just like we took care of Arbenz.” As in Guatemala, American companies controlled major Cuban resources, and the country’s internal affairs were monitored closely in Washington. The Cuban revolution of 1959 drove out the U.S.-supported dictator Fulgencio Batista and led the

CIA to warn Eisenhower that “Communists and other extreme radicals appear to have penetrated the Castro movement.”

When the United States denied Castro’s requests for loans, he turned to the Soviet Union. And when U.S. companies refused Castro’s offer to purchase their Cuban holdings at their assessed value, he began to nationalize their property. Many anti-Castro Cubans fled to the United States and reported his atrocities. Before leaving office, Eisenhower broke off diplomatic relations with Cuba and authorized the CIA to train Cuban exiles for an invasion to overthrow Castro.

This pattern had been established early in Eisenhower’s administration. In the Middle East, the CIA intervened in Iran to oust an elected government, support an unpopular dictatorship, and maintain Western access to Iranian oil (see Map 29.3). In 1951, the Iranian parliament, led by Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, nationalized the country’s oil fields and refineries, the majority of which were held by a British company and from which Iran received less than 20 percent of the profits. Britain strongly objected to the takeover and eventually sought help from the United States.

Advisers convinced Eisenhower that Mossadegh, whom Time magazine had called “the Iranian George Washington,” left Iran vulnerable to communism. Moreover, the president was eager to keep oil-rich areas in friendly hands. With Eisenhower’s authorization, CIA agents instigated a coup, bribing army officers and financing demonstrations in the streets. In August 1953, Iranian army officers captured Mossadegh and reestablished the authority of the shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, known for favoring

Western interests and the Iranian wealthy classes. U.S. companies received a 40 percent share of Iran’s oil concessions. But resentment over the intervention would poison U.S.-Iranian relations into the twenty-first century.

Elsewhere in the Middle East, Eisenhower continued Truman’s policy of support for Israel. He also pursued friendships with Arab nations to secure access to oil and create a bulwark against communism in the region, demanding their allegiance to America’s side in the Cold War even when they preferred neutrality. In 1955, as part of the effort to win Arab allies, U.S. officials began talks with Egypt about American support to build the Aswan Dam on the Nile River. The following year, Egypt’s leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser, sought arms from Communist Czechoslovakia, formed a military alliance with other Arab nations, and recognized the People’s Republic of China. In retaliation, the U.S. called off the deal for the dam.

In July 1956, Nasser responded by seizing the Suez Canal, then owned by Britain and France but scheduled to revert to Egypt within seven years. In turn, Israel attacked Egypt, with help from Britain and France. Eisenhower in this case opposed the intervention, recognizing that the Egyptians had claimed their own territory and that Nasser “embodie[d] the emotional demands of the people … for independence.” Calling on the United Nations to arrange a truce, he pressured Britain and France to pull back, forcing Israel to retreat.

Despite staying out of the Suez crisis, Eisenhower made it clear in a January 1957 speech that the United States would actively combat

communism in the Middle East. Two months later, Congress approved aid to any Middle Eastern nation “requesting assistance against armed aggression from any country controlled by international communism.” The president invoked this Eisenhower Doctrine to send aid to Jordan in 1957 and troops to Lebanon in 1958 to counter anti-Western pressures on those governments.

The Nuclear Arms Race Eisenhower firmly resisted Communist inroads abroad through overt and covert actions. But he also sought to reduce superpower tensions. After Stalin’s death in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev emerged as a more moderate Soviet leader. Like Eisenhower, who remarked privately that the arms race would lead “at worst to atomic warfare, at best to robbing every people and nation on earth of the fruits of their own toil,” Khrushchev wanted to reduce defense spending and the threat of nuclear devastation. Eisenhower and Khrushchev met in Geneva in 1955 at the first summit conference between the two nations since the end of World War I, symbolizing what Eisenhower called “a new spirit of conciliation and cooperation.” In August 1957, the Soviets test-fired their first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), and two months later, they beat the United States into space by launching Sputnik, the first man-made satellite to circle the earth.

The United States launched a successful satellite of its own in January 1958, but Sputnik raised fears that the Soviets led not only in missile development and space exploration but also in science and education. In response, Eisenhower established the National Aeronautics and Space

Administration (NASA) with a huge budget increase for space exploration. He also signed the National Defense Education Act, providing support for students in math, foreign languages, and science and technology. As the legislation’s title suggested, domestic policies even in areas seemingly far removed from the Cold War could be justified in national security terms.

Eisenhower assured the public of the United States’ nuclear superiority. In fact, during his presidency, the stockpile of American nuclear weapons more than quadrupled. With ICBMs at home and in Britain, the United States was prepared to deploy more in Italy and Turkey. In 1960, the United States launched the first Polaris submarine carrying nuclear missiles.

Yet nuclear weapons could not guarantee security for either superpower, each of which possessed sufficient capacity to devastate the other. In drills, school children were trained to “duck and cover” in case of nuclear attack, and the Civilian Defense Administration issued similar guidelines for adults. Most Americans did not follow the recommendation to construct home bomb shelters, but they recognized the unprecedented perils of a nuclear age. A new organization, the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, called the nuclear arms race “a danger unlike any danger that has ever existed.”

Helped by the thaw in U.S.-Soviet relations, the superpowers began to discuss possible resolutions of the arms race in the Eisenhower years. By 1960, the two sides were close to a ban on nuclear testing. But just before a planned summit in Paris, a Soviet missile shot down an American U-2 spy plane over Soviet territory. When the State Department denied that U.S.

planes had been violating Soviet airspace, the Soviets produced the pilot and the photos taken on his flight. The incident dashed all prospects for a nuclear arms agreement.

The Age of Nuclear Anxiety Children directly experienced the insecurity of the Cold War nuclear arms race through routine school drills instructing them to “duck and cover” in the event of a Soviet strike. Although such techniques would not have offered much of a safeguard, civil defense agencies also distributed pamphlets about how to protect oneself in the event of an atomic attack.

In the name of deterrence, Eisenhower promoted the development of more destructive atomic weapons. But he was uneasy with the expansion of defense budgets. Indeed, as the president left office, he warned about the growing influence of the “military-industrial complex,” the insatiable demand of defense contractors and the U.S. military for newer, more powerful weapons systems. In his farewell address, he warned that the “conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry … exercised a total influence … in every city, every state house, every office of the federal government.” His administration had done little, however, to curtail the defense industry’s power. The Cold War had created a warfare state.

��

Where and how did Eisenhower practice containment?

Conclusion: What were the costs and consequences of the Cold War? Hoping for continued U.S.-Soviet cooperation rather than unilateral American intervention to resolve foreign crises, some liberal members of Congress, such as Helen Gahagan Douglas, initially opposed the implementation of containment. By 1948, however, most politicians and public figures had lined up squarely behind Truman’s decision to fight communism throughout the world. It was perhaps the most momentous foreign policy initiative in the nation’s history.

More than any other development in the postwar world, the Cold War defined American politics and society for decades to come. It changed the U.S. government, greatly expanding the federal budget and substantially increasing the power of the president and executive branch. It altered policymaking, shifting priorities from internal to external affairs and linking domestic spending to national security. And it transformed the U.S. economy, which was boosted by the reconstruction of Western Europe and Japan as well as Cold War defense outlays. The nuclear arms race put the people of the world at risk, consumed resources that might have been used to improve living standards, and skewed the economy toward dependence on military projects.

Another cost of the early Cold War years was the anti-Communist wave that swept the nation, denying Douglas a Senate seat, intimidating radicals and liberals, and narrowing the range of ideas acceptable for political discussion. Partisan politics and Truman’s warnings about the Communist

menace fueled McCarthyism, as did popular frustrations over the failure of containment to defeat the nation’s enemies. The Korean War, which ended in stalemate rather than victory, prompted the Eisenhower administration to seek new tools for winning the Cold War, including covert CIA operations and aid to authoritarian leaders around the world — in Guatemala, Iran, and Vietnam — so long as they promised to stave off communism. The conviction that the United States must fight communism everywhere led to infringements on the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens. As the basis for postwar foreign policy, it provoked anti-Americanism and led to military commitments and interventions that would plague future generations.

Chapter Review

��

iron curtain containment Truman Doctrine Marshall Plan North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) Korean War NSC 68 mutually assured destruction (MAD) domino theory Sputnik military-industrial complex

�� The United States and the Postwar World

What interests did American and Soviet policymakers think were at stake in Eastern Europe? How did events in the region contribute to the growing Cold War?

What was the policy of containment? What assumptions did it make about Soviet power and intentions?

Anticommunism as Policy and Politics

How did the United States address the Communist threat in Asia as compared to Europe? What impact did the Korean War have on American domestic politics and on future military decision making?

What explains the rise of McCarthyism? Why did some Americans believe that their country faced a grave internal threat to its security?

Foreign Policy in the Eisenhower Years

How did Eisenhower’s approach to the Cold War compare to Truman’s?

Why did the United States turn to military intervention and covert CIA activities as tools of foreign policy in the 1950s? What were the immediate and longer-term consequences in Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America?

�� , ��

How did American and Soviet experiences between 1918 and 1945 lay the groundwork for the Cold War?

How did the Cold War redirect U.S. foreign and domestic priorities into the 1950s and beyond? What were its effects on the U.S. government and military?

��

1945 Roosevelt dies; Truman becomes president. Korea divided at thirty-eighth parallel after World War II, with American and Soviet occupation zones. Vietnam claims independence from France, and war breaks out.

1946 George F. Kennan drafts containment policy. United States grants independence to Philippines.

1947 National Security Act passes, forming Central Intelligence Agency. Truman Doctrine. United States sends aid to Greece and Turkey. Truman executive order creates loyalty review boards. “Hollywood Ten” jailed for contempt of Congress.

1948 Marshall Plan approved. United States recognizes Israel.

1948–1949

Berlin crisis precipitates airlift drops. 1949

North Atlantic Treaty Organization formed. Soviet Union explodes atomic bombs. Truman approves hydrogen bomb. Program of aid to developing nations begins. Communists win civil war in China.

1950 Senator Joseph McCarthy claims U.S. government harbors Communists. NSC 68 report urges massive military buildup. Korean War begins when North Korea invades South Korea. Truman authorizes crossing of thirty-eighth parallel.

1951 U.S. military occupation of Japan ends. Truman fires General Douglas MacArthur for insubordination.

1952 Dwight D. Eisenhower elected president.

1953 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are executed. Armistice ends Korean War. CIA organizes coup against Iranian government.

1954 Senate condemns Senator McCarthy. CIA organizes coup against Guatemalan government. Geneva accords end French presence in Vietnam.

1955 Eisenhower and Khrushchev meet for summit in Geneva.

1956 Suez crisis breaks out.

1957 Soviets launch Sputnik.

1958 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) established. National Defense Education Act passes.

1959 Cuban revolution installs Fidel Castro in power.

1960 U.S. launches first submarine with nuclear missiles. Soviets shoot down U.S. U-2 spy plane.

�� 27 �� 1945–1960

�� This chapter will explore the following questions:

What were the prospects for domestic reform in the Truman years? To what extent did Eisenhower dismantle the New Deal? What fueled postwar prosperity? How did economic growth affect American society, politics, and culture? What mobilized African Americans to fight for civil rights in the 1950s? Conclusion: What challenges did peace and prosperity mask?

�� TRAILED BY REPORTERS, VICE PRESIDENT RICHARD M. NIXON LED Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev through the American National Exhibition in Moscow in July 1959. The cultural exchange reflected a slight thaw in the Cold War after Khrushchev replaced Stalin. It was nevertheless an excellent opportunity for propaganda. As they examined a display of American consumer goods, Khrushchev and Nixon took part in a slugfest of words that reporters dubbed “the kitchen debate.”

Showing off a new color television set, Nixon remarked that the Soviet Union “may be ahead of us … in the thrust of your rockets,” but he insisted that the United States outpaced the Soviets in consumer goods. Linking capitalism with democracy, Nixon asserted that such products and “our right to choose” were the very substance of American freedom. As the two leaders walked through a model of a six-room ranch-style home, Nixon boasted that “any steelworker could buy this house.” Khrushchev retorted that in his country citizens were “entitled to housing,” whereas in the United States the homeless slept on the pavement. Moving on, Nixon declared that household appliances were “designed to make things easier for our women.” Khrushchev disparaged this “capitalist attitude,” maintaining that the Soviets appreciated women’s contributions to the economy rather than their domesticity.

Nixon got Khrushchev to agree that it was “far better to be talking about washing machines than machines of war.” Yet cultural exchanges aside, the two nations remained locked in Cold War animosity and an intense arms race throughout the postwar decades. Free enterprise and capitalist abundance would be enlisted in this struggle, providing a key justification for “the American way.”

Americans’ soaring standard of living in the 1950s was unparalleled. It was also unanticipated. Many in the United States feared a recession as troops returned from Europe and Asia in 1945, and the conversion from a war footing was not easy. Even at the time of the kitchen debate, poverty clung stubbornly to one of every five Americans. Yet the Moscow display testified to the unheard-of material gains savored by many in the postwar era.

Cold War weapons production spurred the economy, whose vitality stimulated suburban development, contributed to the growth of the South and Southwest (the Sun Belt), and enabled millions of Americans to buy a host of new products. As new homes, television sets, and household appliances transformed living patterns, Americans took part in a consumer culture that celebrated the family and traditional gender roles, even as growing numbers of married women took jobs outside the home.

The prosperity of the postwar period also made way for challenges to dominant norms and practices by dissenting writers known as the Beats and an emerging youth culture. Most dramatically, the Cold War

and the economic boom of the 1950s helped African Americans to mount protests against the system of segregation and disfranchisement that had replaced slavery. The organizations, leadership, and strategies that African American activists developed in this period built a civil rights movement of unprecedented size and influence.

What were the prospects for domestic reform in the Truman years? Referring to the Civil War general who coined the phrase “War is hell,” the newly installed president Harry Truman joked in 1945 that “Sherman was wrong. I’m telling you I find peace is hell.” Challenged by crises abroad, Truman also faced shortages, strikes, and inflation as the economy shifted to peacetime production. The president had vowed to expand on New Deal reforms with his own “Fair Deal” program focused on health care, housing, civil rights, and education. But Cold War commitments around the globe, anticommunism at home, and Republican gains in Congress prevented Truman from enacting much of his domestic agenda.

Reconverting to a Peacetime Economy As World War II came to a close, economic experts and ordinary citizens feared a peacetime recession. They also worried about providing jobs for millions of returning soldiers. To that end, Truman asked Congress for a twenty-one-point program of social and economic reforms. He proposed continued regulation of the economy while the nation adjusted to peacetime production. He also called for new government programs in housing and health care for those in need. “Not even President Roosevelt ever asked for as much at one sitting,” exploded Republican leader Joseph W. Martin Jr.

Congress approved just one of Truman’s key proposals — full-employment legislation — and then only after watering it down. The Employment Act of

1946 called on the federal government “to promote maximum employment, production, and purchasing power,” thereby formalizing the state’s responsibility for maintaining a healthy economy. It created the Council of Economic Advisors to assist the president, but it authorized no new powers to translate the government’s obligations into effective action.

Inflation, not unemployment, turned out to be the biggest economic problem facing the postwar United States. Consumers had $30 billion in wartime savings to spend, but shortages of meat, automobiles, housing, and other items drove up prices. Some in Congress sought to maintain price and rent controls, but those efforts were dashed by pressures from business groups and others determined to trim government powers.

Labor relations were another thorn in Truman’s side. Organized labor emerged from the war 14.5 million members strong, a full 35 percent of the nonagricultural workforce. Yet unions feared the erosion of wartime gains and turned to the weapon they had surrendered during the war. Five million workers went out on strike in 1946, affecting nearly every major industry. One former Marine and his coworkers voted to strike after calculating that an executive had spent more on a party than they would earn in a whole year at the steel mill. “That sort of stuff made us realize, hell we had to bite the bullet…. The bosses sure didn’t give a damn for us.” Although most Americans approved of unions in principle, many became fed up with strikes and blamed unions for shortages and rising prices. When the strikes subsided, workers had won wage increases of about 20 percent, but the loss of overtime pay coupled with rising prices left their purchasing power only slightly higher than it was in 1942.

Women workers fared even worse. Polls indicated that 68 to 85 percent wanted to keep their wartime jobs, but most who remained in the workforce had to settle for relatively low-paying jobs in light industry or the service sector (Figure 27.1). Displaced from her shipyard work, Marie Schreiber took a cashier’s job, lamenting, “You were back to women’s wages, you know … practically in half.” Women’s organizations and union women called for bills to require equal pay for equal work, provide child care for employed mothers, and create a government commission to study women’s status. But it was clear that many others viewed women primarily as wives and mothers — and their wartime work as temporary. At a time of rising opposition to further expansion of federal powers, initiatives on equal pay and child care went nowhere.

FIGURE 27.1 Women Workers in Selected Industries, 1940–1950

Women demolished the idea that some jobs were “men’s work” during World War II, but they lost ground in the manufacturing sector after the war.

Description “The map has years along the horizontal axis and women as a percentage of all production workers along the vertical axis. The automobile industry employed less than 10 percent women workers in 1940 and added on more women employees gradually to account for 26 percent by 1944. However, it dropped below 10 percent by 1946 again and continued with a very slight increase thereafter.

The women workforce of iron and steel industry in 1940 was 9 percent and climbed to 22 percent by 1944. As with the automobile industry, it dropped to 10 percent by 1946 and further to 6 percent by 1950.

The electrical machinery industry had 31 percent women workers which increased to 50 percent in 1944. By 1946, the number reduced to 40 percent and continued through 1950.

The highest female representation was in chemicals and rubber industry as it accounted for 41 percent of workers in 1945 and shot to 68 percent in 1944. Thereafter it declined to 45 percent in 1946 and remained there through 1950.

A note to Automobiles reads, During World War II, the automobile industry did not produce cars, but rather military transportation such as jeeps, tanks, aircraft, etc.)

All data are approximate.”

The most successful of the reconversion measures was the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, or GI Bill, enacted in 1944. Addressing concerns about absorbing returning veterans into the postwar economy, it offered sixteen million veterans vocational training and education. It also provided unemployment compensation until they found jobs, and low-interest loans to purchase homes, farms, and small businesses. By 1948, some 1.3 million veterans had bought houses with government loans. A drugstore clerk before his military service, Don Condren was able to pursue an engineering degree and buy his first house. “The GI Bill gave the whole country an upward boost economically,” he said.

The impact of the GI Bill was uneven, however. As wives and daughters of veterans, women benefited indirectly from the GI subsidies, but few women qualified for the employment and educational preferences available to some fifteen million men. Soldiers dishonorably discharged for “homosexual conduct” were barred from GI benefits. Because GI programs were administered at the state and local levels, they also resulted in systematic racial and ethnic discrimination, especially in the South.

Southern universities remained segregated, and historically black colleges could not accommodate demand. Federal housing loans also heavily favored white applicants. Despite the employment assistance offered by the GI Bill, black veterans were often shuttled into low-skill jobs. One decorated WWII veteran reported that “my color bars me from most decent jobs, and if, instead of accepting menial work, I collect my $20 a week readjustment allowance, I am classified as a ‘lazy nigger.’” Thousands of black Americans did see some benefits, but the GI Bill disproportionately helped white male veterans.

The Fair Deal Falters Truman hoped through his Fair Deal to shore up and expand the New Deal. The president favored universal health care, federally protected civil rights, public assistance for housing, and federal aid to education. But apart from a public housing act, these ambitions were hindered by a series of opponents: business lobbies resistant to the regulation of “free enterprise,” white southerners determined to block civil rights legislation, and a reinvigorated Republican Party. Broader anti-Communist sentiment played a role too, casting suspicion on a powerful federal government and state-backed ventures of all kinds. As a consequence, the only large social welfare measure to pass after the New Deal would be the GI Bill. In sharp contrast to the bipartisan support Truman won for his foreign policy, major domestic reforms were elusive during his administration.

The Democratic dominance that Franklin Roosevelt had presided over during the depression and New Deal years hit roadblocks in the postwar

period. Accusing the Truman administration of “confusion, corruption, and communism,” Republicans capitalized on public frustrations with postwar strikes and shortages, capturing control of Congress in 1946 for the first time in fourteen years. Many had campaigned against the New Deal. Once elected, they weakened some reform programs and enacted tax cuts favoring higher-income groups.

Organized labor took the most severe blow when Congress passed the Taft- Hartley Act over Truman’s veto in 1947. Called a “slave labor” law by unions, the measure amended the Wagner Act (see chapter 24), reducing unions’ power to bargain with employers and making it more difficult to organize workers. States could now pass “right-to-work” laws, which banned the practice of requiring all workers to join a union once a majority had voted for it. Many states, especially in the South and West, rushed to enact such laws, encouraging industries to relocate there. Taft-Hartley maintained the New Deal principle of government protection for collective bargaining, but it tipped the balance of power toward management.

In the 1948 elections, Truman faced not only a resurgent Republican Party headed by New York governor Thomas E. Dewey but also two revolts within his own party. On the left, Henry A. Wallace, whose foreign policy views had cost him his cabinet seat, led the new Progressive Party. On the right, South Carolina governor J. Strom Thurmond headed the States’ Rights Party — the Dixiecrats — formed by southern Democrats who walked out of the 1948 Democratic Party convention when it passed a liberal civil rights plank.

Truman’s 1948 Victory Large crowds turned out for Truman’s coast-to-coast “whistle-stop” campaign in 1948, but experts thought he had little chance to win, given the defections from his party on both the left and right. Polls predicted a Dewey victory, with the Chicago Tribune prematurely handing the Republican the election. Truman gloats over the error and his surprise win before a crowd of supporters.

Truman’s prospects looked so bleak on election night that the Chicago Daily Tribune printed its next day’s issue with the headline “Dewey Defeats Truman.” But even though the Dixiecrats won four southern states, Truman took 303 electoral votes to Dewey’s 189, and his party regained control of

Congress (Map 27.1). His unexpected victory attested to the broad support for his foreign policy and the enduring popularity of New Deal reform.

MAP 27.1 The Election of 1948

Description “The map shows the following data:

Harry S. Truman (Democrat): Electoral Vote, 303; Popular Vote, 24,105,695; Percent of Popular Vote, 49.1 percent.

Electoral vote by state: Massachusetts, 16; Rhode Island, 4; Virginia, 11; West Virginia, 8; Ohio, 25; Tennessee, 11; Kentucky, 11; North Carolina, 14; Georgia, 12; Florida, 8; Wisconsin, 12; Illinois, 28; Minnesota, 11; Iowa, 10; Missouri, 15; Arkansas, 9; Oklahoma, 10; Texas, 23; New Mexico, 4; Colorado, 6; Wyoming, 3; Montana, 4; Arizona, 4; Utah, 4; Idaho,4; Washington, 8; Nevada, 3; and California, 25.

Thomas E. Dewey (Republican): Electoral Vote, 189; Popular Vote, 21,969,170; Percent of Popular Vote, 45.1 percent.

Electoral vote by state: Maine, 5; Vermont, 3; New Hampshire, 4; Connecticut, 8; New Jersey, 16; New York, 47; Pennsylvania, 35; Delaware, 3; Maryland: 8; North Dakota, 4; South Dakota, 4; Nebraska, 6; Kansas, 8; and Oregon, 6.

J. Strom Thurmond (States’ Rights): Electoral Vote, 39; Popular Vote, 1,169,021; Percent of Popular Vote, 2.4 percent.

Electoral vote by state: South Carolina, 8; Alabama, 11; Mississippi, 9; Tennessee, 1; and Louisiana, 10.

Henry A. Wallace (Progressive): Electoral Vote, 0; Popular Vote, 1,156,103; Percent of Popular Vote, 2.4 percent.”

While most New Deal programs survived Republican attacks, Truman failed to enact his Fair Deal agenda. Congress made modest improvements in Social Security and raised the minimum wage, but it passed only one significant reform measure. The Housing Act of 1949 authorized 810,000 units of government-constructed housing over the next six years, representing a landmark commitment by the government to address the housing needs of poor Americans. Yet it fell far short of actual need, and it created new problems when slum clearance displaced people from their homes and neighborhoods without providing alternatives.

The rest of Truman’s Fair Deal did not materialize. With southern Democrats playing a pivotal role, Congress rejected Truman’s proposals for civil rights. A powerful medical lobby blocked plans for national health insurance, attacking it as “socialized medicine” and the Truman

administration as “followers of the Moscow party line.” Conflicts over race and religion thwarted federal aid to education.

Truman’s efforts to revise immigration policy were mixed. The McCarran- Walter Act of 1952 ended the outright ban on immigration and citizenship for Japanese and other Asians, but it authorized the government to bar suspected Communists and homosexuals and maintained the discriminatory quota system established in the 1920s.

Truman’s foreign policy contributed to the failure of his Fair Deal. By late 1950, the Korean War embroiled the president in controversy and depleted his power as a legislative leader. Truman’s inability to make good on his domestic proposals set the United States apart from most European nations, which by the 1950s had established comprehensive health, housing, and employment programs to underwrite the material well-being and security of their populations.

Race and Rights in the 1940s “I spent four years in the army to free a bunch of Frenchmen and Dutchmen,” an African American corporal declared, “and I’m hanged if I’m going to let the Alabama version of the Germans kick me around when I get home.” Truman’s civil rights legislation may have languished in Congress, but black veterans and civilians alike resolved to root out the racial injustices of postwar America. The migration of two million African Americans to northern and western cities made the ballot a newly powerful tool, strengthening ongoing efforts to end discrimination in housing and

education. Pursuing civil rights through the courts and Congress, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) counted half a million members.

Individual African Americans broke through the color barrier in the postwar years. Jackie Robinson integrated major league baseball, playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers and braving abuse from fans and players to win the Rookie of the Year Award in 1947. In 1950, Ralph J. Bunche received the Nobel Peace Prize for his United Nations work, and Gwendolyn Brooks won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Some organizations, such as the American Medical Association in 1949, opened their doors to black members.

Still, little had changed for most African Americans, especially in the South, where violence met their attempts to assert even the most basic rights of U.S. citizens. Armed white men prevented Medgar Evers (who would become a key civil rights leader in the 1960s) and four other veterans from voting in Mississippi. A mob lynched Isaac Nixon for voting in Georgia, and an all-white jury acquitted the men accused of his murder. White supremacy was not confined to the South. Segregation and economic discrimination were widespread in the North as well.

The Cold War, however, compelled U.S. leaders to pay attention to racial issues. Soviet propaganda repeatedly highlighted racial injustice in the United States — a liability in the superpowers’ competition for the allegiance of newly independent nations with nonwhite populations. Secretary of State Dean Acheson reported that systematic segregation and

discrimination jeopardized “our moral leadership of the free and democratic nations of the world.”

“My very stomach turned over when I learned that Negro soldiers just back from overseas were being dumped out of army trucks in Mississippi and beaten,” wrote Truman. Risking the loss of support from southern white voters, Truman spoke more boldly on civil rights than had any previous president. In 1946, he created the President’s Committee on Civil Rights, and in 1948, he asked Congress to enact the committee’s comprehensive recommendations. The first president to address the NAACP, Truman asserted that all Americans should have equal rights to housing, education, employment, and the ballot.

Truman did not match those bold words with effective action. Congress rejected his proposals for national civil rights legislation, although some states outside the South did pass laws against discrimination in employment and public accommodations. Truman’s most significant step was an executive order desegregating the armed services. In part an appeal to northern black and liberal voters leading up to the 1948 election, the order was not implemented until the Korean War, when the cost of segregation to military efficiency became apparent. Officers gradually integrated their ranks, so that by 1953, nearly all African Americans served in mixed units — making the military among the most integrated of all U.S. institutions. Although Truman’s accomplishments fell far short of his proposals, desegregation of the military and federal support of civil rights cases in the Supreme Court seeded far-reaching changes.

Discussion of race and civil rights often focused on African Americans, but Mexican Americans fought similar injustices. In 1929, activists had formed the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) to combat discrimination and segregation in the Southwest. Like black soldiers, Mexican American veterans believed, as one insisted, that “we had earned our credentials as American citizens.” Problems with obtaining their veterans’ benefits spurred the formation of the American GI Forum in 1948 in Corpus Christi, Texas. Dr. Héctor Peréz García, president of the local LULAC and a Bronze Star combat surgeon, led the organization, which became a national force for battling discrimination and electing sympathetic officials.

Mexican American children were routinely subject to segregation in public schools. In 1945, with the help of LULAC, parents filed a class action suit in southern California, challenging school districts that barred their children from white schools. In the resulting decision, Mendez v. Westminster (1947), a federal court for the first time struck down school segregation, arguing that forced attendance at “Mexican schools” was unconstitutional and opposed to the principle of social equality.

NAACP lawyer Thurgood Marshall filed a supporting brief in the case, which foreshadowed the landmark Brown decision of 1954. Efforts to gain equal education, challenges to employment discrimination, and campaigns for political representation made evident the growing mobilization of Mexican Americans.

��

How had the context for domestic reform changed between the mid-1930s and mid-1940s?

To what extent did Eisenhower dismantle the New Deal? Truman’s successor did not roll back popular New Deal programs, but neither did he extend them. Dwight D. Eisenhower, a national military hero, was elected in 1952 in large part based on his promise to end the Korean War. The first Republican president to take office since 1928, Eisenhower charted a path between progressive and conservative agendas. Although Eisenhower favored corporations with tax cuts and resisted federal interventions in health care, education, and race relations, he stayed the course on domestic policy.

A Republican “Middle Way” Moderation was the guiding principle of Eisenhower’s domestic agenda and leadership style. In 1953, he pledged a “middle way between untrammeled freedom of the individual and the demands for the welfare of the whole Nation,” promising that his administration would “avoid government by bureaucracy as carefully as it avoids neglect of the helpless.” Eisenhower generally resisted expanding the federal government’s power. He only reluctantly stepped in when the Supreme Court ordered schools to desegregate, and his administration terminated the federal trusteeship of dozens of Indian tribes.

As a moderate Republican, however, Eisenhower supported the continuation of existing social welfare programs. In the name of national defense he even extended the reach of the federal government with a

massive highway act and federal funding for education in math, foreign languages, and the sciences.

“Ike,” as he was nicknamed, was very popular with the U.S. public, but so were Democratic social welfare programs. In contrast to the old guard conservatives in his party who wanted to repeal much of the New Deal, Dwight D. Eisenhower preached “modern Republicanism.” This meant curbing additional federal intervention in economic life, but not turning the clock back to the 1920s. “Should any political party attempt to abolish social security and eliminate labor laws and farm programs,” he wrote privately in 1954, “you would not hear of that party again in our political history.” Democratic control of Congress after the midterm elections of 1954 further contributed to Eisenhower’s middle-of-the-road approach.

Eisenhower sometimes echoed conservative Republicans’ conviction that government was best left to the states and economic decisions to private business. Yet he signed laws that brought ten million more workers under the umbrella of Social Security, increased the minimum wage, and created a new Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. When the spread of polio — a viral disease that could lead to paralysis — neared epidemic proportions, Eisenhower obtained funds from Congress to distribute a vaccine, a responsibility that conservatives thought individual states should bear.

The Polio Vaccine Building on the work of other scientists, Dr. Jonas Salk, a researcher at the University of Michigan and the University of Pittsburgh, was the first to develop a successful polio vaccine. In this 1953 photo, he injects a girl during the trials that established the drug’s success. Salk became a national hero when the vaccine became available to millions of children in 1955.

Eisenhower’s most significant domestic initiative was the Interstate Highway and Defense System Act of 1956 (Map 27.2). Promoted as essential to the nation’s defense and an impetus to economic growth, the act authorized construction of a national highway system, with the federal

government shouldering most of the costs through fuel and vehicle taxes. The new highways and associated federal outlay were justified in part by the need for escape arteries in the case of nuclear attack. More immediately, the highway network accelerated the mobility of people and goods, spurring suburban expansion. It also benefited the trucking, construction, and automobile industries that had lobbied for the law. Eventually, the monumental highway project exacted unforeseen costs in the form of air pollution, energy consumption, declining railroads and mass transportation, and decay of central cities.

MAP 27.2 The Interstate Highway System, 1930 and 1970

Built with federal funds authorized in the Interstate Highway and Defense System Act of 1956, superhighways soon crisscrossed the nation. Trucking, construction, gasoline, and travel were among the industries that prospered, while railroads suffered from the subsidized competition.

Description The map of 1930 shows highways connecting the northern regions of New York, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Ohio, West Virginia, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Iowa, Missouri, and Wisconsin; a road link running from Washington to California across Oregon; and roads running within Texas, and Florida. The map of 1970 shows an elaborate

and intricate highway system connecting every state. However, the network is dense in the eastern states.

In other areas, Eisenhower reined in federal activity in favor of state governments and private enterprise. His large tax cuts benefited business and the wealthy, and he resisted federal aid to primary and secondary education. The president likewise opposed national health insurance, preferring the growing practice of private insurance provided by employers. And whereas Democrats sought to keep nuclear power in government hands, Eisenhower signed legislation authorizing the private manufacture and sale of nuclear energy. The first commercial nuclear power plant opened in 1958 in northwest Pennsylvania. Most consequentially, Eisenhower avoided White House leadership on civil rights, believing such matters were best left to the states and refusing to endorse desegregation.

Eisenhower was easily reelected in 1956, defeating Adlai Stevenson and doubling his victory margin of 1952. Yet Democrats kept control of Congress, and in the midterm elections two years later, they all but wiped out the Republican Party, gaining a 64–34 majority in the Senate and a 282– 135 advantage in the House. Although Ike captured voters’ hearts, a majority of Americans appeared wedded to the programs and policies of the Democrats.

Eisenhower faced more serious leadership challenges in his second term. When the economy plunged into a recession in 1957, he fought with Congress over the budget and vetoed bills to expand housing, urban development, and public works projects. The president and Congress did

agree on the first, although largely symbolic, civil rights law in a century. Eisenhower also supported a larger federal role in education, largely in the interest of national security. Overall, during his two terms, Eisenhower tipped policy benefits somewhat toward corporate interests. But the first Republican administration after the New Deal largely left the functions of the federal government intact.

A Shifting Indian Policy Eisenhower’s efforts to limit the federal government were consistent with a new direction in Indian policy. After World War II, when some twenty-five thousand Indians had left their homes for military service and another forty thousand for work in defense industries, policymakers began to call for assimilating Native Americans and ending their special relationships with the government. This would amount to a reversal of the New Deal emphasis on strengthening tribal governments and preserving Indian cultures (see chapter 24).

To some officials, influenced by Cold War rhetoric, the communal practices of Indians resembled socialism and stifled individual initiative. Eisenhower’s commissioner of Indian affairs urged that Indians wanted to “work and live like Americans,” although he recognized that tribal lands could not produce income sufficient to eliminate poverty. There were economic interests at stake as well: Indians held rights to water, land, minerals, and other natural resources that were increasingly attractive to state governments and private entrepreneurs.

In the decade and a half after World War II, the government implemented a three-part Indian policy of compensation, termination, and relocation. In 1946, Congress established the Indian Claims Commission to hear outstanding claims by Native Americans for land taken by the government. When it closed in 1978, the commission had settled 285 cases, with compensation exceeding $800 million. This was only a partial victory for Native Americans, however, since the awards significantly underestimated the land’s worth.

The second policy, called termination, also originated in the Truman administration as a pledge to do “nothing for Indians which Indians can do for themselves.” Beginning in 1953, Eisenhower signed bills transferring jurisdiction over tribal land to state and local governments, ending the trusteeship relationship between Indians and the federal government. The loss of federal hospitals, schools, and other special arrangements devastated Indian tribes. As had happened after passage of the Dawes Act in 1887 (see chapter 17), corporate interests and private individuals took advantage of the opportunity to purchase Indian land cheaply. The government abandoned termination in the 1960s, but only after more than one million acres of Native American land had been transferred to others’ hands.

The Indian Relocation Program, the third piece of Native American policy, began in 1948 and involved more than one hundred thousand Native Americans by 1973. The government encouraged Indians to move to cities, where relocation centers were supposed to help with housing, job training, and medical care. The effects were dramatic: The percentage of Indians living in urban areas grew from 13.4 in 1950 to 44 in 1970.

Approximately one-third of the Indians who moved to urban areas, however, returned to reservations. Most who stayed in cities faced racism, unemployment, poor housing, and the loss of their traditional culture. “I wish we had never left home,” said one woman whose husband was out of work. “It’s dirty and noisy, and people all around, crowded…. It seems like I never see the sky or trees.” Reflecting long-standing disagreements among Indians themselves, some who overcame these obstacles applauded the program. But most urban Indians remained poor, and some worried that “we would lose our identity as Indian people, lose our culture and our [way] of living.” Within two decades, a national pan-Indian movement — a by- product of this urbanization — emerged to resist assimilation and to demand Native American rights (see chapter 28).

��

In what areas did the Eisenhower administration depart from or reverse prior domestic policies?

What fueled postwar prosperity? Despite scarcities and inflation, World War II delivered to most Americans a higher standard of living than ever before. By 1947, the economy had stabilized, escaping the postwar depression that so many had feared. Wartime profits enabled businesses to expand, and consumers could now spend their savings on items that had been beyond their reach during the depression and war.

By the 1950s, the economy was booming, in part a product of the Cold War defense buildup. As Nixon and Khrushchev’s “kitchen debate” attested, American life would be transformed by an array of modern conveniences along with suburban development, federally funded highways, and broad access to higher education. Prosperity was far from universal. Rural deprivation was particularly pronounced, as was poverty among the elderly, African Americans, Native Americans, and Latinos. But a remarkable economic boom lasted through the 1960s, prompting economist John Kenneth Galbraith to label the United States “the affluent society.”

Technology Transforms Agriculture and Industry Stimulated by Cold War spending and technological advances, economic productivity increased enormously in the 1950s. Mechanization meant that work itself was changing in the postwar era. Fewer people labored on farms, service sector employment overtook manufacturing jobs, women’s employment grew and union membership soared. These changes created

prosperity for many but caused precariousness for those who were shut out of their old livelihoods. Economic transformations also prompted far- reaching shifts in where — and how — Americans lived.

Between 1940 and 1960, agricultural output mushroomed even as the number of farmworkers declined by almost one-third. Farmers achieved unprecedented productivity through greater crop specialization, intensive use of fertilizers, and, above all, mechanization. A single mechanical cotton picker replaced fifty people and cut the cost of harvesting a bale of cotton from $40 to $5.

The decline of family farms and the growth of large commercial farming, or agribusiness, were causes as well as consequences of mechanization. Benefiting handsomely from federal price supports begun during the New Deal, larger farmers could afford technological improvements, but smaller producers lacked capital to purchase the machinery necessary to compete. Consequently, the average farm size more than doubled between 1940 and 1964, and the number of farms fell by more than 40 percent.

Many small farmers who hung on constituted a core of rural poverty. Others were forced off the land altogether as southern landowners replaced sharecroppers and tenants with machines. Hundreds of thousands of African Americans moved to cities, where racial discrimination and a lack of jobs mired many in urban poverty. A Mississippi mother reported that most of her relatives headed for Chicago when they realized that “it was going to be machines now that harvest the crops.” Worrying that “it might be worse up

there” for her children, she agonized, “I’m afraid to leave and I’m afraid to stay.”

New technologies also transformed industrial production. Between 1945 and 1960, the number of labor-hours needed to manufacture a car fell by 50 percent. Technology revolutionized industries from electronics to chemicals to air transportation. New industrial sectors emerged in television, plastics, and computers. American businesses benefited from U.S. global power in the form of access to cheap oil, ample markets abroad, and little foreign competition. Even with Eisenhower’s conservative fiscal policies, government spending reached $80 billion annually and created new jobs.

The strength of labor unions contributed to prosperity by putting money into the hands of people who would spend it. Real earnings for production workers shot up 40 percent. A steelworker’s son marveled, “In 1946, we did not have a car, a television set, or a refrigerator. By 1952 we had all those things.” In most industrial nations, government programs underwrote their citizens’ economic security, but the United States developed a mixed system in which company-funded programs won by unions provided for retirement, health care, paid vacations, supplementary unemployment benefits, and more. This system of worker welfare — privately funded rather than state-funded — resulted in wide disparities among workers. Those who did not belong to strong unions or who worked irregularly received fewer benefits.

While the number of organized workers continued to grow, union membership peaked at 27.4 percent of all workers in 1957. Technological

advances eliminated jobs in heavy industry. “You are going to have trouble collecting union dues from all of these machines,” commented a Ford manager to union leader Walter Reuther. The U.S. economy as a whole was shifting from the production of goods to services. Beginning in 1957, white- collar jobs outnumbered blue-collar jobs, as more workers distributed goods, performed services, provided education, and carried out government work. Unions made some headway in these fields, especially among government employees, but most service industries resisted unionization.

The growing clerical and service occupations swelled the demand for female workers, who held nearly one-third of all jobs by the end of the 1950s. The vast majority worked in offices, light manufacturing, domestic service, teaching, and nursing. Because these occupations were dominated by women, wages remained relatively low. In 1960, the average female full- time worker earned just 60 percent of the average male worker’s wages. At the bottom of the employment ladder, black women took home only 42 percent of what white men earned.

Suburban Migrations Housing was another growth industry of the postwar era. Although suburbs had existed since the nineteenth century, nothing symbolized the affluent society more than their tremendous expansion in the 1950s. Eleven million new homes went up in the suburbs, and by 1960, one in four Americans lived in a suburban neighborhood.

As Vice President Nixon boasted to Khrushchev during the 1959 kitchen debate, these homes were accessible to families with modest incomes. Builder William J. Levitt erected nearly identical units, adapting the factory assembly line to home construction. In 1949, families could purchase mass- produced houses in his 17,000-home development, called Levittown, on Long Island, New York, for just under $8,000 each (approximately $80,000 in current dollars). Similar developments, as well as more luxurious ones, quickly went up throughout the country.

Suburbanization was underwritten by federal policy. The government subsidized home ownership by guaranteeing low-interest mortgages and by making interest on mortgages tax deductible. Government-funded interstate highways also encouraged suburban development. After years of depression and war, most families were thrilled to be able to own new homes. “It was a miracle to them,” one man said of his working-class parents who moved to Levittown. They left behind dense urban neighborhoods and extended family networks. For the white working class, including many immigrants, private home ownership became a key piece of the American dream.

That opportunity was not open to all. Government loans were less available to aspiring black homeowners, and the new housing tracts observed strict racial lines. Each Levittown resident, for example, signed a contract pledging not to rent or sell to a non-Caucasian. The Supreme Court had declared such covenants unenforceable in 1948, but the new suburbs would nevertheless be sharply — and deliberately — segregated.

Although some African Americans joined the suburban migration, most headed to urban centers in search of economic opportunity, doubling their numbers in major cities during the 1950s. They moved to cities that were already in decline, losing not only population but also commerce, industry, and jobs to the suburbs or to southern and western states. Plant closings and unemployment in the urban core were the flip side of rapid suburbanization.

By the 1960s, suburbs came under attack for bulldozing the natural environment, creating groundwater contamination, and disrupting wildlife patterns. They were also the target of social critics, who decried the new communities as hothouses of conformity. Lewis Mumford, for example, disparaged suburbia as “a multitude of uniform, unidentifiable houses in a treeless communal wasteland, inhabited by people of the same class, the same income, the same age group.” In the late 1940s, the suburbs were a symbol of economic security and class mobility; a decade later, suburbia would come to represent for some dissenters all that was wrong with American consumer society.

The Rise of the Sun Belt Although every section of the nation enjoyed the new abundance, the Southwest and South especially thrived in production, commerce, and population (Map 27.3). California overtook New York as the most populous state. Sports franchises followed fans: In 1958, the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angeles, joined by the Minneapolis Lakers three years later.

MAP 27.3 The Rise of the Sun Belt, 1940–1980

The growth of defense industries, a non-unionized labor force, and the spread of air- conditioning all helped spur economic development and population growth in the Southwest and the South. This made the Sun Belt the fastest-growing region of the country between 1940 and 1980.

Description “The places marked on the map are as follows.

Over 20 percent increase: California, 48 percent; Nevada, 78 percent; Utah, 29 percent; Arizona, 73 percent; Colorado, 32 percent; New Mexico, 39 percent; Texas, 24 percent; Louisiana, 21 percent; Florida, 78 percent; Connecticut, 26 percent; New Jersey, 25 percent; Delaware, 40 percent; Maryland, 32 percent; Ohio, 22 percent; and Michigan, 22 percent. An inset shows Alaska (1959), 75 percent; and Hawaii, (1959) 26 percent.

Under 20 percent increase: Washington, 19 percent; Oregon, 16 percent; Idaho, 13 percent; Montana, 14 percent; Wyoming, 13 percent; North Dakota, 2 percent; South Dakota, 4

percent; Nebraska, 6 percent; Minneapolis, 14 percent; Iowa, 5 percent; Kansas, 14 percent; Oklahoma, 4 percent; Missouri, 9 percent; Wisconsin, 15 percent; Illinois, 15 percent; Indiana, 18 percent; Kentucky, 3 percent; Tennessee, 8 percent; North Carolina, 12 percent; Virginia, 19 percent; Pennsylvania, 7 percent; New York, 13 percent; Vermont, 3 percent; Rhode Island, 8 percent; Massachusetts, 9 percent; New Hampshire, 13 percent; Maine, 6 percent; Mississippi, 1percent; Alabama, 6 percent; Georgia, 14 percent; and South Carolina, 12 percent.

Decrease: Arkansas, negative 6 percent; Washington D. C., Negative 4 percent; and West Virginia, negative 7 percent.

Major Sun Belt city: Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Tucson in the West; Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, and New Orleans in the South; Florida 78 percent in the Southeast; Washington D.C. in the North.”

A pleasant natural environment attracted new residents to the Sun Belt, but the real magnet was economic opportunity. Just as railroads had fueled western development in the nineteenth century, the automobile and the airplane spurred post–World War II growth. New technologies made the Sun Belt livable. Air-conditioning cooled nearly eight million homes by 1960, fostering industrial development and tourism. Asked a journalist: “Can you conceive a Walt Disney World in central Florida without its air- conditioned hotels?”

So important was the defense industry to the South and Southwest that the area was later referred to as the “Gun Belt.” The aerospace industry boomed in Los Angeles and Dallas–Fort Worth, and military bases underwrote prosperity in San Diego and San Antonio. Although defense dollars flowed to other regions as well — military bases and aerospace plants were numerous in the Northwest, for example — the Sun Belt captured the lion’s

share of Cold War spending. By the 1960s, nearly one of every three California workers held a defense-related job.

Surging populations and industries soon presented environmental dilemmas. Providing sufficient water and power to cities and to agribusiness meant building dams and reservoirs on free-flowing rivers. Native Americans lost fishing sites on the Columbia River, and dams on the Upper Missouri displaced nine hundred Indian families. Sprawling suburban settlement without efficient public transportation ensured that the new highway system was clogged with cars, contributing to blankets of smog over Los Angeles and other cities.

High-technology industries drew well-educated, skilled workers to the West, but economic promise also attracted those bereft of other opportunities. Between 1945 and 1960, more than one-third of African Americans leaving the South moved west. The Mexican American population also grew, especially in California and Texas.

To supply California’s vast agribusiness industry, the government continued the bracero program begun in 1942, under which Mexicans were temporarily permitted to work in the United States. Until the program ended in 1964, more than one hundred thousand Mexicans entered the United States each year to labor in the fields — and many of them stayed, legally or illegally. But permanent Mexican immigration was not as welcome as Mexicans’ low-wage labor. In 1954, the government launched a series of raids called “Operation Wetback,” sending more than one million Mexicans back across the border.

That same year, Mexican American citizens gained a victory in their ongoing struggle for civil rights in Hernandez v. Texas. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Mexican Americans were a distinct group entitled to equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment and that their systematic exclusion from juries was unconstitutional. The lawyers who won the case were the first Mexican Americans in U.S. history to argue before the Supreme Court.

Free of the discrimination faced by minorities, white Americans enjoyed the fullest prosperity in the West. In 1950, when California developers opened Lakewood, a 17,500-home development in Los Angeles County, thirty thousand people lined up to buy houses at prices averaging $92,000 in today’s dollars. Many of the new homeowners were veterans, blue-collar and lower-level white-collar workers who worked in defense-based jobs at aerospace corporations. A huge shopping mall, Lakewood Center, displayed the fruits of a consumer culture, and the workers’ children lived within commuting distance of community colleges and six state universities.

The Democratization of Higher Education California’s postwar university system exemplified a spectacular transformation of higher education. A college education had once been reserved for the affluent. But between 1940 and 1960, college enrollments in the United States more than doubled, with more than 40 percent of young Americans attending college by the mid-1960s. State governments vastly

expanded the number of public colleges and universities, while municipalities began to build two-year community colleges.

Higher education in these years would become central not only to individuals’ economic prospects but also to a variety of state projects. The Cold War channeled millions of federal dollars to universities for defense- related research in fields ranging from engineering and chemistry to anthropology, linguistics, and psychology.

Like private home ownership, a college degree became newly accessible to working-class Americans. Thanks to the GI Bill, the federal government subsidized the higher education of more than two million veterans, many of whom were immigrants or the first in their family to attend college. As one servicewoman who enrolled at the University of Minnesota in 1946 put it, “Without the GI Bill, I never would have gone to college and I would have lived with disappointment.” The following year, when photographer Margaret Bourke-White traveled to the University of Iowa on behalf of Life magazine, she found that a remarkable sixty percent of the student body had served in World War II. She discovered, too, that the new veteran-student was “getting better grades than the non-veteran and has forced higher standards on everyone else.”

The democratization of higher education had its limits. Although their college enrollments surged from 37,000 in 1941 to 90,000 in 1961, African Americans constituted just 5 percent of all college students while comprising 10 percent of the U.S. population. Women’s enrollments increased, but the educational gap between white men and women widened

as veterans flocked to college campuses. In 1940, women had earned 40 percent of undergraduate degrees, but their proportion dropped to 25 percent after World War II, rising to just 33 percent by 1960. Women were also more likely than men to drop out of college after marriage, taking jobs to support their husbands in school. Reflecting gender norms of the 1950s, white college women were assured that “it is natural for a woman to be satisfied with her husband’s success and not crave personal achievement.”

These important limitations aside, the tremendous growth of universities opened up new pathways to the middle class for large numbers of Americans. A better-educated and higher-paid workforce was another ingredient fueling the extraordinary prosperity of the postwar years.

��

How did technology contribute to changes in the economy, suburbanization, and the growth of the Sun Belt?

How did economic growth affect American society, politics, and culture? The United States in the 1950s became a full-fledged consumer society. The easy availability of credit, the wide array of products on offer, and the growing centrality of purchasing power to social status and personal identity changed the way Americans lived. The new medium of television both reflected and stimulated a consumer culture focused less on work than on the fruits of one’s labor. More certain of a stable future, Americans married at earlier ages, and the birthrate soared. This “baby boom” led to celebrations of family life. Less predictably, reassertions of traditional gender roles accompanied a modern consumer culture. But undercurrents of rebellion, especially among young people, and women’s growing participation in the workforce would defy these dominant norms, as would an emerging critique of consumerism from environmentalists and social critics.

A Consumer Culture Scorned by Khrushchev during the kitchen debate as unnecessary gadgets, consumer items flooded American society in the 1950s. Although the purchase and display of consumer goods was not new (see chapter 23), at midcentury consumption became a reigning value, vital for economic prosperity and equated in some quarters with patriotism and the American way of life. Televisions and automobiles but also washing machines and refrigerators would become commonplace rather than luxury items. In place

of a traditional emphasis on work and savings, advertisements encouraged satisfaction and happiness through the acquisition of new products. Marketers dreamed up campaigns to persuade Americans that their lives would be improved through ever-newer and better goods.

U.S. consumer culture at midcentury rested on a firm material base. Between 1950 and 1960, both the gross national product (the value of all goods and services produced) and median family income grew by 25 percent in constant dollars (Figure 27.2). Economists claimed that 60 percent of Americans enjoyed middle-class incomes in 1960. By then, four- fifths of all families owned a television set, nearly all had a refrigerator, and most owned at least one car. The number of shopping centers quadrupled between 1957 and 1963.

FIGURE 27.2 The Postwar Economic Boom: GNP and Per Capita Income, 1945–1970

American dominance of the worldwide market, innovative technologies that led to new industries such as computers and plastics, population growth, and increases in worker productivity all contributed to the enormous economic growth of the United States after World War II.

Description The graph has years along the horizontal axis and gross national product (G N P) in billions of dollars along the vertical axis. The line for G N P shows a continuous increase from 210 billion dollars in 1945 to 400 dollars in 1956, 600 billion dollars in 1964, and 980 billion dollars in 1970 with a few fluctuations in the early years. The line for per capita income stands at 1,500 dollars in 1945, 2,000 dollars in 1951, 3,000 dollars in 1962, 4,000 dollars in 1966, and nears 5,000 dollars in 1970. All data are approximate.

This unparalleled abundance was linked to the baby boom and new financial practices. The U.S. population surged from 152 million to 180 million during the 1950s, heightening demand for products and boosting industries ranging from housing to baby items. Consumer borrowing also drove the economy, as buyers made purchases on installment plans and began to use credit cards. Increasingly, Americans enjoyed their possessions while they paid for them instead of waiting until they could buy items in full.

Although the sheer need to support themselves and their families motivated most women’s employment, a desire to partake in “the good life” sent growing numbers of women into the workforce. As one explained, “My Joe can’t put five kids through college … and the washer had to be replaced, and Ann was ashamed to bring friends home because the living room furniture was such a mess, so I went to work.” Anxiety about “keeping up with the Joneses,” or staying up to date with the latest products and appliances, was a pressure peculiar to an affluent society. The rising cost — and standard — of living increasingly required a second income, even as television shows and magazine advertisements portrayed middle-class white women as homemakers first and foremost.

The Revival of Domesticity and Religion In a reversal of — and partly in response to — the social trends of prior decades, traditional family life and gender roles were celebrated in the 1950s. Popular culture and public figures defined the ideal family as a male

breadwinner, a full-time female homemaker, and three or four children. Feminist Betty Friedan gave a name to the idealization of women’s domestic roles in her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique. Friedan criticized health professionals, scholars, advertisers, and public officials for assuming that biological differences dictated distinct roles for men and women. The belief that women should find exclusive fulfillment in devotion to their homes, marriages, and families was increasingly questioned. The women’s magazine Redbook sponsored a contest in 1960 asking readers to write in with responses to the question of “Why Young Mothers Feel Trapped.” The magazine was shocked to receive twenty-four thousand letters.

Although the glorification of female domesticity clashed with working women’s realities, many Americans’ lives did outwardly embody the family ideal. Higher incomes enabled people to marry earlier and to have more children. Reversing the century’s downward trend, the American birthrate soared between 1945 and 1965, peaking in 1957 with 4.3 million births, producing both the baby boom generation and a marked emphasis on stronger relationships within the nuclear family. Experts like Dr. Benjamin Spock encouraged mothers to devote even more attention to child rearing, while they urged fathers to cultivate family “togetherness” by spending more time at home with their offspring.

Interest in religion also swelled in the 1950s. From 1940 to 1960, membership in churches and synagogues rose from 50 to 63 percent of all Americans. Polls reported that 95 percent of the population believed in God. Evangelism took on new life, notably in the nationwide crusades of Southern Baptist minister Billy Graham. The U.S. Congress linked Judeo-

Christian religion more closely to the state by adding “under God” to the pledge of allegiance and by requiring that “In God We Trust” be printed on all currency.

Religion helped many find meaning and comfort in the nuclear age. Ministers such as Graham linked spiritual faith to American victory in the Cold War, painting communism as a “sinister anti-Christian movement masterminded by Satan.” Some critics questioned the depth of the religious revival, attributing the growth in church membership to a desire for conformity and a need for social outlets. One commentator noted that 53 percent of Americans could not name a single book of the Christian New Testament. Yet the trend was striking, countering earlier predictions of religion’s waning significance in a scientific, secular nation.

Television Transforms Culture and Politics The new medium of television altered American life as much as any other development in the 1950s. TV was both a product of midcentury consumer culture and a mirror held up to it, carrying Billy Graham’s sermons as well as conventional gender norms into suburban living rooms. By 1960, nearly 90 percent of American homes contained a television set, and the average viewer spent more than five hours each day watching it. Audiences were especially attracted to situation comedies like I Love Lucy and Father Knows Best. Such programs promoted the white nuclear family ideal alongside new leisure habits and consumer desires.

Television would also have a major impact on politics. Eisenhower’s 1952 presidential campaign was the first to air TV ads, although he begrudged the fact that “an old soldier should come to this.” By 1960, television played a key role in election campaigns. Reflecting on his narrow victory that year, president-elect John F. Kennedy remarked, “We wouldn’t have had a prayer without that gadget.” The expense of TV ads meant that fundraising would play an ever-larger role in politics. The ability to appeal directly to voters in their living rooms put a premium on personal attractiveness and encouraged candidates to build their own campaign organizations, relying less on political parties. While the declining strength of parties and the growing power of money in elections were not new trends, television greatly accelerated them.

Unlike government-financed television in Europe, private enterprise — meaning advertising — paid for American TV. What NBC called a “selling machine in every living room” became the major vehicle for fostering consumption, and advertisers did not hesitate to interfere with shows that might jeopardize the sale of their products. In 1961, Newton Minow, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, called television a “vast wasteland.”

While acknowledging some of TV’s achievements, particularly documentaries and drama, Minow depicted it as “a procession of game shows, … formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, … and cartoons.” But viewers kept tuning in. In little more than a decade, television came to dominate

Americans’ leisure time, influence their consumption patterns, and shape their perceptions of the nation’s leadership.

Countercurrents Most Americans — recalling the deprivations of depression and war — embraced the bounty and convenience of a modern consumer society. Others, however, worried that the new materialism had altered Americans’ values as well as their habits. In The Lonely Crowd (1950), sociologist David Riesman lamented a shift from the “inner-directed” to the “other- directed” individual, as Americans seemingly replaced independent thinking with a desire to adapt to external standards of behavior and belief. William H. Whyte Jr., in his popular book The Organization Man (1956), likewise criticized Americans’ quest for “belonging,” blaming the modern corporation for making employees tailor themselves to the group. Best- selling exposés of subliminal advertising and the use of psychological manipulation to sell products reflected general unease with the priorities of a culture based around consumption.

A growing environmental critique blamed rapid development and unchecked consumerism for the despoliation of natural resources and the American countryside. Economist John Kenneth Galbraith, who had described the United States as “the affluent society,” warned in 1958 that the quest for private comforts was endangering public goods and public spaces. “The family which takes its … air-conditioned, power-steered and power-braked automobile out for a tour,” he chided, “passes through cities that are badly paved” and “made hideous by litter.”

Some critiques of consumer culture stemmed from concern about the weakening of traditional masculinity, given that consumption was associated with women and that white-collar jobs no longer seemed to demand independence or aggressive action. If men were now required to conform to get ahead in the workplace, would their autonomy be compromised? The increase in married women’s employment further undercut the presumed male role of breadwinner. Into this context arrived Playboy, which began publication in 1953 and quickly gained a circulation of one million. The new magazine redefined masculine independence as sophisticated bachelorhood and sexual freedom, pushing against middle- class norms of domesticity and respectability.

In fact, two best-selling studies published by Alfred Kinsey and other researchers at Indiana University — Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953) — indicated that Americans’ sexual practices regularly departed from the postwar family ideal. Large numbers of men and women reported that they had engaged in premarital sex and extramarital affairs; one-third of the men and one- seventh of the women reported homosexual experiences. The Kinsey Reports shocked many Americans but lent support to legal efforts to decriminalize homosexuality and to the midcentury homophile movement, which sought equal rights for individuals regardless of sexual orientation.

Challenges to mainstream standards also appeared in the everyday behavior of young Americans. “Roll over Beethoven and tell Tchaikovsky the news!” belted out Chuck Berry in his 1956 hit record celebrating rock and roll, a new form of music that grew out of black rhythm and blues and mingled

with the country and western traditions of the 1940s. White teenagers idolized Elvis Presley, who shocked their parents with his tight pants, hip- rolling gestures, and sensuous rock-and-roll music. “Before there was Elvis … I started going crazy for ‘race music,’” recalled a white man of his teenage years. His words underscored African Americans’ contributions to rock and roll, as well as the importance of black music to the rebellions of white youth.

The most overt revolt against the social conformity of the 1950s came from the self-proclaimed Beat generation, a small group of mostly male literary figures based in New York City and San Francisco. Rejecting the values of the dominant culture — patriotism, consumerism, technology, conventional family life and morality — writers such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac celebrated spontaneity and absolute personal freedom, including drug consumption and freewheeling sex. The Beats scandalized “square” Americans, but both they and their lifestyles would provide a model for a new movement of youthful dissidents in the 1960s.

Bold new styles in the visual arts also showed the 1950s to be much more than a decade of bland conformity. In New York City, action painting or abstract expressionism flowered, countering the idea that art should represent recognizable forms. Jackson Pollock and other abstract expressionists poured, dripped, and threw paint on canvases or substituted sticks and other implements for brushes. The new form of painting so captivated the Western art world that New York replaced Paris as its center.

��

Why did American consumer culture expand so dramatically in the 1950s, and what aspects of society did it influence?

What mobilized African Americans to fight for civil rights in the 1950s? Building on the civil rights initiatives begun during World War II, African Americans posed the most dramatic challenge to the status quo of the 1950s as they sought to topple discrimination and segregation. At the opening of the decade, every southern state mandated rigid segregation in public settings, ranging from schools to cemeteries. Segregation in practice, if not by law, was also commonplace in the North. Voting laws and practices in the South disfranchised the vast majority of African Americans, and blacks faced systematic employment discrimination throughout the country.

Although black protest was as old as American racism, in the 1950s grassroots movements arose that attracted national attention and the support of white liberals. Pressed by civil rights groups, the Supreme Court delivered significant institutional reforms, but some of the most important changes occurred among blacks themselves. Ordinary African Americans in substantial numbers sought their own liberation, building a movement that would transform race relations in the United States.

African Americans Challenge the Supreme Court and the President Several factors galvanized black protest in the 1950s. Between 1940 and 1960, more than three million African Americans migrated from the South to areas where they had a political voice. Black leaders highlighted how racist practices at home tarnished the U.S. image abroad and handicapped

the United States in its competition with the Soviet Union. The very fact of segregation meant that African Americans controlled certain organizational resources, such as black churches, colleges, and newspapers, where leadership skills could be honed and networks developed.

The legal strategy of the major civil rights organization, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), reached its crowning achievement with the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, which consolidated five separate suits. Oliver Brown, a World War II veteran in Topeka, Kansas, filed suit because his daughter had to pass by a white school near their home to attend a black school more than a mile away. In Virginia, sixteen-year-old Barbara Johns initiated a student strike over wretched conditions in her all-black high school, leading to another of the suits joined in Brown. The NAACP’s lead lawyer, future Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall, urged the Court to overturn the “separate but equal” precedent established in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 (see chapter 21). A unanimous Court, headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren, agreed, declaring that “Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” and thus violated the Fourteenth Amendment.

Ultimate responsibility for enforcement of the decision lay with President Eisenhower, but he refused to endorse Brown. He also kept silent in 1955 when whites murdered Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old black boy who had allegedly whistled at a white woman in Mississippi. Reflecting his own prejudice, his preference for limited federal intervention in the states, and a leadership style favoring consensus and gradual progress, Eisenhower

distanced the White House from civil rights issues. Such inaction fortified southern resistance.

In September 1957, Governor Orval Faubus sent Arkansas National Guard troops to block the enrollment of nine black students at Little Rock’s Central High School. He later allowed the students to enter but withdrew the National Guard, leaving the “Little Rock Nine” to face an angry white mob. “During those years when we desperately needed approval from our peers,” Melba Patillo Beals remembered, “we were victims of the most harsh rejection imaginable.” As television cameras transmitted the ugly scene, Eisenhower was forced to send regular army troops to Little Rock, the first federal military intervention in the South since Reconstruction. Paratroopers escorted the Little Rock Nine into Central High, staying for the remainder of the school year. Faubus, however, closed the public schools the next fall in order to prevent integration, provoking no further response from the president. White resistance to integration, whether via mob violence or school closings, continued across the South.

School segregation outside the South was not usually sanctioned by law, but northern school districts found ways to separate black and white students by manipulating neighborhood boundaries. Even before Brown, black parents in dozens of northern cities challenged the assignment of their children to inferior “colored” schools. While they had some successes, residential segregation, often supported by official action, made school segregation a reality for African Americans in both the North and South.

Civil rights agitation resulted in some congressional and presidential action. Eisenhower ordered the integration of public facilities in Washington, D.C., and on military bases, and he supported the first federal civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. Yet the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960 were little more than symbolic. Baseball star Jackie Robinson spoke for many African Americans when he wired Eisenhower in 1957, “We disagree that half a loaf is better than none. Have waited this long for a bill with meaning — can wait a little longer.” Eisenhower appointed the first black professional to his White House staff, but E. Frederick Morrow confided in his diary, “I feel ridiculous … trying to defend the administration’s record on civil rights.”

Montgomery and Mass Protest The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s drew on earlier acts of black resistance. What set it apart was its widespread presence in the South, the large number of people involved, their willingness to confront white institutions directly, and the use of nonviolent protest and civil disobedience to bring about change. The Congress of Racial Equality and other groups had experimented with these tactics in the 1940s, organizing to integrate movie theaters, restaurants, and swimming pools in northern cities. In the South, the first sustained protest to claim national attention began in Montgomery, Alabama, on December 1, 1955.

Civil Rights Activism in the North Black protest had a long history in the North, where African Americans and their allies battled job discrimination and segregation in schools, housing, and public accommodations. Here, demonstrators march outside the Stork Club in New York City in 1951, protesting its refusal to serve the world-famous dancer, singer, and actress Josephine Baker. Note how one of the signs capitalizes on Cold War rhetoric.

Description The signs read, We protest, Humiliation of Josephine Baker, N A A C P; We protest Discrimination in service of negroes, N A A C P; Stork Club color discrimination Un- American, N A A C P; Famous Nite Spot Just a White spot, N A A C P.

That day, police arrested Rosa Parks for violating a local segregation ordinance. Riding a crowded bus home from work, she refused to give up

her seat in the white section so that a man could sit down. She resisted not because she was physically tired, she recalled; rather she was “tired of giving in.” The bus driver called the police, who promptly arrested her. Parks had long been active in the local NAACP, headed by E. D. Nixon, and had sought an opportunity to challenge bus segregation. So had the Women’s Political Council (WPC), led by Jo Ann Robinson, an English professor at Alabama State, who had once been humiliated by a bus driver when she accidentally sat in the white section.

When word came that Parks would fight her arrest, WPC leaders mobilized teachers and students to distribute fliers urging blacks to boycott the buses. E. D. Nixon called a mass meeting at a black church, where those assembled founded the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). The MIA arranged volunteer car pools and marshaled most of the black community to sustain what became the yearlong Montgomery bus boycott.

Elected to head the MIA was twenty-six-year-old Martin Luther King Jr., a young Baptist pastor with a doctorate in theology from Boston University. A captivating speaker, King addressed mass meetings at black churches throughout the bus boycott, inspiring courage and commitment by linking racial justice to Christianity. He promised, “If you will protest courageously and yet with dignity and Christian love … historians will have to pause and say, ‘There lived a great people — a black people — who injected a new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilization.’”

Montgomery blacks summoned their courage and determination. Boycotters walked miles or carpooled to get to work, contributed their meager financial resources to the cause, and stood up to intimidation and police harassment. One older woman declared, “I’m not walking for myself, I’m walking for my children and my grandchildren.” Authorities arrested several leaders, and whites firebombed King’s house. Yet the boycott persisted until November 1956, when the Supreme Court declared Alabama’s laws requiring bus segregation unconstitutional.

King’s appearance on the cover of Time magazine in February 1957 marked his rapid rise to national and international fame. Black clergy from across the South chose King to head the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), newly established to coordinate local protests against segregation and disfranchisement. The prominence of King and other ministers tended to overshadow the substantial numbers of black women whose grassroots action would be critical to the movement. King’s fame and the media’s focus on the South also obscured the national scope of racial injustice. Yet the push for racial equality would dramatically transform both the North and the South in the years to come.

��

What were the goals and strategies of civil rights activists in the 1950s?

Conclusion: What challenges did peace and prosperity mask? At the American exhibit in Moscow in 1959, the consumer goods that Nixon proudly displayed to Khrushchev spoke to two related postwar themes: American prosperity and superpower rivalry. The era’s tremendous economic growth, raising the standard of living for most Americans, was often celebrated as the product of a free enterprise system. But it rested on federal Cold War defense spending as well. The large military outlays that began under Truman helped jump-start postwar prosperity. Eisenhower’s continued defense spending, along with housing, highway, and education subsidies, sustained the economic boom.

Prosperity changed the very landscape of the United States. Suburban housing developments sprang up, interstate highways cut up cities and connected the country, farms declined in number but grew in size, and people and industry moved south and west. Not all Americans welcomed these changes, some decrying consumerism and its environmental costs. Nor did all Americans benefit from economic growth. At the height of the affluent society, a shocking forty million people lived in poverty. Material abundance masked other developments as well: persistent racial injustice and rising resistance to it, married women’s movement into the labor force, and the emergence of a youth rebellion.

Compared to the vigorous federal activity of the New Deal years, the Truman and Eisenhower administrations — focused on the Cold War crisis — enacted little in the way of landmark legislation. The most important

domestic development of the postwar era would come not from elected leaders but from the assertion of citizenship rights by those who had been left outside the affluent society’s promise, whether Mexican Americans in Los Angeles or African Americans in Montgomery and Little Rock. In the 1960s, new leaders would take up the struggle against communism. They would also grapple with unaddressed domestic challenges of racism, poverty, and urban decay. As a new decade dawned, the stage was set for turbulence and conflict.

Chapter Review

��

Servicemen’s Readjustment Act Fair Deal Taft-Hartley Act Dixiecrats Housing Act of 1949 Interstate Highway and Defense System Act of 1956 Indian Relocation Program Sun Belt bracero program Hernandez v. Texas baby boom Brown v. Board of Education Montgomery bus boycott

�� Domestic Politics and Policy

How did Truman propose to expand the New Deal, and what prevented him from enacting this agenda?

What did Eisenhower’s “middle way” suggest about American politics in the 1950s?

Cultural Currents

How did prosperity shape living patterns for white working-class and middle-class Americans in the 1950s?

What developments challenged the dominant norms of American consumer culture in the 1950s?

Civil Rights

Why was Brown v. Board of Education such a pivotal legal ruling in the history of the civil rights movement?

How and why did the Montgomery bus boycott succeed?

�� , ��

Compare and contrast the culture and society of the 1920s with that of the 1950s.

What tensions in 1950s America would become defining political struggles of the 1960s?

��

1942 Bracero program launched.

1944 Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, or GI Bill, passes.

1945–1965 Soaring birthrate signals baby boom.

1946 Labor strikes affect major industries. President’s Committee on Civil Rights created. Employment Act passes. Republicans gain control of Congress.

1947 Mendez v. Westminster decided.

1948 American GI Forum founded. Truman orders desegregation of military. Truman wins presidency. Indian Relocation Program begins. Housing covenants ruled unconstitutional.

1949 First Levittown built in Long Island, New York.

1952 Dwight D. Eisenhower elected president.

Television ads are used for first time in presidential campaign. 1953

Korean War ends. Eisenhower signs bills ending trusteeship between Indians and federal government. Playboy begins publication.

1954 Operation Wetback begins. Hernandez v. Texas decided. Brown v. Board of Education rules school segregation unconstitutional.

1955 Emmett Till murdered in Mississippi.

1955–1956 Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott carried out.

1956 Interstate Highway and Defense System Act becomes law. Eisenhower reelected.

1957 U.S. birthrate peaks at 4.3 million births in one year. Union membership as percentage of all workers peaks. White-collar jobs outnumber blue-collar jobs for first time. Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) founded. Little Rock Nine integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Civil Rights Act of 1957 passes.

1958 First commercial nuclear power station opens. Democrats gain large majorities in Congress.

1959 Nixon and Khrushchev engage in “kitchen debate” in Moscow.

1960 One-quarter of Americans live in suburbs. Thirty-five percent of women work outside home. Ninety percent of American homes have television set.

1963 Betty Friedan publishes The Feminine Mystique.

�� 28 ��, ��, �� 1960–1974

�� This chapter will explore the following questions:

What were the achievements of JFK’s New Frontier and LBJ’s Great Society? How did the black freedom movement evolve? What other social movements emerged in the 1960s? What were the goals of the new wave of feminism? Why and where did the conservative movement gain ground? Conclusion: What were the lasting effects of sixties-era reform?

�� EVEN AS A CHILD, PAULI MURRAY RESISTED JIM CROW, REFUSING to ride on segregated streetcars and boycotting movie theaters where African Americans were restricted to the balcony. Murray detested segregated buses most of all, which “permitted the public humiliation of black people to be carried out in the presence of privileged white spectators.” As an adult and civil rights lawyer, Murray waged a battle against all forms of social injustice, playing a key role in the rights revolution of the 1960s.

Anna Pauline Murray was born in 1910 to a family of African, European, and Native American descent, and to a lifetime of struggle with her gender and sexual identity. She was orphaned at a young age and lived with relatives in North Carolina. Going north for college, she became a labor activist in New York. In 1938, Murray applied to graduate school at the University of North Carolina, where her white great-great-grandfather had been a trustee, but was rejected on the basis of her race. Several years later, after being arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus in Richmond, Virginia, Murray enrolled at Howard Law School with “the single-minded intention of destroying Jim Crow.”

While a law student, Murray led the first successful sit-in to desegregate restaurants in Washington, D.C., nearly two decades before that tactic would transform the civil rights movement in the South. She also helped frame a successful legal attack on the principle

of “separate but equal,” her scholarship and research underpinning Thurgood Marshall’s arguments in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education (1954) case.

Later denied admission to Harvard’s law school because of her sex, Murray was the sole woman in her cohort at Howard University. Graduating first in her class, she gained a legal education but also a feminist consciousness: Belittled by her male peers, she became a fierce critic of what she termed “Jane Crow.” By the 1960s, along with a new generation of feminists, Murray turned her energies to toppling gender discrimination. In 1962, Eleanor Roosevelt invited Murray to serve on President Kennedy’s Commission on the Status of Women, where she argued for legal analogies between sex and race. At one point, Murray proposed an “NAACP for women” to feminist Betty Friedan, leading to the founding of the National Organization for Women in 1966.

In 1965, Murray would become the first African American recipient of a Yale Law School degree. Her arguments — adopted by Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the 1970s — persuaded the Supreme Court that women were entitled to constitutional protection against discrimination. Murray would go on to a history professorship at Brandeis, and she became the first African American woman ordained as an Episcopal priest.

Pauli Murray died before a movement emerged to defend the rights of transgender people, a cause she likely would have embraced both personally and politically. Her legal strategies underwrote an expansive

era of social reform carried from grassroots movements all the way to the Supreme Court.

What were the achievements of JFK’s New Frontier and LBJ’s Great Society? At the Democratic National Convention in 1960, John F. Kennedy proclaimed a “New Frontier” that would confront “unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered pockets of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus.” Four years later, Lyndon B. Johnson invoked a “Great Society” that promised “abundance and liberty for all” and “an end to poverty and racial injustice.” Each professed a liberal faith in the government to solve social and economic problems. Prodded by the civil rights movement and underwritten by momentous Supreme Court decisions as well as postwar prosperity, liberals’ agenda expanded in the 1960s to include not just economic security but also individual rights and racial justice. Johnson won legislation on civil rights, poverty, education, medical care, housing, consumer safety, and environmental protection. This broad agenda also sparked political fights. Activists on the left charged that the government had not gone far enough in rectifying social inequalities, while a growing conservative movement pushed back against the growth of federal power.

Kennedy and a New Frontier in the 1960s John F. Kennedy grew up in privilege in Massachusetts, the son of an Irish Catholic businessman who became a New Deal official and the U.S. ambassador to Britain. His distinguished World War II navy record helped

Kennedy win election to the House of Representatives in 1946 and the Senate in 1952. He went on to secure the Democratic presidential nomination in 1960, supported by a powerful political machine, his family’s fortune, and a dynamic personal appeal. Kennedy stunned many Democrats by choosing as his running mate Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, whom liberals disparaged as a typical southern conservative.

In the general election, Kennedy narrowly defeated his Republican opponent, Vice President Richard M. Nixon (Map 28.1). African American voters contributed to his victory, and Johnson helped carry the South. Kennedy also benefited from the nation’s first televised presidential debates, at which he appeared cool and confident beside a nervous and pale Nixon.

MAP 28.1 The Election of 1960

Description “The map shows the following data:

John F. Kennedy (Democrat): Electoral Vote, 303; Popular vote, 34,227,096; Percent of popular vote, 49.9 percent.

Electoral vote by state: Massachusetts, 16; Rhode Island, 4; Connecticut, 8; New York, 45; Pennsylvania, 32; New Jersey, 16; Delaware, 3; Maryland, 9; North Carolina, 14; West Virginia, 8; South Carolina, 8; Georgia, 12; Alabama, 5; Michigan, 20; Illinois, 27; Missouri, 13; Arkansas, 8; Louisiana, 10; Minnesota, 11; Texas, 24; New Mexico, 4; Utah, 3; and Hawaii, 3

Richard M. Nixon (Republican): Electoral Vote, 219; Popular vote, 34,108,546; Percent of popular vote, 49.6 percent.

Electoral vote by state: Maine, 5; Vermont, 3; New Hampshire, 4; Virginia, 12; Ohio, 25; Indiana, 13; Kentucky, 10; Tennessee, 11; Florida, 10; Wisconsin, 12; Iowa, 10; North Dakota, 4; South Dakota, 4; Nebraska, 6; Kansas, 8; Oklahoma, 7; Montana, 4; Wyoming, 3; Colorado, 6; Idaho, 4; Utah, 4; Arizona, 4; Washington, 9; Oregon, 6; California, 32; and Alaska, 3.

Harry F. Byrd (Independent): Electoral Vote, 15; Popular vote, 501,643; Percent of popular vote, 0

Electoral vote by state: Oklahoma, 1; Louisiana, 8; and Mississippi, 6.”

At forty-three, JFK was the youngest man and the first Roman Catholic to be elected president. His administration projected energy, idealism, and glamour, while the press kept from the public his serious health problems and extramarital affairs.

At his inauguration, Kennedy called on Americans to serve the common good. “Ask not what your country can do for you,” he implored. “Ask what you can do for your country.” JFK made these remarks in the context of the superpower struggle, declaring that the United States would “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” Especially early in his presidency, Kennedy’s commitment to fighting communism abroad — from resisting Castro in Cuba to increasing the U.S. presence in South Vietnam (see chapter 29) — took precedence over rights and reform at home.

JFK launched the Peace Corps in 1961 in a bid to enhance the reputation of the United States in developing nations. The program recruited young

people to open schools, provide basic medical care, and assist with agriculture and small businesses in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

Kennedy, however, failed to persuade Congress to enact legislation to improve domestic education and health care. And despite courting black votes to get elected, Kennedy refused to take the lead on racial justice. Pledging during the campaign to end segregation in federally subsidized public housing “with the stroke of a pen,” Kennedy did not act once in office, leading civil rights groups to mail him pens by the thousands to remind him of his promise. Ultimately, only the bloody confrontations sparked by mass protest prompted him to take a public stand on civil rights.

Still, the idealism of Kennedy’s rhetoric inspired many. Moved by the desperate conditions he observed while campaigning in Appalachia, the president brought attention to some of the problems that the affluent society had evaded. After reading Michael Harrington’s The Other America, which identified more than one in five Americans as “maimed in body and spirit, existing at levels beneath those necessary for human decency,” Kennedy pushed poverty onto the national agenda. By 1962, he had won support for a $2 billion urban renewal program, providing incentives to businesses to locate in economically depressed areas and job training for the unemployed. The next year he asked aides to explore a full-scale attack on poverty. Kennedy also called for an enormous tax cut to increase consumer demand and create jobs.

The Kennedy Appeal The freshness and glamour of the Kennedy administration are apparent in this photo of the candidate and his wife riding through New York City a few weeks before his election in 1960. The couple’s second child was born between his election and inauguration, further contributing to JFK’s youthful image.

Kennedy’s domestic efforts were in their infancy when he was assassinated on November 22, 1963, as his motorcade passed through Dallas, Texas. Within minutes of the shooting, radio and television broadcast the unfolding horror to the nation. Stunned Americans struggled to understand what had happened. The police arrested Lee Harvey Oswald, who had fired the shots from a nearby building. Two days later, while officers were transferring Oswald from one jail to another, a local nightclub operator killed him. Some claimed that a conspiracy of ultraconservatives or Communists was

behind these murders, but a presidential commission eventually concluded that both Oswald and his killer had acted alone.

Kennedy’s domestic record was unremarkable in his first two years, but his attention to taxes, civil rights, and poverty in 1963 signaled an important shift. Could Kennedy have persuaded Congress to enact his proposals? It would be up to his vice president to secure and expand the liberal agenda that Kennedy had hinted at.

Johnson and the War on Poverty Lyndon B. Johnson, or LBJ, assumed the presidency with a wealth of political experience. Growing up in the Texas Hill Country, Johnson experienced firsthand some of the economic instability of the rural South. As a young man, he taught at a Mexican American school, where the poverty of his students made a lasting impression on him.

Johnson won election in 1937 to the House of Representatives and in 1948 to the Senate, where he served skillfully as Senate majority leader. His modest upbringing, his admiration for Franklin Roosevelt, and his ambition to outdo the New Deal president underpinned LBJ’s commitment to reform. The pressure generated by the black freedom struggle and other social movements also decisively shaped his political agenda.

Lacking Kennedy’s sophistication, Johnson excelled behind the scenes, where he could entice, maneuver, or threaten legislators to support his objectives. His persuasive power, the famous “Johnson treatment,” became

legendary. In his ability to achieve his legislative goals, Johnson had few peers in American history.

Just days after Kennedy’s assassination, Johnson entreated Congress to act so that “John Fitzgerald Kennedy did not live or die in vain.” He pushed through Kennedy’s tax cut bill by February 1964, contributing to an economic boom and a drop in unemployment. More remarkable was passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The strongest such measure since Reconstruction, the law made discrimination in employment, education, and public accommodations illegal. Its passage required every ounce of Johnson’s political skill to pry sufficient votes from Republicans to overcome opposition by southern Democrats. In the lead-up to the Senate vote, one Republican aide reported that Johnson “never left him alone for thirty minutes.”

Antipoverty legislation followed fast on the heels of the Civil Rights Act. Johnson announced “an unconditional war on poverty” in his January 1964 State of the Union message. In August, Congress passed the Economic Opportunity Act, the opening shot in Johnson’s War on Poverty. The law authorized ten new programs, allocating $800 million — about 1 percent of the federal budget — for the first year. Many provisions targeted children and youth, including Head Start for preschoolers, work-study grants for college students, and the Job Corps for unemployed young people. The Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) program paid modest wages to those working with the disadvantaged, and a legal services program provided lawyers for the poor.

The most controversial part of the law, the Community Action Program (CAP), required “maximum feasible participation” of the poor in antipoverty projects. Funds were funneled to public and private agencies in an attempt to reach people in need directly and to combat entrenched racial discrimination in local government. Poor people organized to make welfare agencies, school boards, police departments, and housing authorities more accountable to the people they served. Such demands did not sit well with local officials, leading Johnson to back off from genuine representation for the poor. Still, CAP opened opportunities for political leadership and federal funds to those usually excluded from government.

Liberalism at High Tide As the 1964 election approached, Johnson projected stability and security in the midst of a booming economy — a dramatic contrast to his far-right Republican opponent, Arizona senator Barry M. Goldwater, who attacked the welfare state and entertained the use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam. Johnson achieved a record-breaking 61 percent of the popular vote, and Democrats won resounding majorities in the House (295–140) and Senate (68–32). Still, Goldwater’s considerable support marked a growing conservative movement and a threat to Democratic control of the South.

Johnson laid out an ambitious vision for what he called the “Great Society,” taking aim at the unfinished business of the New Deal and Fair Deal but also pressing beyond it. Large Democratic majorities in Congress, his own political skills, and grassroots pressure enabled Johnson to obtain legislation on discrimination, poverty, education, medical care, housing,

urban development, consumer and environmental protection, and the arts. Reporters called the legislation of the Eighty-Ninth Congress (1965–1966) “a political miracle.”

Poverty remained a core focus of Johnson’s administration. Congress doubled the funding for the Economic Opportunity Act in 1965, authorized economic development measures for depressed regions, and allocated more than $1 billion to improve the nation’s slums. The government offered direct aid as well. A new food stamp program gave poor people greater choice in obtaining food, and rent supplements provided alternatives to public housing.

Those in need also organized their own grassroots movements, most prominently the National Welfare Rights Organization. Assisted by antipoverty lawyers, mothers on welfare pushed administrators of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) to ease restrictions on welfare recipients. The number of families receiving assistance jumped from less than one million in 1960 to three million by 1972, a full 90 percent of those eligible.

Johnson’s War on Poverty favored expanding individual opportunity — through education, job training, food security, health care, and political empowerment — rather than redistributing income. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, a turning point in involving the federal government in K–12 education, channeled funds to local school districts and provided equipment to private and parochial schools serving the poor. That same year, Congress passed the Higher Education Act, vastly

expanding federal assistance to colleges and universities for buildings, programs, scholarships, and student loans.

An even greater watershed was the federal government’s entry into health care. Faced with a powerful medical lobby opposed to national health insurance, Johnson focused on the elderly, who constituted a large portion of the nation’s poor. Congress responded in 1965 with the Medicare program, providing the elderly with universal medical insurance financed largely through Social Security taxes. A separate program, Medicaid, authorized federal grants to supplement state-paid medical care for poor people. By the twenty-first century, these two programs covered 87 million Americans, nearly 30 percent of the population.

Whereas programs such as Medicare fulfilled long-standing liberal goals, the Great Society’s attention to racial discrimination represented a break with the past. Advised early on not to waste his political capital on civil rights, Johnson retorted, “What the hell’s the presidency for?” Whereas racial minorities had been excluded from or discriminated against in many New Deal programs, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 made discrimination in employment, education, and public accommodations illegal. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 banned literacy tests and other practices used to disqualify black voters, authorizing federal intervention to ensure access to the voting booth.

Another form of bias fell with the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which abolished quotas based on national origins. The law maintained caps on the total number of immigrants and, for the first time, included the

Western Hemisphere in those limits; preference was now given to immediate relatives of U.S. citizens and to those with desirable skills. One unanticipated consequence was a surge of immigration in the 1980s and thereafter (as discussed in chapter 31).

Great Society benefits reached well beyond victims of discrimination and the poor. Medicare covered the elderly, regardless of income. Consumer activism led to legislation making cars safer and raising standards for the food, drug, and cosmetics industries. LBJ insisted that the Great Society meet “not just the needs of the body but the desire for beauty and hunger for community.” In 1965, he sent Congress the first presidential message on the environment, obtaining measures to control water and air pollution and to preserve the natural beauty of the American landscape. The National Arts and Humanities Act of 1965 funded artists, musicians, writers, and scholars and brought their work to public audiences.

Assessing Johnson’s legislative accomplishments, Senate majority leader Mike Mansfield concluded that the president “has done more than FDR ever did, or ever thought of doing.” The flood of reform legislation dwindled after 1966, however, when Democratic majorities in Congress shrank and conservative opposition to government programs gained ground. The Vietnam War dealt the largest blow, diverting Johnson’s attention, spawning an antiwar movement that crippled his leadership, and devouring tax dollars that might have been used for reform (see chapter 29).

In 1968, Johnson obtained one more civil rights law, which banned discrimination in housing and jury service. He also signed the National

Housing Act of 1968, which authorized an enormous increase in low- income housing: 1.7 million units over three years.

Legacies of the Great Society Great Society programs like food stamps and Medicaid extended the reach and responsibility of the federal government. Federal expenditures on health, education, and welfare tripled, constituting more than 15 percent of the U.S. budget by 1970.

The resulting reduction in poverty was significant. The number of poor Americans fell from more than 20 percent of the population in 1959 to approximately 13 percent in 1968. Those who in Johnson’s words “live[d] on the outskirts of hope” found new opportunities. To Rosemary Bray, what transformed her family of longtime welfare recipients into taxpaying workers “was the promise of the civil rights movement and the war on poverty.” A Mexican American who learned to be a sheet metal worker through a job training program reported, “[My children] will finish high school and maybe go to college…. I see my family and I know the chains are broken.”

Government spending in the 1960s improved the lives of millions, even if that spending never approached the amounts necessary to claim victory in the War on Poverty. The aged fared better than others. Many male-headed families rose out of poverty, but impoverishment among female-headed families increased. Whites escaped poverty faster than racial and ethnic minorities. Great Society programs contributed to a burgeoning black

middle class, yet one in three African Americans remained poverty-stricken (Figure 28.1).

FIGURE 28.1 Poverty in the United States, 1960–1974

The results of economic growth and the Great Society’s attack on poverty are seen here. Which groups experienced the sharpest decline in poverty, and what might account for the differences?

Description “The horizontal axis has years and the vertical axis shows percent of group living below poverty line. In 1968, 40 percent of the Blacks were living below the poverty line but it reduced to 35 percent by 1970. With minor fluctuations, it remained so during the subsequent years before it decreased to 31 percent in 1974. The elderly stood close in

poverty to the Blacks as 30 percent of them were living below the poverty line in 1968. However, it dropped to 26 percent and followed a slow and gradual descent to below 20 percent by 1972. The Whites, on the other hand, experienced relatively less with only 18 percent living below the poverty line in 1960 that reduced to 10 percent by 1968. With hardly any variations, poverty amongst the Whites continued to account for less than 10 percent till 1974.

The graph shows that poverty among all races was alleviated over the years as the percent of people living below poverty line was 22 percent in 1960, which significantly reduced to 15 percent in 1966, and further reduced to 11 percent by 1974.

Statistics on blacks for years 1960 to 1965 not available.

Statistics on elderly for years 1960 to 1966 not available.

All data are approximate.”

Johnson’s War on Poverty triggered fierce political debate. Conservative critics charged that the government had overstepped its bounds and that the new programs discouraged individual initiative and fostered family dysfunction by giving handouts to the poor. Liberal critics claimed that focusing on training and education wrongly targeted poor people, rather than an economic system that could not provide enough adequately paying jobs.

Others noted that, unlike the New Deal, the Great Society avoided structural reform of the economy. Funded by economic growth rather than new taxes on the rich or middle class, Johnson’s poverty programs led to no significant redistribution of income. Paid for by prosperity, these programs would become vulnerable in less flush times. The Great Society left a mixed legacy, frustrating lofty liberal aspirations even as it bolstered

conservatives’ argument that the government was incapable of solving pressing social problems.

The Judicial Revolution Led by the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren (1953–1969), the judiciary was another instrument of liberal change in the 1960s. In contrast to the federal courts of the Progressive Era and New Deal, which blocked reform, the Warren Court often moved ahead of Congress and public opinion, energizing the “rights revolution” of the 1960s. The Court granted new protections to disadvantaged groups and accused criminals, expanding the Constitution’s promise of equality and individual rights.

Some of the Court’s rulings established federal oversight of areas once left to the states. Following the Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation decision of 1954 (see chapter 27), the Court struck down southern states’ maneuvers to avoid integration. In Baker v. Carr (1963) — which grew out of a complaint that sparsely populated rural districts were often allotted far more representatives than densely populated urban areas — the Court established the principle of “one person, one vote” for state legislatures and for the House of Representatives.

The Court underscored protections for freedom of assembly and speech, including that of protesters. In addition, it announced for the first time a constitutional right to privacy in the birth control case, Griswold v. Connecticut (1965). A unanimous Court in Loving v. Virginia (1967)

invalidated state laws banning interracial marriage, citing marriage as one of the “basic civil rights.”

In decisions that dramatically altered law enforcement practices, the Warren Court declared that the states, and not just the federal government, were bound by the Bill of Rights. Gideon v. Wainwright (1963) established the duty to provide counsel to accused criminals who could not afford to hire a lawyer. Miranda v. Arizona (1966) required police officers to inform suspects of their rights upon arrest. The Court overturned convictions based on evidence obtained wrongfully — whether by unlawful arrest, by electronic surveillance, or without a search warrant. While liberals celebrated these rulings as ensuring equal treatment in the criminal justice system, critics accused the justices of “handcuffing the police” and letting criminals go free.

The Court’s decisions on religion were even more divisive. A 1963 ruling found that requiring Bible reading and prayer in public schools violated the First Amendment principle of separation of church and state. Later judgments banned official prayer in public schools, even if students were not required to participate. The Court’s supporters saw these decisions as protecting the rights of non-Christians and atheists, leaving others free to worship on their own. But the rulings infuriated many Christians. Billboards demanding “Impeach Earl Warren” joined a larger backlash mounting against Great Society liberalism.

��

How did the Kennedy and Johnson administrations exemplify a liberal vision of the federal government?

How did the black freedom movement evolve? More than anything else, African American mass protest distinguished the liberalism of the 1960s from that of the New Deal. The civil rights movement shook the nation’s conscience, forced federal action, and provided a protest model for other groups. Building on decades of organized resistance to racial injustice, African Americans mobilized to strike down legal segregation and discrimination in the South and to secure voting rights. This “second Reconstruction,” a century after the first, depended heavily on the courage and determination of black people to stand up to racist violence.

Civil rights activism that focused on the South and on legal rights eventually won widespread acceptance in most of the country. As African Americans stepped up protests against racial injustice outside the South and challenged entrenched economic inequality, however, white support for the black freedom struggle eroded. By the 1970s, the national mass movement had been replaced by an array of local efforts, as civil rights and black power activists pursued new strategies for liberation.

The Flowering of Civil Rights The Montgomery bus boycott of 1955–1956 turned a national — and international — spotlight on America’s racial divisions and produced a leader in Martin Luther King Jr. In the 1960s, black protest expanded dramatically, as African Americans directly confronted the institutions of an

unequal and racially segregated society: retail establishments, public parks and libraries, buses and depots, voting registrars, and police forces.

Massive direct action in the South began in February 1960, when four African American college students in Greensboro, North Carolina, requested service at the whites-only Woolworth’s lunch counter. Within days, hundreds of young people joined them, and others launched sit-ins in thirty-one southern cities. From the Southern Christian Leadership Conference headquarters, organizer Ella Baker telephoned her young contacts at black colleges, asking: “What are you going to do? It’s time to move.”

Baker helped protesters form a new organization, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Committed to decision making at the grassroots level, SNCC rejected the top-down leadership of established civil rights organizations, although it embraced King’s principles of civil disobedience and nonviolence. Activists were trained to confront their oppressors and stand up for their rights but not to respond if assaulted. Nashville lunch counter protesters preparing for a sit-in were instructed: “Do show yourself friendly on the counter at all times. Do sit straight and always face the counter. Don’t strike back or curse back if attacked.”

Lunch Counter Sit-In Tougaloo College professor John Salter Jr. and students Joan Trumpauer and Anne Moody take part in a 1963 sit-in at the Woolworth’s lunch counter in Jackson, Mississippi. Shortly before this photograph was taken, whites had thrown two demonstrators to the floor, and police had arrested one student. In 1968, Moody published Coming of Age in Mississippi, a book about her experiences in the black freedom struggle.

The activists’ optimism and commitment to nonviolence were tested. Although some cities quietly met protesters’ demands, activists more typically encountered violence. Hostile whites poured food over demonstrators, burned them with cigarettes, and pelted them with rocks.

Local police were often complicit, attacking protesters with dogs, clubs, fire hoses, and tear gas and arresting thousands of demonstrators.

Another wave of protest occurred in May 1961, when the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) organized Freedom Rides to pressure the government to enforce court rulings ordering the integration of public transportation. When a group of six whites and seven blacks reached Alabama, whites bombed their bus and beat them with baseball bats so fiercely that an observer “couldn’t see their faces through the blood.” To President Kennedy’s pleas for a cooling-off period, CORE leader James Farmer retorted that blacks had been “cooling off for 150 years. If we cool off anymore, we’ll be in a deep freeze.” After a mob attacked the riders in Montgomery, Alabama, Attorney General Robert Kennedy finally dispatched federal marshals to restore order. Nonetheless, Freedom Riders arriving in Jackson, Mississippi, were arrested, and several hundred spent weeks in jail.

In the summer of 1962, SNCC and other groups organized the Voter Education Project to register black voters in southern states. Fannie Lou Hamer, who went on to become a prominent figure in the civil rights movement, recalled that before these activists arrived in her home state of Mississippi, “I didn’t know that a Negro could register and vote.” Blacks constituted a majority in her county but only 1.2 percent of registered voters. Hamer herself passed through a hostile, gun-carrying crowd of whites as she attempted to register.

The voting drives, like the Freedom Rides, sparked violent resistance. Whites bombed black churches, threw tenant farmers out of their homes, and beat and jailed activists. In June 1963, a white man gunned down Mississippi NAACP leader Medgar Evers in front of his house. Similar violence met King’s 1963 campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, to integrate public facilities and open jobs to blacks. The police attacked demonstrators, including children, with dogs, cattle prods, and fire hoses — brutalities that television cameras broadcast around the world.

In August 1963, 250,000 blacks and whites flocked to the nation’s capital for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, inspired by the strategy of A. Philip Randolph in 1941 (see chapter 25). Speaking from the Lincoln Memorial, King put his indelible stamp on the day. “I have a dream,” he repeated, as he imagined the day “when all of God’s children … will be able to join hands and sing … ‘Free at last, free at last; thank God Almighty, we are free at last.’”

Activists returned from the march to continued hostility in the South. In 1964, the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project prepared northern black and white college students to conduct voter registration drives. Opposition was fierce, and by the end of the summer, only twelve hundred new voters had been registered. Southern whites had killed several activists, beaten eighty, arrested more than one thousand, and burned thirty-five black churches.

Even then, activists could not rely on the support of liberal politicians. When the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party challenged the all-white

delegation sent by the state party to the 1964 Democratic National Convention, its members were rebuffed. Resistance came from the federal government itself, as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) spied on King and expanded its activities to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” black protest.

In March 1965, Alabama state troopers used such violent force to turn back a voting rights march from Selma to the state capital, Montgomery, that the incident earned the name “Bloody Sunday” and compelled President Johnson to call up the Alabama National Guard to protect the marchers. Battered and hospitalized that day, John Lewis, chairman of SNCC — and later a congressman from Georgia — called the Voting Rights Act, which passed that October, “every bit as momentous as the Emancipation Proclamation.” Referring to the Selma march, he said, “we all felt we’d had a part in it.”

The Response in Washington The Democratic administrations of the 1960s did not lead the way on racial justice. The Voting Rights Act, like the landmark civil rights legislation that preceded it, was the product of disciplined, persistent, and often bloody protest. Reluctant to alienate southern voters and their congressional representatives, Kennedy and Johnson tended to move on civil rights only when events gave them little choice.

Yet move they did. The sit-ins and Freedom Rides had not been enough to prompt decisive federal action, but Birmingham was. In June 1963, after

scenes of violence against peaceful demonstrators appalled television viewers across the world, Kennedy finally made good on his promise to seek strong antidiscrimination legislation. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, signed by Johnson, was the most important civil rights law since Reconstruction. The act guaranteed equal access for all Americans to public accommodations, public education, employment, and voting, and it extended constitutional protections to Indians on reservations. Title VII of the measure, banning discrimination in employment, not only attacked racial discrimination but also outlawed discrimination against women. Because Title VII applied to every aspect of employment, including wages, hiring, and promotion, it represented a giant step toward equal employment opportunity for white women as well as for racial minorities.

Likewise, the furious resistance to voter registration drives in the South prompted Johnson to demand legislation to remove “every remaining obstacle to the right and the opportunity to vote.” In August 1965, he signed the Voting Rights Act. By empowering the federal government to intervene directly to enable African Americans to register and vote, the law transformed southern politics. Black voting rates shot up dramatically (Map 28.2). In turn, the number of African Americans holding political office in the South increased from a handful in 1964 to more than one thousand by 1972, translating into tangible benefits for black communities.

MAP 28.2 The Rise of the African American Vote, 1940–1976

Voting rates of southern blacks increased gradually in the 1940s and 1950s but shot up dramatically in the deep South after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 provided for federal agents to enforce African Americans’ right to vote.

Description “The map on the top-left shows the following data based on the percentage of voting age blacks registered to vote:

Less than 10 percent: Texas: 5.6 percent; Arkansas: 1.5 percent; Tennessee: 6.5 percent; Virginia: 4.1 percent; North Carolina: 7.1 percent; South Carolina: 0.8 percent; Georgia: 3 percent; Alabama: 0.4 percent; Mississippi: 0.4 percent; Los Angeles: 0.5 percent; and Florida: 5.7 percent.

Text below the map reads, 1940 Total: 3 percent of voting age blacks.

The map on the top-right shows the following data based on the percentage of voting age blacks registered to vote:

50 to 70 percent: Texas: 57.7 percent; Tennessee: 69.4 percent; and Florida: 63.8 percent.

30 to 50 percent: Arkansas: 49.3 percent; Los Angeles: 32 percent; Georgia: 44 percent; Virginia: 45.7 percent; North Carolina: 46.8 percent; and South Carolina: 38.7 percent.

10 to 30 percent: Alabama: 23 percent.

Less than 10 percent: Mississippi: 6.7 percent.

Text below the map reads 1964 Total: 43.1 percent of voting age blacks.

The map on the bottom-left shows the following data based on the percentage of voting age blacks registered to vote:

More than 70 percent: Texas: 83.1 percent and Tennessee: 72.8 percent.

50 to 70 percent: Arkansas: 67.5 percent; Virginia: 58.4 percent; North Carolina: 55.3 percent; South Carolina: 50.8 percent; Georgia: 56.1 percent; Alabama: 56.7 percent; Mississippi: 54.4 percent; Los Angeles: 59.3 percent; and Florida: 62.1 percent.

Text below the map reads 1968 Total: 62.0 percent of voting age blacks.

The map on the bottom-right shows the following data based on the percentage of voting age blacks registered to vote:

More than 70 percent: Arkansas: 94 percent and Georgia: 74.8 percent.

Less than 10 percent: Texas: 65 percent; Tennessee: 66.4 percent; Virginia: 54.7 percent; North Carolina: 54.8 percent; South Carolina: 56.5 percent; Alabama: 58.4 percent; Mississippi: 60.7 percent; Los Angeles: 63 percent; and Florida: 61.1 percent.

Text below the map reads 1976 Total: 63.1 percent of voting age blacks.”

Johnson would also declare the need to realize “not just equality as a right and theory, but equality as fact and result.” He issued an executive order in

1965 requiring employers holding government contracts to take “affirmative action” to ensure equal opportunity. Extended to cover women in 1967, the affirmative action program aimed to counter the effects of centuries of discrimination by requiring employers to act vigorously to align their hiring with the available pool of qualified candidates. While many corporations came to see affirmative action as a good employment practice, the policy became a flashpoint of partisan battles in the 1970s and beyond.

Ending racial discrimination in housing was another item on civil rights activists’ agenda. But white resistance to neighborhood integration, including in northern, Democratic-leaning cities, was formidable. When Martin Luther King Jr. launched a campaign against de facto segregation in Chicago in 1966, thousands of whites jeered and threw stones at demonstrators. Johnson’s efforts to secure a federal open-housing law succeeded only in the wake of King’s assassination. The Civil Rights Act of 1968 banned racial discrimination in housing as well as jury selection, and it authorized federal intervention when states failed to protect civil rights workers from violence.

Black Power and Urban Rebellions By 1966, black protest engulfed the entire nation. On the heels of civil rights victories, activists turned to the problem of black poverty, demanding not just legal equality but also economic justice. Some abandoned nonviolent resistance as a basic principle. These developments were not completely new. African Americans had waged campaigns for decent jobs,

housing, and education outside the South since the 1930s. Some African Americans had always armed themselves in self-defense, skeptical that a passive response to violent attacks would change the hearts of racists. Still, these developments made the black freedom struggle appear more threatening to the white majority.

African Americans’ rage at oppressive conditions erupted in waves of urban uprisings from 1965 to 1968 (Map 28.3). In a situation where virtually all- white police forces patrolled black neighborhoods, confrontations between police and African Americans typically sparked the riots and resulted in looting, destruction of property, injuries, and deaths. The August 1965 urban rebellion in Watts (Los Angeles) was set off by an incident of police brutality, but it was fueled by long-standing grievances over inadequate housing, poor sanitation, and underfunded, segregated schools. Major uprisings followed in Newark and Detroit in July 1967 and in the nation’s capital in April 1968. Violence convulsed hundreds of cities, with African Americans suffering most of the casualties.

MAP 28.3 Urban Uprisings, 1965–1968

When a white police officer in the Watts district of Los Angeles struck a twenty-one-year-old African American, whom he had just pulled over for driving drunk, one onlooker shouted, “We’ve got no rights at all — it’s just like Selma.” The altercation sparked a five-day uprising, during which young blacks set fires, looted, and attacked police and firefighters. By its end, 34 people were dead, more than 3,000 were arrested, and scores of businesses had been wiped out. Similar but smaller-scale violence erupted in dozens of cities across the nation during the next three summers.

Description “The data marked on the map are as follows:

1965 to1966: Oakland and Los Angeles (Watts) in the southwest; Grenada, Birmingham, Atlanta, and Americus in the southeast; Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Newark, and Rochester in the northeast.

1967 to 1968: Portland in the northwest; San Francisco, Oakland, Palo Alto, Denver in the West; Phoenix and Tucson in the southwest; Houston, Pine Bluff, Jackson, Itta Bena, Memphis, Birmingham, Atlanta, and Nashville in the southeast; Minneapolis, Waterloo, Omaha, Wichita, Milwaukee, Grand Rapids, Chicago, Flint, Detroit, Pontiac, Kansas City, South Bend, Saginaw, Cincinnati, Dayton, and Toledo in the north; Boston, Providence, Poughkeepsie, Newark, New York, Philadelphia, New Jersey, Plainfield, Wilmington, Washington D.C., Cambridge, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Youngstown, Newark in the northeast; and Tampa, Riviera beach, Miami, Houston, and Jacksonville in the southeast.”

New voices called for “black power,” a term coined by SNCC chairman Stokely Carmichael at a June 1966 rally in Greenwood, Mississippi. In the North, Malcolm X — an activist who while in prison had converted to the Nation of Islam, a religious sect — challenged the ethos of nonviolence. Civil rights leaders, he charged, had failed to protect their communities, and African Americans would need to act in their own defense against white violence. Proclaiming that blacks needed to separate themselves from “corrupt [white] society,” Malcolm X attracted a large following, especially in urban ghettos.

Arguing that black self-determination could not be achieved through integration — and that even sympathetic whites could not excise their own racism — SNCC expelled its white members. Linking their cause to the colonial struggles and independence movements of dark-skinned people around the world, black radicals believed that African Americans’ freedom would come only from control over their own schools, communities, businesses, and political organizations.

Black power quickly became the rallying cry in organizations such as the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, established in Oakland, California, in 1966 by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale to combat police brutality. Armed with rifles and adopting military attire, the Panthers struck fear into many whites. But they also established day care centers, free breakfast and clothing programs, and classes in black history. The Panthers and other radicals were harassed by the FBI and jailed, with some encounters leaving both black militants and police dead. Yet black power’s emphasis on self- determination and its critique of American institutions resonated loudly. And a new emphasis on pride in African and African American culture, captured by the slogan “Black is Beautiful,” endured.

The press paid inordinate attention to the black power movement, which met with a severe backlash from whites. Although the urban rebellions of the mid-1960s erupted spontaneously, many Americans blamed black militants. By 1966, polls indicated that 85 percent of the white population — up from 34 percent two years earlier — thought that African Americans were pressing for too much too quickly.

Martin Luther King Jr. agreed with black power advocates about the need for economic justice and “a radical reconstruction of society,” even as he continued to believe that nonviolence and integration were the means to this end. In 1968, the thirty-nine-year-old leader went to Memphis to support striking municipal sanitation workers. On April 4, he was shot and killed by an escaped white convict. King’s assassination triggered riots and protests in one hundred American cities. One speaker at a Boston rally commemorated the civil rights leader who had been “prepared to give his

life for justice in America,” whereas a pastor from Iowa asked, “Why must we always kill our prophets before we will listen to them?” Into the 1970s, civil rights and black power activists would continue the difficult work that King and countless other African American men and women had begun.

��

How and why did the civil rights movement change in the mid-1960s?

What other social movements emerged in the 1960s? The civil rights movement’s moral claims, protest strategies, and legal victories inspired a multitude of other social movements in the 1960s and 1970s. Native Americans, Latinos, college students, women, gay men and lesbians, and environmentalists all drew on the black freedom struggle’s model and lessons. Many of these groups engaged in direct-action protests, demanded new rights and recognition, and formed cultural pride movements. The challenge they posed to dominant institutions and values would permanently transform American society and culture.

Native American Protest Young Native Americans rallied for “red power” in the late 1960s, reflecting their new militancy as well as the influence of black radicalism. The termination and relocation programs of the 1950s (see chapter 27), contrary to their intent, had forged a sense of Indian identity across tribal lines and a determination to preserve traditional cultures. Activists pursued cultural recognition as well as economic claims, including rights to natural resources and territory that American Indian groups had owned collectively before European settlement.

In 1969, Native American demonstrators captured world attention when several dozen seized Alcatraz Island, an abandoned federal prison in San Francisco Bay, claiming their right of “first discovery” of this land. For nineteen months, they used the occupation to publicize injustices against

Native Americans while promoting pan-Indian cooperation. One of the organizers, Dr. LaNada Boyer, the first Native American to attend the University of California, Berkeley, said of the Alcatraz protest, “We were able to reestablish our identity as Indian people, as a culture, as political entities.”

In Minneapolis in 1968, two Chippewa Indians, Dennis Banks and George Mitchell, founded the American Indian Movement (AIM) to attack the problems faced by the 300,000 Indians who lived in urban areas. AIM sought to protect Native Americans from police harassment, to secure antipoverty funds, and to establish “survival schools” to teach Indian history and values. The movement spread quickly. Lakota activist and author Mary Crow Dog wrote that AIM’s visit to her South Dakota reservation “loosened a sort of earthquake inside me.”

AIM leaders helped organize the “Trail of Broken Treaties” caravan to the nation’s capital in 1972, where activists occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs to protest the bureau’s policies and its interference in Indians’ lives. In 1973, a much longer siege occurred on the Lakota Sioux reservation in South Dakota. For seventy-two days, AIM took over the village of Wounded Knee, where U.S. troops had massacred more than two hundred Sioux Indians in 1890 (see chapter 17).

Although these dramatic occupations did not achieve all their specific goals, activists would by the 1970s win the end of relocation and termination policies, greater tribal sovereignty and control over community services, protection of Indian religious practices, and visibility for their cause. A

number of laws and court decisions also restored rights to ancestral lands and compensated tribes for land seized in violation of treaties.

Latino Struggles for Justice Latinos — the term for an extraordinarily varied population encompassing people of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Caribbean, and other Latin American origins — were the fastest-growing U.S. minority group in the 1960s. People of Puerto Rican and Caribbean descent populated East Coast cities, but more than half of the nation’s Latino population — including some six million Mexican Americans — lived in the Southwest. In addition, thousands illegally crossed the border between Mexico and the United States yearly in search of economic opportunity and security from violence.

Political organization of Mexican Americans dated back to the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), founded in 1929, which fought segregation and discrimination through litigation (see chapter 27). In the 1960s, however, young Mexican Americans increasingly rejected traditional politics in favor of direct action. One symbol of this generational change was young activists’ adoption of the term Chicano (from mejicano, the Spanish word for “Mexican”).

The Chicano movement drew national attention to California, where Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta organized a movement to overcome the exploitation of migrant agricultural workers. As the child of migrant farmworkers, Chavez lived in soggy tents, saw his parents cheated by labor contractors, and encountered indifference and discrimination. One teacher,

he recalled, “hung a sign on me that said, ‘I am a clown, I speak Spanish.’” After serving in World War II, Chavez began to organize voter registration drives among Mexican Americans.

Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta Chavez and Huerta became heroes to many during the United Farm Workers’ struggle with grape growers for better wages and working conditions in 1968, and for their tireless advocacy in the decades after. This mural on the wall of a taqueria in West Jordan, Utah, painted as a community project in 2015, suggests the lasting impact of their work on behalf of migrant laborers. The flag of the United Farm Workers is at the center of the mural.

Dolores Huerta grew up in an integrated neighborhood and avoided the farmworkers’ grinding poverty but witnessed discrimination based on language and color — one high school teacher challenging Huerta’s authorship of an essay because it was so well-written. Believing that

collective action was the key to progress, she and Chavez founded the United Farm Workers (UFW) union in 1962. To gain leverage for striking workers, the UFW mounted a nationwide boycott of California grapes, winning support from millions of Americans and gaining a wage increase for the workers in 1970. The UFW lost membership during the 1970s but was critical in politicizing Mexican Americans and improving farmworkers’ lives.

Others pressed the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to combat job discrimination against Mexican Americans. After LULAC and the American GI Forum picketed government offices, President Johnson appointed Vicente T. Ximenes as the first Mexican American EEOC commissioner in 1967 and created a special committee on Mexican American issues.

Claiming “brown power,” Chicanos organized in order to end discrimination in education, gain political access, and combat police brutality. In Denver, Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales set up “freedom schools” where Chicano children learned Spanish and Mexican American history. The nationalist strains of Chicano protest were evident in La Raza Unida (the United Race), a political party founded in 1970 based on cultural pride and solidarity. Along with African Americans and Native Americans, Chicanos continued to be disproportionately impoverished, but they gradually won more political offices, more effective enforcement of antidiscrimination legislation, and greater respect for their cultural institutions.

Youth Rebellions, the New Left, and the Counterculture White youths, although comparatively privileged, were also inspired by the black freedom struggle, and some were radicalized by its critique of American society. They participated in civil rights actions, the antiwar movement, and the new wave of feminism. Young activists were part of a broader phenomenon of student movements around the globe that challenged establishment institutions.

The central organization of white student protest in the United States was Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). The organization’s 1962 Port Huron Statement outlined its purpose, asserting: “We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably at the world we inherit.” Students criticized the complacency of their elders, the remoteness of decision makers, and the powerlessness and alienation generated by a bureaucratic society. SDS aimed to mobilize a “New Left” around the goals of civil rights, peace, and universal economic security. Other forms of student activism flourished, including the mobilization of young conservatives around a different set of concerns: the threats of international communism, big government, and incursions on economic freedom.

The first large-scale white student protest arose at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1964, when university officials banned students from setting up tables to recruit support for various causes. Led by activists returning from civil rights work in the South, the Free Speech Movement

occupied the administration building, and more than seven hundred students were arrested before the California Board of Regents overturned the new restrictions.

Hundreds of student rallies and building occupations followed on campuses across the country, especially after 1965, when opposition to the Vietnam War mounted and students protested universities’ ties with the military (as discussed in chapter 29). Students also sought to expose the injustices of their own campuses. Women at the University of Chicago charged in 1969 that universities “discriminate against women, impede their full intellectual development, deny them places on the faculty, exploit talented women and mistreat women students.” At Howard University, African American students called for a “Black Awareness Research Institute,” demanding that academic departments “place more emphasis on how these disciplines may be used to effect the liberation of black people.” Across the country, students borrowed sit-ins and other tactics to win curricular reforms such as black studies and women’s studies programs, more financial aid for minority and low-income students, independence from paternalistic rules, and a larger voice in campus decision making.

Student protest sometimes blended into a cultural rebellion against conventional standards of behavior. Drawing on the ideas of the Beats of the 1950s (see chapter 27), the so-called hippies rejected mainstream values such as consumerism, order, and sexual restraint in search of more authentic experiences. The 1967 “Human Be-In” that gathered in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park brought an eclectic group of nonconformists to national attention. Questioning established authority — along with long hair, wildly

colorful clothing, and drug use — became a hallmark of the counterculture. Across the country, thousands of radicals renounced private property and established communes in cities or on farms.

Rock and folk music, often carrying insurgent social and political messages, were the backdrop of radical youth culture. “Eve of Destruction,” a top hit of 1965, reminded young men of draft age at a time when the voting age was twenty-one, “You’re old enough to kill but not for votin’.” The 1969 Woodstock Music Festival, attended by 400,000 young people, epitomized the centrality of music to the youth rebellion. Never a movement in a traditional sense, many elements of the counterculture — rock music, jeans, and long hair, as well as new social attitudes — filtered into the mainstream. This was especially evident in the liberalization of sexual mores, which, along with the birth control pill (introduced in 1960), fostered the era’s “sexual revolution.”

Gay Men and Lesbians Organize More permissive sexual norms did not stretch easily to include tolerance of homosexuality. Gay men and lesbians typically had escaped discrimination and ostracism only by concealing their identities. Those who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, found themselves fired from jobs, arrested for their sexual activities, or accused of “perversion.”

In the 1950s, the homophile movement had acted quietly to advance the equal rights of homosexuals, in part through careful conformity to heterosexual norms. But gays and lesbians organized in new ways in the

mid-1960s. In 1965, picketers outside the White House challenged the government’s policy of banning homosexuals from civil service with signs branding such discrimination “as immoral as discrimination against Negroes and Jews.” It took another ten years for the Civil Service Commission to end the policy, but a full-fledged social movement would not wait that long.

A turning point came in 1969 when police conducted a routine raid of a gay bar, the Stonewall Inn, in New York City’s Greenwich Village — and gay men and lesbians fought back. “Suddenly, they were not submissive anymore,” a police officer remarked. Bolstered by the defiance shown at the Stonewall riots, gay men and lesbians launched a host of new advocacy groups, such as the Gay Liberation Front and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. As with black power, gay liberationists pursued equal rights as well as cultural self-determination. Shouts of “gay power” broke out at Stonewall, and activists called for gay men and lesbians to “come out” publicly and proudly.

In 1972, Ann Arbor, Michigan, passed the first antidiscrimination ordinance pertaining to homosexuals, and two years later, Elaine Noble’s election to the Massachusetts legislature marked the first time that an openly gay candidate won state office. In 1973, activists succeeded in getting the American Psychiatric Association to withdraw its designation of homosexuality as a disorder. It would take decades for these initial gains to improve conditions for most, but by the mid-1970s, gay men and lesbians had created a movement through which they would advance equal rights and promote a society more welcoming of diverse sexualities.

Environmental Activists Mobilize Advocates for protecting the natural environment and reversing the hazards of rapid economic growth were yet another node of social activism in the 1960s and 1970s. Like the conservation movement of the Progressive Era (see chapter 21), the new environmentalists sought to preserve natural areas for recreational and aesthetic purposes and to conserve natural resources. In the West, population growth and the resulting demands for electricity and water stirred activists. Already in the 1950s, environmental groups had mobilized to halt construction of dams that would disrupt national parks and wilderness.

The new environmentalists, however, went beyond conservationism to attack the ravaging effects of industrial and technological advances on human life and health. Biologist Rachel Carson drew national attention in 1962 with her best seller Silent Spring, which vividly described the perils of toxic chemicals, such as the pesticide DDT, to wildlife, plants, and the ecological balance that sustains human life.

The Sierra Club and other older conservation organizations expanded their membership rolls and their agendas, and a host of new environmental groups appeared. Twenty million Americans took part in the first observation of Earth Day in April 1970, where teach-ins and rallies sought to raise consciousness about air and water pollution, oil spills, industrial waste, and automobile emissions.

LBJ had signaled federal support for environmental regulations, but it was his successor, Richard Nixon, who enacted them. Nixon pronounced “clean air, clean water, open spaces … the birthright of every American” and urged Congress to “end the plunder of America’s natural heritage.” In 1970, he created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to enforce environmental laws, conduct research, and reduce human health and environmental risks from pollutants. He also signed the landmark Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA), protecting workers against job-related accidents and disease; the Clean Air Act of 1970, restricting factory and automobile emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants; and the Endangered Species Act of 1973. Congress pressed further, overriding Nixon’s veto of the Clean Water Act of 1972, an indication of how decisively the issues raised by environmental activists had moved onto the national agenda.

��

How did the black freedom struggle influence other reform movements of the 1960s and 1970s?

What were the goals of the new wave of feminism? On August 26, 1970, the fiftieth anniversary of woman suffrage, tens of thousands of women across the country — from radical women in jeans to conservatively dressed suburbanites, and from peace activists to politicians — took to the streets. They carried signs reading “Sisterhood Is Powerful” and “Don’t Cook Dinner — Starve a Rat Today.” Some opposed the war in Vietnam, others demanded racial justice, but women’s own liberation stood at the forefront.

Gathering steam in the late 1960s, “second-wave” feminism — a label meant to distinguish it from earlier efforts on behalf of women’s rights, including the suffrage movement — reached its high tide in the 1970s and extended into the twenty-first century. By that time, despite a powerful countermovement, women had witnessed remarkable transformations in their legal status, public opportunities, and personal and sexual relationships, while popular expectations about appropriate gender roles had shifted dramatically.

A Multifaceted Movement Emerges Demographic changes laid the foundations for a resurgence of feminism. During World War II, the importance of women’s paid work to the economy and their families challenged traditional views and awakened many female workers, especially those in labor unions, to discrimination in employment. The postwar democratization of higher education also brought more women

to college campuses, where their aspirations collided with the confines of domesticity and low-wage, subordinate jobs.

These developments, along with the efforts of women’s rights activists, led to new policy initiatives in the early 1960s. In 1961, Assistant Secretary of Labor Esther Peterson persuaded John F. Kennedy to create the President’s Commission on the Status of Women, chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt. Its 1963 report documented widespread discrimination against women and recommended remedies ranging from affordable child care to paid maternity leave. Although these policies were not enacted, one of the commission’s concerns was addressed even before its report came out, when Congress passed the Equal Pay Act of 1963, making it illegal to pay women less than men for the same work.

Like other movements, second-wave feminism owed much to the black freedom struggle. By piggybacking onto civil rights measures, women gained protection from employment discrimination (through Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964) and were covered by affirmative action. They soon grew impatient when the government failed to take these new policies seriously. Calling for “an NAACP for women,” Betty Friedan, civil rights activist Pauli Murray, several union women, and others founded the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966.

At a time when newspapers advertised jobs as either “male” or “female,” and women could not apply for their own credit cards, NOW set its sights on equal opportunity for women in the male-dominated public arena, including employment, education, medicine, law, and politics. Among other

causes, NOW pledged support for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the Constitution, a measure first introduced in 1923 and intended to outlaw differential treatment of men and women under all state and federal laws.

Simultaneously, a more radical feminism emerged among young women active in the black freedom struggle and the New Left. These women — often relegated to mundane tasks and sexually exploited by fellow radicals — found it particularly jarring to discover their second-class status even within movements for social justice. Frustrated when male leaders dismissed and ridiculed their claims of discrimination, many walked out of New Left organizations and created independent women’s liberation groups.

Radical feminists first captured national media attention when they picketed the Miss America beauty pageant in 1968. Activists decried being forced “to compete for male approval,” describing women as “enslaved by ludicrous ‘beauty’ standards.” Calling their movement “women’s liberation,” they encouraged public discussion of experiences shrouded in secrecy, such as rape and abortion. Women joined “consciousness-raising” groups, where they realized that what they had considered to be personal problems reflected an entrenched system of male privilege, or sexism. The slogan of women’s liberation, “the personal is political,” insisted that sexual relationships, the division of labor in the family, and norms about bodies and beauty were always also relations of power.

Radical feminists differed from the members of NOW in several ways. NOW focused on equal treatment for women in the public sphere; women’s liberation emphasized ending women’s subordination in the family and in their most intimate relationships. Whereas NOW sought to integrate women into existing institutions, radical groups insisted that women’s liberation required a total transformation of those institutions and perhaps even a separation from men. Differences between these two strands of feminism blurred in the 1970s, however, as NOW and other mainstream groups embraced many of the issues raised by radicals.

Although NOW elected a black president, Aileen Hernandez, in 1970, the new feminism’s leadership and constituency were predominantly white and middle-class. Women of color criticized white feminists for assuming that white women could speak for all women. To African American women, who were much more frequently compelled to labor in difficult and dirty jobs for their families’ survival, for example, entrance into the paid workforce did not necessarily represent liberation. Feminists struggled with how to build a movement spanning the many constituencies among women: ethnic and racial minorities, labor union members, religious women, rural women, mothers on welfare, lesbians, and more.

They also contended with the media’s refusal to take women’s grievances seriously. Finding their movement mocked and trivialized, some protesters refused to grant interviews except to female reporters. One solution was to create woman-run organizations. In 1972, Gloria Steinem founded Ms.: The New Magazine for Women, a mass-circulation periodical controlled by women and featuring articles on a broad range of feminist issues. A host of

other organizations emerged that were devoted to issues such as women’s health, abortion rights, and domestic violence. After the United Nations declared 1975 International Women’s Year, U.S. women also began to take part in global conversations about women’s status. As they did, they learned that theirs was often not the most advanced nation when it came to women’s welfare or political leadership.

Feminist Gains Spark a Countermovement Feminism lifted female aspirations and helped lower barriers to occupations monopolized by men. By 2010, women’s share of law and medical degrees had shot up from 5 percent and 10 percent, respectively, to approximately 50 percent, although women earned much less than men in those fields. Women gained political offices very slowly; by 2018, they constituted 20 percent of Congress and nearly 25 percent of all state legislators.

Despite outnumbering men in college enrollments and making some inroads into male-dominated occupations, women still concentrated in low-paying, traditionally female jobs, and an earnings gap between men and women persisted. Working women continued to bear primary responsibility for taking care of their homes and families, thereby working a “double shift.” Unlike in other industrialized countries, women in the United States were not entitled to paid maternity leave and could not count on government provisions for child care.

By the mid-1970s, feminism faced a powerful countermovement, organized around opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment (see chapter 30). Powerful opposition likewise arose to feminists’ quest for abortion rights. “Without the full capacity to limit her own reproduction,” activist Lucinda Cisler insisted, “a woman’s other ‘freedoms’ are tantalizing mockeries that cannot be exercised.” In 1973, the Supreme Court ruled in the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that the Constitution protected the right to abortion, and that states could not prohibit it in the early stages of pregnancy.

This decision galvanized many conservatives, some of whom believed that abortion constituted murder. Like ERA opponents, with whom they often overlapped, those drawn to the emerging “right-to-life” movement charged feminism with threatening traditional motherhood and gender roles. Beginning in 1977, abortion foes pressured Congress to restrict the right to abortion by prohibiting coverage under all government-financed health programs, and the Supreme Court allowed states to impose additional obstacles.

Despite such resistance, feminists won lasting gains. Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 banned sex discrimination in all aspects of education, such as admissions, athletics, and hiring. Congress also outlawed sex discrimination in credit in 1974, opened U.S. military academies to women in 1976, and prohibited discrimination against pregnant workers in 1978. The Supreme Court struck down laws that treated men and women differently in Social Security, welfare and military benefits, and workers’ compensation — rulings based on legal arguments

made by future Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and crafted in part by Pauli Murray.

At the state and local levels, women saw many reforms in areas first introduced by radical feminists. They won laws requiring police departments and the legal system to treat rape victims more justly and humanely. Activists also pushed domestic violence onto the public agenda. They obtained government financing for shelters for battered women along with laws ensuring greater protection for victims of domestic violence and more effective prosecution of abusers. In perhaps the largest victory of all, many of the feminist causes deemed radical in the 1960s — from a right to equal pay to the criminalization of marital rape — had won the support of a majority of Americans by the end of the 1970s.

��

What were the key goals of feminist reformers, and why did a countermovement arise to resist them?

Why and where did the conservative movement gain ground? Resistance to black power, student protest, and second-wave feminism came from a reinvigorated right. Hidden beneath Lyndon B. Johnson’s landslide victory over the far-right Arizona senator Barry Goldwater in the presidential election of 1964 lay a rising conservative movement. Goldwater defined his goal as “enlarging freedom at home and safeguarding it from the forces of tyranny abroad,” and his nomination was a victory for conservative activists in the Republican Party who believed that government intervention into the economy hindered prosperity, stifled personal responsibility, and interfered with the right of citizens to determine their own values. Increasingly, they would merge their free enterprise, states’ rights, and anti-Communist views with a moral critique of sixties liberalism. While Republican Richard Nixon’s election to the presidency in 1968 did not immediately overturn liberal policies, the coordinated action of conservatives in the 1960s and 1970s paved the way for future victories.

A Grassroots Right The grassroots movement on the right included middle-class suburban women and men as well as members of the rabidly anti-Communist John Birch Society. These groups assailed big government in domestic affairs but demanded a strong military to eradicate “Godless Communism.” Joining them was a key force behind Goldwater’s nomination — college students. Gathering at the home of conservative intellectual William F. Buckley in

1960, they formed the Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), a counterpart to radical student groups on the left. In 1966, these same grassroots organizations helped former movie star Ronald Reagan defeat the liberal incumbent governor of California, whom Reagan linked to the Watts riot, student disruptions at the University of California, and rising taxes.

Conservatism flourished in the Sun Belt. Places such as Orange County, California; Dallas, Texas; and Scottsdale, Arizona were predominantly white with relatively homogeneous, skilled, and economically comfortable populations. They were also home to military bases and defense plants. The West harbored a long-standing tradition of individualism and opposition to interference by a remote federal government — a tradition that ignored the Sun Belt’s economic dependence on defense spending and federal projects providing water and power for the burgeoning region. The South, which also benefited from military bases and the space program, shared this antipathy toward the federal government. Hostility to racial change was, however, much more central to its conservatism. After signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, President Johnson remarked privately, “I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party.”

Grassroots movements on the right were often triggered by fears about American moral decline. In 1962, for example, Mel and Norma Gabler pressed the Texas Board of Education to drop books in the public schools that they believed undermined “the Christian-Judeo morals, values, and standards as given to us by God through … the Bible.” New sex-education programs were a particular point of contention. The U.S. Supreme Court’s

liberal decisions on school prayer and abortion as well as obscenity helped galvanize conservatives in defense of “traditional values.”

“Law and order” was another rallying cry of those on the right, reflecting concerns about rising rates of crime but also shifting patterns of decorum. Conservatives tended to link crime, civil disobedience, and antiwar protest alike to a declining respect for authority in American society. In this vein, a conservative newspaper condemned the sit-in movement as an “incitement to anarchy.” Those on the right blamed the social disorder of the era on Supreme Court decisions that “coddled” criminals, permissive attitudes toward protesters, and Great Society programs that seemed to undercut personal responsibility. For one Pennsylvania man, “crime, the streets being unsafe, strikes, the trouble with the colored, all this dope-taking” added up to “a breakdown of the American way of life.”

Nixon and the Election of 1968 Opposition to civil rights measures, government spending on the War on Poverty, and the pace of social change — along with frustration over the war in Vietnam (see chapter 29) — delivered the White House to Republican Richard M. Nixon in 1968. Although Nixon did not embrace the entire conservative agenda, he sought to rebuild the Republican Party by appealing to disaffected blue-collar and southern white Democrats. Nixon attacked the Great Society for “pouring billions of dollars into programs that have failed.” At the same time, his administration promoted or accepted important elements of the liberal reform agenda, including greater federal

assistance to the poor, new protections for women and minorities, and environmental regulation.

A number of factors shaped the policies of the Nixon administration. Democrats continued to control Congress, the Republican Party contained many liberals and moderates, and Nixon saw political advantages in endorsing some liberal programs. Although Nixon’s real passion lay in foreign policy, he was eager to establish a domestic legacy. During his administration, federal assistance programs such as Social Security, public housing, and food stamps grew, and Congress established Pell grants for low-income students to attend college. Noting the disparity between what Nixon said and what he did, his speechwriter, the archconservative Pat Buchanan, grumbled, “Vigorously did we inveigh against the Great Society, enthusiastically did we fund it.”

Nixon’s campaign exploited white hostility to black protest and civil rights policies, but his administration had to answer to the courts and to Congress. In 1968, fourteen years after the Brown decision, school desegregation had barely touched the South. Like Eisenhower, Nixon was reluctant to use federal power to compel integration. But the Supreme Court overruled the administration’s efforts to delay court-ordered desegregation, with dramatic effects. By 1974, fewer than one in ten southern black children attended totally segregated schools.

Nixon also implemented affirmative action among federal contractors and unions, and his administration increased government contracts and loans to minority businesses. Congress took the initiative in other areas. In 1970, it

extended the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and in 1972 it strengthened the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by enlarging the powers of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In 1971, Congress responded to the youth movement with the Twenty-Sixth Amendment to the Constitution, reducing the voting age to eighteen. In 1973, Nixon signed legislation outlawing discrimination against people with disabilities in all programs receiving federal funds. The president also signed pathbreaking environmental legislation to regulate pollutants in the air and water and established the Environmental Protection Agency.

President Nixon was especially receptive to Native American rights. He told Congress that Indians were “the most deprived and most isolated minority group … the heritage of centuries of injustice.” While not bowing to radicals’ demands, his administration dealt cautiously with the occupations of Alcatraz and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Nixon signed measures recognizing claims of Alaskan and New Mexican Indians, restoring tribal status and lands to groups that had lost them through earlier federal policies.

Nixon’s response to women’s activism was mixed. He vetoed a bill providing federal funds for day care centers, arguing that child care was a matter for the private market rather than the government and warning of the measure’s “family-weakening implications.” In response to the movement to liberalize abortion laws, Nixon sided with “defenders of the right to life of the unborn,” anticipating the Republican Party’s eventual embrace of the issue. Acknowledging a growing feminist movement, however, Nixon signed the landmark Title IX, guaranteeing equality in all aspects of

education, and permitted the Labor Department to pursue affirmative action for women.

Nixon took more consistently conservative positions in favor of law and order and in opposition to the rights-oriented Warren Court. The Republican president’s distancing of himself from the programs of the New Deal and Great Society, although gradual, was significant. Whereas John F. Kennedy had summoned Americans to contribute to the common good, Nixon invited Americans to “ask — not just what will government do for me, but what can I do for myself?” An emphasis on individualism and private enterprise rather than reliance on the state would be a rallying cry of conservative politics in the 1970s and 1980s.

��

To what extent did the election of Republican president Richard Nixon in 1968 reverse the liberal tide?

Conclusion: What were the lasting effects of sixties-era reform? The years between 1960 and 1974 witnessed the greatest efforts to reconcile America’s promise with reality since the New Deal. Pressed by activists like Pauli Murray, Democratic administrations expanded the liberal agenda to encompass racial justice and individual rights. The lofty rhetoric of Kennedy’s New Frontier, the burst of Great Society legislation under Johnson, and the rulings of the Warren Court spoke to the new federal commitment to the social welfare and quality of life of all Americans.

Johnson’s War on Poverty and Great Society were emblematic of these aspirations as well as their limits. Antipoverty programs focused more on the poor than on structural reforms that would ensure adequately paying jobs for all, and they never commanded the resources necessary for victory over poverty. Yet some of Johnson’s accomplishments were enduring. Federal aid for education and housing became permanent elements of national policy. Medicare and Medicaid continue to provide access to health care for the elderly and the poor.

New welfare policies, legal rights, and antidiscrimination measures were only secured through organized protest: from sit-ins and black power to the environmental and feminist movements. The African American freedom struggle inspired much of this change. Yet it was clear that black aspirations exceeded white Americans’ commitment to genuine equality. While the overturning of crude forms of racism in the South gained wide support, activists’ goal of equality in fact as well as in law met powerful resistance.

Feminists and other groups, including ethnic minorities, environmentalists, and gays and lesbians, carried the tide of reform into the 1970s. They pushed Nixon’s Republican administration to sustain and even extend many liberal programs. At the same time, the rapid social changes and disorder of the era — along with a costly and difficult war in Vietnam — were undermining faith in government and energizing the conservative movement.

Chapter Review

��

Civil Rights Act of 1964 War on Poverty Medicare and Medicaid Voting Rights Act of 1965 Warren Court Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) affirmative action black power movement American Indian Movement (AIM) Chicano movement Environmental Protection Agency National Organization for Women (NOW) Roe v. Wade Young Americans for Freedom (YAF)

�� The Great Society

What were the most significant domestic achievements of the Johnson administration? What were its most important failures?

What assumptions about the responsibilities of government underlay Great Society programs?

Protest and Rebellion

Why was the black freedom struggle so important to other social movements of the 1960s and 1970s? Were there any other common threads among them?

What conditions, old and new, spurred second-wave feminism? What kind of reactions did the movement generate?

The Conservative Movement

What issues led those on the right to mobilize in the 1960s?

What liberal initiatives did Nixon’s Republican administration embrace, and why?

�� , ��

How did the African American quest for civil rights in the 1960s differ from that of the 1950s?

What kinds of opposition emerged in the late 1960s to liberal reforms and radical protest? How would that resistance shape politics in the decades that followed?

��

1960 John F. Kennedy elected president. Sit-in movement begins in Greensboro, North Carolina. Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) founded. Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) established. Young Americans for Freedom founded.

1961 Kennedy launches Peace Corps. Freedom Rides challenge segregation in interstate transportation. Kennedy creates President’s Commission on the Status of Women.

1962 Voter Education Project begins registering African American voters in South. United Farm Workers (UFW) founded. Rachel Carson publishes Silent Spring.

1963 Supreme Court rules Bible reading and prayer in public schools unconstitutional. Baker v. Carr, Supreme Court sets “one person, one vote” rule for congressional districts. Gideon v. Wainwright establishes duty to provide counsel to those unable to afford lawyer. President Kennedy assassinated; Lyndon B. Johnson becomes president. Police attacks on demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama, attract international coverage.

March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom draws 250,000 participants. Equal Pay Act makes it illegal to pay women less than men for same work.

1964 War on Poverty begins. Civil Rights Act passes. Mississippi Freedom Summer Project conducts voter drives. Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party forms. Free Speech Movement protests begin at UC Berkeley. Women gain protection against employment discrimination through Title VII of Civil Rights Act. Barry Goldwater loses presidential election to Lyndon Johnson.

1965 Supreme Court announces “right to privacy.” Voting Rights Act signed. Federal aid to education expands. Medicare and Medicaid signed into law. Selma-to-Montgomery march for voting rights takes place. Johnson issues executive order on “affirmative action.”

1965–1968 Urban uprisings erupt in Watts and major U.S. cities.

1966 Miranda v. Arizona ruling requires police officers to inform suspects of their rights. Black Panther Party for Self-Defense founded. “Black power” coined by Stokely Carmichael. National Organization for Women (NOW) founded. Conservative Republican Ronald Reagan wins California’s governorship.

1967 Loving v. Virginia strikes down state laws against interracial marriages.

1968 National Housing Act signed. Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated. Civil Rights Act of 1968 passes. American Indian Movement (AIM) launched. Radical feminists picket Miss America pageant. Richard M. Nixon elected president.

1969 Stonewall riots erupt, giving rise to gay liberation movement. Native American activists occupy Alcatraz Island.

1970

La Raza Unida political party founded. First Earth Day observed. Environmental Protection Agency created and Clean Air Act passed. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) established. Voting Rights Act extended.

1971 Twenty-Sixth Amendment to Constitution lowers voting age to eighteen.

1972 “Trail of Broken Treaties” caravan protests federal Indian policies. Clean Water Act passed. Title IX bans sex discrimination in education. Powers of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission are expanded.

1973 Endangered Species Act becomes law. In Roe v. Wade, Supreme Court rules in favor of abortion rights. Law passes banning discrimination against people with disabilities in programs receiving federal funds.

1974 Congress outlaws sex discrimination in credit.

1978 Congress prohibits discrimination against pregnant workers.

�� 29 �� 1961–1979

�� This chapter will explore the following questions:

What led to the United States’ deepening involvement in Vietnam? How did a war abroad provoke a war at home? How did U.S. foreign policy change under Nixon? What accounted for the growth of conservatism in the 1970s? What challenges did the Carter administration face? Conclusion: How did the constraints of the 1970s reshape U.S. policy and politics?

�� LIEUTENANT FREDERICK DOWNS JR. GREW UP ON AN INDIANA FARM and enlisted in the army after three years of college. Leaving a ten-month-old daughter behind, he completed officer training and shipped out for South Vietnam in September 1967. The infantry platoon leader and his men arrived there “cocky and sure of our destiny, gung ho, invincible.”

That confidence was tempered by what they found in Vietnam. Unlike most of America’s previous wars, there was no fixed battlefront, but rather a shifting, confounding search for South Vietnamese rebels and their North Vietnamese allies. In a civil war characterized by guerrilla tactics, Downs and his fellow soldiers struggled to distinguish civilians from combatants and destroyed villages simply because they might be used by the enemy.

He had faith that his country could win the war but found the South Vietnamese army utterly incompetent. “Maybe the people in Nam are worth saving, but their army isn’t worth shit,” he wrote in his memoir. Downs won several medals for bravery before his one-year stint in Vietnam ended, a land mine blowing off his left arm and wedging shrapnel into his legs and back.

Downs served in Vietnam at the height of a U.S. engagement sustained by successive Cold War presidents — Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy — and dramatically escalated by Lyndon Johnson in 1965.

That decision transformed a civil war among the Vietnamese into America’s war, a protracted, destructive, and costly conflict that would take another decade to end. At peak strength in 1968, 543,000 U.S. military personnel served in Vietnam; all told, some 2.6 million saw duty there.

Yet this massive intervention failed to defeat North Vietnam. It also created intense divisions at home, “poisoning the soul of America,” in Downs’s words. Some Americans supported the government’s goal of a non-Communist South Vietnam and decried only the failure to pursue it effectively. Others contended that this was neither a vital interest of the United States nor within its capacity or moral right to achieve. Back home in college after months of surgery, Downs encountered a man who asked about the hook descending from his sleeve. When Downs explained that he had lost his arm in Vietnam, the man shot back, “Serves you right.”

The war exacted great costs. Like Downs, more than 150,000 soldiers suffered severe wounds, and more than 58,000 lost their lives, as did some two million Vietnamese. The war also derailed U.S. domestic reform, depleted the federal budget, disrupted the economy, kindled domestic discord, and led to the violation of protesters’ rights. Defeat in Vietnam hung over a chastened era, one in which American military might — but also U.S. economic prosperity, the expansion of opportunity to all, and even the integrity of the White House — could no longer be assured. Downs had once believed the United States “invincible” and its people “sure of our destiny.” Many in the 1970s

instead wondered if the nation had lost its way, presenting an opening for the patriotic, optimistic message advanced by Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980.

What led to the United States’ deepening involvement in Vietnam? Renewed Cold War rivalry in Latin America, Europe, and even outer space contributed to the widening of the American engagement in Southeast Asia. So did a fear among U.S. leaders about the consequences, psychological as much as diplomatic, of conceding defeat in the struggle against communism. Building on the policies of their predecessors, Kennedy and Johnson claimed a vital U.S. interest in Vietnam, first committing just arms and military advisers to the conflict, but eventually sending combat troops and launching bombing campaigns. The escalation of the war came even as leaders doubted the capacity of the South Vietnamese army and their own forces’ ability to win it. Those who served — younger, poorer, and more likely to be nonwhite than the troops who had fought in World War II or Korea — paid the price.

Anticommunism in the Kennedy Years John F. Kennedy entered the presidency a vigorous anti-Communist, warning in his inaugural address that the nation faced grave peril: “Each day the crises multiply…. Each day we draw nearer the hour of maximum danger.” Although the president exaggerated the threat to national security, several developments in the early sixties heightened the sense of crisis. One was Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev’s public encouragement of “wars of national liberation,” aligning the Soviet Union with independence

movements in the developing world that were often anti-Western. In 1960 alone, seventeen African nations gained their independence.

Much more than his predecessors, Kennedy supported third-world aspirations, believing that the United States could and should win the hearts and minds of people in developing nations. This was his rationale for the Peace Corps program (see chapter 28) and the Alliance for Progress, a largely ineffectual effort to help alleviate poverty in Latin America. Kennedy, however, coupled such efforts with an expansion of the elite special forces corps established under Eisenhower to aid groups resisting Communist-leaning movements. These counterinsurgency forces, including the army’s Green Berets and the navy’s SEALs, were trained to wage guerrilla warfare and equipped with the latest technology.

The first foreign policy crisis Kennedy faced lay in Cuba, just ninety miles off the Florida coast. Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution had moved Cuba into the Soviet orbit, and Eisenhower’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had planned an invasion of the island. Kennedy ordered the invasion to proceed in April 1961, sending 1,400 anti-Castro exiles trained and armed by the CIA to the Bay of Pigs on the south shore of Cuba. Contrary to U.S. expectations, no popular uprising materialized to support them. Kennedy refused to provide direct military backup, and the invaders quickly fell to Castro’s forces in what was painted as a humiliation for the United States.

Just days before the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Soviet Union dealt a psychological blow when a Soviet astronaut became the first human to orbit the earth. Kennedy called for a massive commitment to the space program,

with the bold goal of sending a man to the moon by 1970. Congress authorized the Apollo program and boosted appropriations for space exploration. John H. Glenn orbited the earth in 1962, and the United States beat the Soviets to the moon, landing two astronauts there in 1969.

Cold War conflict also flared where it had first begun when Khrushchev demanded an agreement recognizing the existence of two Germanys and threatened U.S. occupation rights in and access to West Berlin. The Soviet premier sought to halt the massive exodus of East Germans into West Berlin, a major embarrassment for the Communists. Khrushchev backed off from his threats after East Germany erected the Berlin Wall in August 1961 to stem the tide of escapees between the sectors. This concrete barrier between east and west would stand until 1989.

Kennedy used the Berlin crisis to add $3.2 billion to the defense budget, to increase draft calls, and to mobilize the reserves and National Guard. He also doubled the nation’s nuclear force within three years, vastly increasing the number of nuclear weapons based in Europe and the supply of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). The Soviet Union stepped up its own ICBM program, setting off the most intense arms race in history.

The superpowers came perilously close to using their weapons during the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962. When American spy planes captured aerial photographs of Soviet missile launching sites under construction in Cuba, Kennedy placed the military on full alert, announcing that the navy would turn back any Soviet vessel suspected of carrying missiles to Cuba.

He warned that any attack launched from Cuba would trigger a full nuclear assault against the Soviet Union.

A terrifying thirteen days followed as the superpowers approached the brink of nuclear war. Disregarding his military advisers, Kennedy refused to bomb the missile sites. Russian ships carrying nuclear warheads toward Cuba turned back, and when one ship crossed the blockade line, the president ordered the navy to follow it rather than confront it. Meanwhile, Kennedy and Khrushchev negotiated an agreement: The Soviets would remove the missiles in exchange for a U.S. promise not to invade the island. Secretly, Kennedy also agreed to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey.

The episode compelled Kennedy to pursue an easing of hostilities with the Soviet Union. In June 1963, Kennedy stressed what the two superpowers had in common: “We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future and we are all mortal.” That year, the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain signed a limited nuclear test ban treaty, reducing the threat of radioactive fallout and raising hopes for further arms reductions.

A Growing War in Southeast Asia By the time Kennedy took office, more than $1 billion in aid and seven hundred U.S. military advisers had failed to stabilize South Vietnam. Under assault from Communist North Vietnam as well as from rebels within, the U.S.-supported government in Saigon suffered from weak leadership and determined opposition.

The South Vietnamese insurgents — whom Americans derisively called Viet Cong — had taken up arms when the Saigon government refused to hold elections. Increasingly, Ho Chi Minh’s Communist government in North Vietnam supported the rebels, pledging land reform and the unification of Vietnam. The North constructed a network of infiltration routes, called the Ho Chi Minh Trail, in neighboring Laos and Cambodia, through which it sent people and supplies to help liberate the South (Map 29.1). Saigon’s forces, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), could not defeat the insurgents. Ngo Dinh Diem, South Vietnam’s premier from 1954 to 1963, garnered little support from the South Vietnamese, the majority of whom were Buddhist and saw the Catholic Diem as a corrupt tool of the West.

MAP 29.1 The Vietnam War, 1964–1975

The United States sent 2.6 million soldiers to Vietnam and spent more than $150 billion on the longest war in American history to that point, but it was unable to prevent the unification of Vietnam under a Communist government.

Description “The map shows the following data:

U.S. and South Vietnamese forces: The forces moved from the west of South Vietnam toward Cambodia. Invasion of Cambodia April 29 to June 29, 1970. Another set of forces moved from the north of South Vietnam toward Laos. Invasion of Laos February 6 to March 1971.

Major North Vietnamese supply route into South Vietnam: Forces moved from North Vietnam along the eastern borderline of Laos and entered various parts of South Vietnam. The route was identified as Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Important battles or action: Saigon Tet Offensive, January 30 to March 7, 1968, and Surrender of South Vietnam in 1975 in the South; My Lai massacre March 16, 1968 and Hue Tet Offensive January 30 to February 1968 in the West; Gulf of Tonkin incident August 1964 and Hanoi U. S. air raids late 1960s,1972 in the North.

The 17th parallel demarcation line (Geneva Accords, 1954) divides North and South Vietnam cutting across the Mekong River to the south of 20 degrees North latitude. The North-South Vietnam border marks the Demilitarized zone (D M Z).

The map also shows the South China Sea, Malaysia, Mekong Delta, Gulf of Thailand, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, China, and Gulf of Tonkin.”

By 1963, the Saigon government was close to collapse, despite Kennedy’s gradual increase of aid and advisers. He, like most American officials, assumed that technology and sheer power could win in Vietnam. Yet U.S. weapons were ill-suited to guerrilla warfare and surprise attacks by the enemy. They also alienated the very people Americans intended to help. Thousands of peasants were uprooted. Many others fell victim to bombs containing the highly flammable substance napalm dropped by the South Vietnamese air force. In 1962, U.S. planes began to spray herbicides such

as Agent Orange to destroy the insurgents’ forest cover and food supply, destroying 5.5 million acres of forest and farmland and causing lasting environmental damage.

With tacit permission from Washington, South Vietnamese military leaders in November 1963 executed a coup against Diem. Yet there was no change in U.S. policy. In a speech to be given on the day he was assassinated, Kennedy referred to Southeast Asia and warned, “We dare not weary of the task.” At his death, 16,700 Americans were stationed in Vietnam, and 100 had died there.

An All-Out Commitment in Vietnam Lyndon B. Johnson’s priorities for his presidency were tackling poverty and building the Great Society. Yet he shared the Cold War assumptions underlying Kennedy’s foreign policy and continued the massive buildup of nuclear weapons as well as conventional and counterinsurgency forces.

Johnson was determined to foil revolutions like Castro’s in Latin America. He sent troops to the U.S.-held Panama Canal Zone to quell an anti- American riot in 1964. The next year, Johnson ordered twenty thousand soldiers to the Dominican Republic to suppress a revolt, aiming to prevent “another Cuba.” No Communists were found among the rebels, however, and the president had acted without consulting either the Dominicans or the Organization of American States (OAS). This first outright show of U.S. force in Latin America in four decades violated the United States’ pledge to

respect national sovereignty in Latin America, generating cries of “Yankee imperialism.”

Regarding the U.S. commitment in Vietnam, some advisers, politicians, and international leaders questioned the wisdom of continued intervention, recognizing the situation as a civil war rather than Communist aggression. Most U.S. allies did not consider Vietnam crucial to containing communism and were not prepared to share the military burden. Johnson expressed his own doubts privately: “I don’t think it’s worth fighting for and I don’t think we can get out.” Yet like Kennedy, Johnson remembered the political blows that Truman had taken when China fell to communism, and he determined not “to be the president who saw Southeast Asia go the way China did.” Abandoning Vietnam, he believed, would damage his plans for a Great Society at home as well as American credibility in the world.

Johnson was aware of the ineffectiveness of his South Vietnamese allies and agonized over sending young men into combat. Yet he continued to dispatch more military advisers, weapons, and economic aid. In August 1964, based on uncertain reports of North Vietnamese gunboats firing on U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin (see Map 29.1), Johnson seized an opportunity to increase the pressure on North Vietnam with air strikes. He won from Congress the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave Johnson virtually unlimited authority to “repel any armed attacks against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.”

Soon after winning the election of 1964, Johnson widened the war. He dismissed reservations expressed by prominent Democrats and rejected

peace overtures from North Vietnam tied to American withdrawal and a coalition government in South Vietnam. In 1965, he made the fateful decision to order U.S. troops into combat and to begin sustained bombing of the North. The administration downplayed the import of these policy changes, but they marked a critical turning point. Now it was genuinely America’s war.

From 1965 to early 1968, the U.S. military presence grew to more than 500,000 troops as it escalated attacks on North Vietnam and its ally in the south, the National Liberation Front. To minimize protest at home and avoid provoking Chinese or Soviet involvement, Johnson expanded the war slowly but steadily. Eventually, U.S. pilots dropped 643,000 tons of bombs on North Vietnam and more than twice that amount in the South, the total surpassing all the explosives the United States dropped in World War II. The North Vietnamese withstood monthly death tolls of more than 2,000. In South Vietnam, the massive U.S. bombing campaign destroyed villages and fields, turning the former leading rice producer into a rice importer.

On the ground, General William Westmoreland’s strategy of attrition was designed to seek out and kill the southern insurgents and members of the North Vietnamese regular army. Officials calculated progress not in territory seized but in “body counts” and “kill ratios” — the number of enemies killed relative to the cost in American and ARVN lives. However, North Vietnam sent in or recruited new Communist forces faster than they could be eliminated. “To win a battle, we had to kill them,” explained Lieutenant Frederick Downs Jr. “For them to win, all they had to do was

survive.” Despite American troops inflicting great losses on the enemy, the war remained a stalemate.

The Toll on Vietnamese Civilians The guerrilla nature of the Vietnam War made it especially devastating for civilians. Here, in 1965, Vietnamese women try to protect their children while U.S. Marines storm the village of My Son in search of insurgents.

Those Who Served In contrast to World War II, when the average soldier was twenty-six years old, teenagers fought the Vietnam War. Until the Twenty-Sixth Amendment to the Constitution lowered the voting age from twenty-one to eighteen in 1971, most soldiers could not even vote for the officials who sent them into battle. All the men in Frederick Downs’s platoon were between the ages of

eighteen and twenty-one, and the average age for all soldiers was nineteen. One eighteen-year-old reflected, “I should have been home getting ready to take a pretty girl to the prom.”

The composition of the U.S. fighting forces in Vietnam was different in other ways. Men of all classes had fought in World War II, but in Vietnam the poor and working class constituted about 80 percent of the troops. Privileged youths avoided the draft with college deferments or family connections to get into the National Guard. Sent from Plainville, Kansas, to Vietnam in 1965, Mike Clodfelter could not recall “a single middle-class son of the town’s businessmen, lawyers, doctors, or ranchers from my high school graduating class who experienced the Armageddon of our generation.”

More than World War II, Vietnam was also a men’s war since the United States did not undergo full mobilization. Still, between 7,500 and 11,000 women served in Vietnam, the vast majority of them nurses, many of whom struggled with their helplessness to repair the maimed and dead bodies they attended.

Early in the war, African Americans constituted a striking 31 percent of combat troops, often choosing the military over the meager opportunities in the civilian economy. Special forces ranger Arthur E. Woodley Jr. recalled, “The only way I could possibly make it out of the ghetto was to be the best soldier I possibly could.” Death rates among black soldiers were also disproportionately high until 1966, when the military adjusted personnel assignments.

Soldiers in previous wars had served “for the duration,” but in Vietnam, a soldier served a one-year tour of duty. A commander called it “the worst personnel policy in history,” because men had less incentive to fight near the end of their tours, wanting merely to stay alive and whole. The young troops faced extremely difficult conditions. Frederick Downs’s platoon fought in thick leech-ridden jungles, in rain and oppressive heat, always vulnerable to sniper bullets and land mines. Many Vietnamese saw the South Vietnamese government as a tool of Western imperialism. In their hunt for insurgents, the ARVN and American troops killed and wounded thousands of civilians and destroyed their villages. By 1968, nearly 30 percent of the population had become refugees. According to Downs, “All Vietnamese had a common desire — to see us go home.”

��

Why did massive amounts of airpower and ground troops fail to bring U.S. victory in Vietnam?

How did a war abroad provoke a war at home? The failure to stabilize South Vietnam even as the U.S. military presence grew created grave challenges for the administration at home. After 1965, President Johnson fought a war on two fronts as domestic opposition to the war swelled. By 1968, battered both by antiwar critics and by the military’s insistence on more troops, Johnson announced a halt to the bombing, a new effort at negotiations, and his decision not to pursue reelection. Demonstrations, violence, and assassinations continued to convulse the increasingly polarized nation, however. Vietnam took center stage in the 1968 election, with voters narrowly electing the Republican candidate, former vice president Richard M. Nixon, who promised to achieve “peace with honor.”

The Antiwar Movement Johnson’s authorization of bombing and ground troops transformed previously quiet doubts about the war into a mass movement. In April 1965, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) recruited twenty thousand people for the first major antiwar demonstration in Washington, D.C. Thousands of students protested against Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) programs, CIA and defense industry recruiters, and military research projects on their campuses. Environmentalists condemned the use of chemical weapons, including the toxic Agent Orange.

By 1968, antiwar sentiment entered the mainstream, with the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Life magazine, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., and popular TV anchorman Walter Cronkite all voicing opposition. Clergy, businesspeople, scientists, and physicians formed their own groups to pressure Johnson to stop the bombing and start negotiations. Antiwar action took diverse forms, including public demonstrations, draft card burnings, and attempts to halt troop trains. The peace movement, although a small fraction of the population, focused media attention on the war, severely limiting the administration’s options. The twenty-year-old consensus around Cold War foreign policy had shattered.

Some Americans refused to serve. The World Boxing Association stripped Muhammad Ali of his heavyweight title when he refused to “drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs.” More than 170,000 men gained conscientious objector status and performed nonmilitary duties at home or in Vietnam. About 60,000 fled the country to escape the draft, and more than 200,000 were accused of failing to register or of committing other draft violations.

Some opponents of the war saw the conflict in moral terms. They sought total withdrawal, claiming that their country had no right to interfere in a civil war and stressing the suffering of the Vietnamese people. A larger segment of antiwar protesters believed that the war could not be won at a bearable cost. Working-class people were no more opposed than other groups, but they recognized the class dimensions of both the war and the

antiwar movement. A firefighter whose son had died in Vietnam said bitterly, “It’s people like us who give up our sons for the country.”

The antiwar movement outraged millions of Americans who supported the war. Some members of the generation who had fought against Hitler could not understand younger people’s refusal to support their government. They expressed their anger at war protesters with bumper stickers that read “America: Love It or Leave It.”

By 1967, aware that “discontent with the war is now wide and deep,” Johnson attempted to silence critics. He equated opposition to the war with communism and assistance to the enemy. His administration deceived the public by making optimistic statements about military progress in Vietnam, concealing officials’ doubts. Johnson ordered the CIA to spy on antiwar protesters, and the FBI infiltrated the peace movement in an attempt to disrupt it and spread false information about activists. Even the resort to illegal measures, however, failed to subdue the opposition.

The Tet Offensive and Steps toward Peace The year 1968 was marked by violent confrontations around the world. Antigovernment protests erupted from Mexico City to Paris to Tokyo. In the United States, conflict broke out between so-called hawks who called for intensification of the war and doves who sought de-escalation or withdrawal.

With troop strength nearing half a million and military deaths approaching 20,000 by the end of 1967, serious doubts about the war penetrated the administration itself. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, a principal architect of U.S. involvement, now believed that the North Vietnamese “won’t quit no matter how much bombing we do.” He feared for the image of the United States, “the world’s greatest superpower, killing or seriously injuring 1,000 noncombatants a week, while trying to pound a tiny, backward nation into submission.” McNamara left the administration in early 1968, without voicing his concerns publicly.

A critical turning point came with the Tet Offensive. In January 1968, the North Vietnamese and southern insurgents launched a campaign of attacks on key cities, every major American base, and the U.S. Embassy in Saigon during Tet, the Vietnamese New Year holiday. The North lost ten times as many soldiers as ARVN and U.S. forces, but Tet was psychologically devastating to the United States, exposing a “credibility gap” between official statements and the reality of the war. The attacks created one million more South Vietnamese refugees, and public approval of Johnson’s handling of the war plummeted to 26 percent.

In the aftermath of Tet, Johnson conferred with advisers — some of whom had steered Cold War policy since the 1940s — and concluded that it was time to “take steps to disengage.” On March 31, 1968, he announced a sharp reduction in the bombing of North Vietnam and an offer to begin peace talks. His popular support and vision for a Great Society in tatters, Johnson added the stunning declaration that he would not run for reelection. Military strategy would now shift from “Americanization” to

“Vietnamization” of the war. The goal remained a non-Communist South Vietnam; the United States would simply rely more heavily on the South Vietnamese to achieve it.

Although negotiations began in Paris in May 1968, the United States and North Vietnam could not agree on terms, and the fighting continued. Meanwhile, violence escalated at home. Protests struck two hundred college campuses in the spring of 1968. In the bloodiest action, students occupied buildings at Columbia University in New York City, condemning the university’s war-related research and its treatment of African Americans. When negotiations failed, city police stormed the buildings. Scores of demonstrators were injured, and hundreds were arrested. A student strike ensued, prematurely ending the academic year.

The Tumultuous Election of 1968 In 1968, violence also entered U.S. electoral politics. In June, two months after the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. and the tumult that followed, antiwar candidate Senator Robert F. Kennedy, campaigning for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, was killed by a Palestinian Arab refugee because of his support for Israel.

In August, several thousand demonstrators arrived in Chicago, site of the Democratic National Convention. Some came to support peace candidate Senator Eugene McCarthy, others to cause disruption. When demonstrators jeered at orders to disperse, police attacked them with tear gas and clubs. Street battles continued for three days, culminating in a police riot where

officers turned their weapons even against reporters, peaceful demonstrators, and convention delegates. The bloodshed in Chicago had little effect on the convention’s outcome, however. Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey easily defeated the antiwar McCarthy for the Democratic nomination.

In contrast to the turmoil in Chicago, the Republican convention met peacefully and nominated former vice president Richard Nixon. The American Independent Party introduced a third candidate into the race, nominating staunch segregationist George C. Wallace. The former Alabama governor spoke especially to white working-class voters’ dissatisfaction with the reforms and rebellions of the 1960s and their outrage at assaults on patriotism, religion, and traditional values. Nixon cautiously played on resentments that fueled the Wallace campaign, calling for “law and order” and attacking liberal Supreme Court decisions, busing for school desegregation, and student protesters.

The candidates differed little on the central issue of Vietnam. Nixon promised “an honorable end” to the war but did not indicate how to achieve it. Humphrey had serious reservations about U.S. policy in Vietnam, but he was tied to Johnson’s policies and did not air his views publicly. Nixon edged out Humphrey by just half a million popular votes but won 301 electoral college votes to Humphrey’s 191 and Wallace’s 46 (Map 29.2). The Democrats maintained control of Congress.

MAP 29.2 The Election of 1968

Description “The map shows the following data:

Richard M. Nixon (Republican): New Hampshire, 4; Vermont, 3; New Jersey, 17; Delaware, 3; Virginia, 12; North Carolina, 12; South Carolina, 8; Florida, 14; Tennessee, 11; Kentucky, 9; Ohio, 26; Illinois, 13; Indiana, 26; Wisconsin, 12; Iowa, 9; Missouri, 12; North Dakota, 4; South Dakota, 4; Nebraska, 5; Kansas, 7; Oklahoma, 8; Montana, 4; Wyoming, 3; Colorado, 6; Mexico, 4; Arizona, 5; Utah, 4; Idaho, 4; Oregon, 6; California, 40; Nevada 3; and Alaska, 3.

Electoral Vote, 301; Popular Vote, 31,770,237; Percent of popular vote, 43.4 percent.

Hubert H. Humphrey (Democrat): Maine, 4; Massachusetts, 14; Rhode Island, 4; Connecticut, 8; New York, 43; Pennsylvania, 29; West Virginia, 7; Michigan, 21;

Minnesota, 10; Texas, 25; Washington, 9; Washington D.C., 3; and Hawaii, 4.

Electoral Vote, 191; Popular Vote, 31,270,533; Percent of popular vote, 42.7 percent.

George C. Wallace (American Independent): North Carolina, 1; Georgia, 12; Alabama, 10; Mississippi, 7; Louisiana, 10; and Arkansas, 6.

Electoral Vote, 46; Popular Vote, 9,906,141; Percent of popular vote, 13.5 percent.

Note: North Carolina split its vote, with one elector voting for Wallace.”

The 1968 election revealed deep cracks in the coalition that had secured Democratic dominance in Washington since the 1930s. Johnson’s liberal policies on race shattered a century of Democratic Party rule in the South, which delivered all its electoral votes to Wallace and Nixon. Elsewhere, large numbers of blue-collar workers broke their traditional alliance with the Democrats to vote for Wallace or Nixon, associating the Democratic Party with racial turmoil, poverty programs, changing sexual mores, and failure to turn the tide in Vietnam.

��

How did the Vietnam War shape the election of 1968?

How did U.S. foreign policy change under Nixon? Having made a name for himself as a vocal anti-Communist in Congress and then as vice president to Eisenhower, President Richard Milhous Nixon was a familiar political figure by 1968. He would also be a transformative one in the realm of world affairs. Diverging from Republican orthodoxy, he made dramatic overtures to the Soviet Union and China and brokered important arms control agreements. Yet anticommunism remained central to Nixon’s foreign policy. Nixon backed repressive regimes around the world. He also aggressively pursued the war in Vietnam, expanding the conflict into Cambodia and Laos, despite mounting opposition. America’s longest war would end during his presidency, but Nixon was forced to settle for peace without victory.

Détente with the Soviet Union and China Nixon hoped to make his mark on history by applying his broad understanding of international relations to a changing world. He grasped that the “rigid and bipolar world of the 1940s and 1950s” was changing, and that America’s European allies were seeking to ease East-West tensions. Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry A. Kissinger, also believed they could exploit the increasing discord between the Soviet Union and China to help the United States extricate itself from Vietnam.

Following two years of secret negotiations, in February 1972 Nixon became the nation’s first president to set foot on Chinese soil, an astonishing move by one who had built his career on anticommunism. As the president remarked to Chinese leader Mao Zedong, “Those on the right can do what those on the left only talk about.” Although Nixon’s visit was largely symbolic, cultural and scientific exchanges followed, and American manufacturers began to find markets in China — small steps in the process of globalization that would take giant strides in the 1990s (see chapter 30).

As Nixon and Kissinger had hoped, the warming of U.S.-Chinese relations furthered détente, their term for easing conflict with the Soviet Union. Détente did not mean abandoning containment, but rather focusing on issues of shared concern in order to foster a stable international order.

Arms control, trade, and stability in Europe were three areas where the United States and the Soviet Union had common interests. In May 1972, Nixon became the first Cold War president to visit Moscow, signing agreements on trade and cooperation in science and space. Most significantly, the two superpowers concluded the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) in 1972, halting new production of ICBMs. They also agreed to ban the development of antiballistic missile systems, to prevent both nations from developing a defense secure enough against a nuclear attack to risk a first strike.

In 1975, U.S., Canadian, Soviet, and European leaders signed the historic Helsinki accords that formally recognized the post–World War II boundaries in Europe but also proclaimed “the universal significance of

human rights and fundamental freedoms.” Dissidents in the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites would use this official promise of rights to challenge the Soviet dictatorship and help overthrow it fifteen years later.

U.S. Interventions around the World Despite the thaw in U.S. relations with the Soviet Union and China, Nixon and Kissinger continued to view left-wing movements as a threat to U.S. interests. Following a pattern begun by Eisenhower, the Nixon administration ordered his CIA director to destabilize the government of Salvador Allende, a self-proclaimed Marxist who was elected president of Chile in 1970. In 1973, the CIA helped the Chilean military engineer a coup, resulting in Allende’s death and a ruthless dictatorship under General Augusto Pinochet.

The Nixon administration backed other repressive regimes as well. In southern Africa, it eased pressures on white minority governments that tyrannized blacks. In the Middle East, the United States sent massive arms shipments to support the shah of Iran’s harsh regime with an eye on the country’s enormous petroleum reserves and its status as a stable anti- Communist ally.

Nixon pursued a delicate balance between defending Israel’s security and seeking the goodwill of Arab nations strategically and economically important to the United States. Conflict between Israel and the Arab nations led to the Six-Day War in 1967, with Israel winning a stunning victory, seizing the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip from Egypt, the Golan Heights

from Syria, and the West Bank, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians lived, from Jordan. In October 1973, on the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur, Egypt and Syria retaliated with a surprise attack.

The Nixon administration sided with Israel, prompting Arab nations to organize an oil embargo that created severe shortages in the United States. After Israel repulsed the attack, tensions remained high. The Arab countries refused to recognize Israel, Israel began to settle its citizens in the West Bank and other territories it had seized during the Six-Day War, and no solution could be found for the Palestinian refugees who had been displaced by the creation of Israel in 1948. The conflict continued to simmer, as did anti-American sentiment among Arabs.

Nixon’s War in Vietnam Nixon was determined not to let South Vietnam fall to the Communists, which he believed would seriously damage American credibility in the world. Regardless of the wisdom of the initial intervention, Kissinger asserted, “the commitment of 500,000 Americans has settled the importance of Vietnam…. What is involved now is confidence in American promises.”

From 1969 to 1972, Nixon and Kissinger pursued a three-pronged approach. First, they tried to expand the South Vietnamese military and strengthen local institutions. Second, Nixon gradually reduced the U.S. presence in Vietnam from 543,000 troops in 1968 to 140,000 by the end of 1971, although casualties remained high. Third, the United States replaced U.S. forces with intensive bombing.

In the spring of 1969, Nixon began a ferocious air war in Cambodia in an attempt to eliminate North Vietnamese sanctuaries there, dropping more than 100,000 tons of bombs. Nixon hid this campaign from Congress and the public for more than a year. Nixon also ordered an invasion of Cambodia in April 1970. He argued: “If, when the chips are down, the world’s most powerful nation… acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world.”

This escalation of the war triggered outrage at home. More than one hundred thousand people protested in Washington, D.C., and students boycotted classes on hundreds of campuses. At a rally on May 4 at Kent State University in Ohio, National Guard troops opened fire, killing four and wounding ten others. “They’re starting to treat their own children like they treat us,” commented an African American woman in Harlem. In a confrontation at Jackson State College in Mississippi on May 14, police killed two black students.

Congressional reaction to the invasion of Cambodia revealed deepening concern about abuses of presidential power. In the name of national security, presidents since Franklin Roosevelt had conducted foreign policy without the consent or sometimes even the knowledge of Congress — for example, Eisenhower in Iran and Kennedy in Cuba. But in their determination to win the war in Vietnam, Johnson and Nixon had taken extreme measures to deceive the public and silence critics. The Senate voted to terminate the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and to cut funds for the

Cambodian operation. By the end of June 1970, Nixon had pulled all U.S. troops out of Cambodia.

In 1971, Vietnam veterans became a visible part of the peace movement, the first men in U.S. history to protest a war in which they had fought. They held a public investigation of “war crimes” in Vietnam, rallied in front of the Capitol, and cast away their war medals. In May of that year, veterans numbered among the forty thousand protesters who engaged in civil disobedience in an effort to shut down Washington. Officials made more than twelve thousand arrests, which courts later ruled violations of protesters’ rights.

Revelations about the My Lai massacre of 1968, which came to light during the court-martial of Lieutenant William Calley in 1970, further eroded support for the war. During the trial, Americans learned that Calley’s company had killed every inhabitant of the hamlet of My Lai, even though it had encountered no enemy forces and the four hundred villagers were nearly all old men, women, and children. They also learned of the military’s cover-up of the massacre for more than a year before a journalist exposed it. Eventually, twelve officers and enlisted men were charged with murder or assault, but only Calley was convicted.

Administration policy suffered another blow in 1971 when the New York Times published portions of the Pentagon Papers, a secret internal study of the war begun in 1967. Nixon attempted to halt further publication, but the Supreme Court ruled this a violation of the First Amendment. Subsequent circulation of the Pentagon Papers, which revealed officials’ private

pessimism about the war’s progress even as they made rosy promises, heightened public disillusionment and undermined the government’s credibility. More than 60 percent of Americans polled in 1971 considered it a mistake to have sent American troops to Vietnam; 58 percent believed the war to be immoral.

Military morale sank in the last years of the war. Having been exposed to the antiwar movement at home, many soldiers expressed little faith in their mission. Racial tensions among the troops mounted, and many sought escape in illegal drugs. Enlisted men committed hundreds of “fraggings,” or attacks on officers. In a 1971 report, a retired Marine colonel warned: “Our army that now remains in Vietnam [is] near mutinous.”

Peace Accords Nixon and Kissinger continued to believe that intensive firepower could bring victory. In 1972, the United States resumed sustained bombing of North Vietnam. Though costly to both sides, it resulted in renewed negotiations. On January 27, 1973, representatives of the United States, North Vietnam, South Vietnam, and the southern insurgents (now called the Provisional Revolutionary Government) signed a formal peace accord in Paris. The agreement required removal of all U.S. troops and military advisers from South Vietnam but allowed North Vietnamese forces to remain. Both sides agreed to return prisoners of war. Nixon called the agreement “peace with honor,” but in fact, it allowed only a face-saving withdrawal. Unlike the ending of World War II, “There’s nothing to celebrate,” remarked an American Legion commander.

Fighting resumed immediately among the Vietnamese. In 1975, North Vietnam launched a new offensive, seizing Saigon on April 30. The Americans remaining in the U.S. Embassy and their Marine guard hastily evacuated, along with 150,000 of their South Vietnamese allies. Confusion, humiliation, and tragedy marked the rushed departure. The United States lacked sufficient capacity to evacuate all those who had supported the South Vietnamese government and were now desperate to leave. A U.S. diplomat who escaped Saigon commented, “The rest of our lives we will be haunted by how we betrayed those people.” Eventually more than 600,000 Vietnamese fled to the United States, but others lost their lives trying to escape, and many who could not get out suffered from political repression.

During the four years it took Nixon to end the war, he had expanded the conflict into Cambodia and Laos and launched massive bombing campaigns. Although increasing numbers of legislators criticized the war, Congress never denied the funds to fight it. Only after the peace accords did the legislative branch attempt to reassert its constitutional authority in the making of war. The War Powers Act of 1973 required the president to secure congressional approval for any substantial, long-term deployment of troops abroad. The new law, however, did little to dispel the distrust of government that resulted from U.S. leaders’ dishonesty about the conduct of the war.

The war produced widespread criticism of the draft from both the left and right. As the United States withdrew from Vietnam, Nixon and Congress agreed to abandon conscription, which had been part of the Cold War since its beginning. Military leaders predicted that an all-volunteer army would

make a more disciplined and professional fighting force. Yet ending service as a common obligation would distance most Americans from the horrors of warfare and from the military, whose ranks would disproportionately be filled by poorer Americans and people of color.

The Legacy of Defeat Four presidents had declared that the survival of South Vietnam was critical to U.S. containment policy. Yet their predictions that a Communist victory in South Vietnam would set the dominoes cascading did not materialize. Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia all fell within the Communist camp in the spring of 1975, but the rest of Southeast Asia did not. The fear of a monolithic Communist power dominating Asia was undercut when China and Vietnam reverted to their historically hostile relationship.

The long pursuit of victory in Vietnam complicated the United States’ relations with its allies, many of whom doubted the wisdom of the war. The use of terrifying American power against a small Asian country also alienated many in the third world. The war set off turmoil at home, increased presidential power at the expense of congressional authority and public accountability, weakened the economy, diminished trust in government, and contributed to the downfall of two presidents.

The cruelest legacy of Vietnam fell on those who had served. More than 58,000 Americans lost their lives (Table 29.1). For those who survived, the war’s pain endured. “The general public just wanted to ignore us,” remembered Frederick Downs, while opponents of the war “wanted to

argue with us until we felt guilty about what we had done over there.” Many veterans believed in the war’s aims and felt betrayed by the government for not letting them win it. Others blamed the government for sacrificing the nation’s youth in an immoral, unnecessary war, referring to their dead comrades as having been “wasted.” A Native American soldier assigned to resettle Vietnamese civilians found it to be “just like when they moved us to the rez [reservation]. We shouldn’t have done that.”

TABLE 29.1 VIETNAM WAR CASUALTIES United States

Battle deaths 47,434

Other deaths 10,786

Wounded 153,303

South Vietnam

Killed in action 110,357

Military wounded 499,026

Civilians killed 415,000

Civilians wounded 913,000

Communist Regulars and Guerrillas

Killed in action 66,000

Source: U.S. Department of Defense.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial was unveiled in Washington, D.C., in November 1982. Designed by Yale architecture student Maya Lin, the stark, black, V-shaped wall inscribed with the names of men and women lost in the war became one of the most-visited sites in the nation’s capital. Veterans, however, often came home to public neglect, with government benefits that were less generous than had been the case in previous wars.

Most soldiers readjusted well to civilian life, but some suffered long after the war ended. The Veterans Administration estimated that nearly one-sixth of the troops suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, experiencing recurring nightmares, feelings of guilt and shame, violence, substance abuse, and suicidal tendencies. Thirty years after performing army intelligence work in Saigon, Doris Allen “still hit the floor sometimes when [she heard] loud bangs.” Some who had served began to report birth defects, cancer, severe skin disorders, and other ailments, linking those illnesses to the deadly poison dioxin in Agent Orange, although it was not until 1991 that Congress acted to provide them with medical assistance.

��

What were the Vietnam War’s legacies for the United States?

What accounted for the growth of conservatism in the 1970s? If the Vietnam War unsettled Americans’ faith in their leaders and foreign policy, the era’s economic downturn generated criticism of domestic policies ranging from tax rates to social welfare programs to school busing. Richard Nixon’s presidency reflected the impact of the conservative movement as well as the challenges of governing in troubled economic times. The Republican acquiesced in continuing many Great Society social welfare programs and even approved pathbreaking environmental, minority, and women’s rights measures (see chapter 28). Yet his public rhetoric and some of his actions signaled a move to the right. Many Americans would move with him.

Just two years after Nixon won reelection by a huge margin, his abuse of power and efforts to cover up crimes committed by subordinates forced the first presidential resignation in history. His Republican successor, Gerald Ford, served only two years, but the political spectrum continued to shift rightward even when Democrat Jimmy Carter captured the White House in 1976.

The End of the Boom Whereas Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson had all governed during a period of prosperity, Nixon faced a considerably less auspicious economic climate. By 1970, both inflation and unemployment had surpassed 6 percent, an unprecedented combination that experts dubbed “stagflation.”

Domestic troubles were compounded by the decline of American dominance in the international economy. With Japan and Western Europe fully recovered from the devastation of World War II, foreign cars and electronic equipment now competed favorably with American goods. In 1971, for the first time in decades, the United States imported more than it exported, meaning the nation could no longer back up its currency with gold reserves. Nixon abandoned the gold standard and devalued the dollar to increase exports by making them cheaper.

Economic crises and energy shortages induced Nixon to intervene in the private marketplace. To protect domestic manufacturers, he imposed a surcharge on most imports, and he froze wages and prices, thus enabling the government to stimulate the economy without fueling inflation. In the short run, these policies worked. Yet by 1974, unemployment had crept back up and inflation soared.

Skyrocketing energy prices worsened stagflation. During the postwar economic boom, abundant domestic oil deposits and access to cheap Middle Eastern oil had encouraged the building of large cars and skyscrapers with no concern for fuel efficiency. By the 1970s, the United States was consuming a stunning one-third of the world’s fuel resources.

In the fall of 1973, the United States faced its first energy shortage. Arab nations, furious at the Nixon administration’s support of Israel during the Yom Kippur War, cut off oil shipments to the United States. Long lines formed at gas stations, and prices nearly doubled. In response, Nixon authorized temporary emergency measures allocating petroleum and

establishing a national 55-mile-per-hour speed limit to save gasoline. The energy crisis eased, but the nation would not easily come to grips with its seemingly unquenchable demand for fuel and dependence on foreign oil.

Gas Station Lines During America’s first oil crisis, customers at gas stations encountered around-the-block lines as well as skyrocketing prices, rationing, and signs reading “out of gas.” Americans surveyed by pollsters ranked the energy crisis a more pressing concern even than the Watergate scandal. Here, cars line up in New York City on December 23, 1973.

Nixon Courts the Right Nixon’s calls for “law and order,” his attacks on antiwar protesters, his exploitation of white resistance to integration, and his criticism of the Warren Court were part of a “southern strategy” intended to bring white

southerners and northerners alike into the Republican Party. His reelection in 1972 revealed this strategy’s success, as well as the growing strength of the conservative movement.

In his 1968 campaign, Nixon billed himself as the candidate of “those who did not indulge in violence, those who did not break the law.” A new emphasis on containing crime, begun in Johnson’s administration, spoke to fears of social disorder in the aftermath of black urban uprisings and mass protests. Starting in the 1970s, increased funding for law enforcement and prisons would lead to unparalleled levels of incarceration in the United States, and particularly of African Americans. Nixon also pledged to represent the “forgotten Americans, the non-shouters, the non- demonstrators,” a group he called the “silent majority.” Some of his appeals were racially coded, playing on hostility to new civil rights policies that seemed to favor minorities over white working people.

One of these hot-button issues was busing to achieve school integration. Nixon reluctantly enforced court orders to achieve high degrees of integration in southern schools, but he resisted such efforts outside the South. In northern and western cities, where segregation resulted from housing discrimination and the drawing of school district boundaries, half of all African American children attended nearly all-black schools. To achieve desegregation, courts began to order busing, the transfer of students between schools in white and black neighborhoods.

Children had been riding buses to school for decades, but busing in the service of court-mandated racial integration provoked fury. Violence

erupted in Boston in 1974 when a district judge ordered busing. The whites most affected came from working-class families. Left in cities abandoned by the more affluent, their children now often rode buses to predominantly black, overcrowded schools with deficient facilities. Clarence McDonough denounced the liberal officials who bused his “kid half way around Boston so that a bunch of politicians can end up their careers with a clear conscience.” African American parents were also conflicted about sending their children on long rides to schools where white teachers and students might resent their presence.

Although whites eventually became more accepting of integration, many simply flocked to the white-majority suburbs. Nixon was unable to persuade Congress to end court-ordered busing; however, once he appointed four new justices, the Supreme Court imposed strict limits on its use to achieve racial balance.

Nixon’s judicial appointments would over time weaken other liberal initiatives. He charged the justices of the Warren Court with being “unprecedentedly politically active … using their interpretation of the law to remake American society according to their own social, political, and ideological precepts.” When Chief Justice Earl Warren resigned in 1969, Nixon replaced him with Warren E. Burger, who was inclined to interpret the Constitution narrowly and to limit government intervention on behalf of individual rights. While the Burger Court did curb protections of individual rights, it also upheld many liberal programs, including affirmative action. Its ruling in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), for example, allowed universities to remedy the results of past discrimination in

their admissions policies so long as they did not employ strict quotas and racial classifications.

Nixon’s southern strategy and other repercussions of the civil rights revolution ended the Democratic hold on the “solid South.” Beginning in 1964, a number of conservative southern Democrats changed their party affiliation; by 2018, Republicans controlled nearly every southern state legislature, every governorship, and every Senate seat.

The Election of 1972 Nixon’s reelection prospects in 1972 were good. Although the war in Vietnam continued, antiwar protests ebbed with the decrease in American ground forces and casualties. Nixon’s economic initiatives had temporarily checked inflation and unemployment, and his attacks on busing and antiwar protesters had won strong support from the right.

South Dakota senator George S. McGovern was his Democratic opponent, nominated by a diverse slate of women, minority, and youthful delegates. Republicans portrayed McGovern as a left-wing extremist, tagging him as the candidate of “Acid, Amnesty, and Abortion” — that is, the choice of the counterculture, draft resisters, and feminists. More worrisome for Democrats, McGovern’s support for busing, a generous welfare program, and immediate withdrawal from Vietnam alienated some in his own party.

Nixon achieved a landslide victory, winning 60.7 percent of the popular vote and every state except Massachusetts. Although the Democrats held on

to Congress, Nixon won majorities among traditional Democrats: southerners, Catholics, urbanites, and blue-collar workers. The president, however, had little time to savor his triumph, as revelations began to emerge about crimes committed to ensure his victory.

The Watergate Scandal During the early-morning hours of June 17, 1972, five men working for Nixon’s reelection crept into the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. Intending to repair a bugging device installed in an earlier break-in, they were discovered and arrested. Nixon and his aides then tried to cover up the burglars’ connection to his administration, setting in motion the scandal reporters dubbed Watergate.

Nixon was not the first president to lie to the public or misuse power. Every president since Franklin D. Roosevelt had enlarged the powers of the office in the name of national security. This expansion of executive powers, commonly referred to as the “imperial presidency,” weakened traditional checks and balances on the executive branch and opened the door to abuses. No president, however, had dared go as far as Nixon, who treated opposition to his policies as a personal attack and was willing to violate the Constitution to stop it.

After the Watergate arrests, Nixon plotted to conceal links between the burglars and the White House. Nearly a year later, after investigations by a grand jury and the Senate suggested that White House aides had been involved in a cover-up, Nixon accepted official responsibility for Watergate

but denied any knowledge of the break-in. Nixon also authorized the appointment of an independent special prosecutor to conduct an investigation.

Meanwhile, a Senate investigating committee uncovered the administration’s projects to harass “enemies” through tax audits and other illegal means and implicated the president in efforts to cover up the Watergate break-in. When it was revealed that all conversations in the Oval Office had been taped, a legal battle ensued. Nixon refused to hand over the tapes, citing executive privilege and separation of powers, but the Supreme Court unanimously ruled to order their release.

Nixon’s misuse of federal funds and tax evasion also came to light. In August 1973, Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned after having been found to accept bribes while governor of Maryland, and he was replaced by House minority leader Gerald Ford of Michigan. The next winter, the House of Representatives began an impeachment investigation, and Nixon began to release edited transcripts of the tapes. The transcripts revealed Nixon’s orders to aides in March 1973: “I don’t give a shit what happens. I want you all to stonewall it, let them plead the Fifth Amendment, cover up or anything else, if it’ll save it — save the plan.”

In July 1974, the House Judiciary Committee voted to impeach the president on three counts — obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress — and it seemed certain that the House would follow suit. “The prisons of Georgia are full of people who stole $5 or $10,” remarked Georgia state legislator and civil rights activist Julian Bond, “and

this man tried to steal the Constitution.” To avoid impeachment, Nixon announced his resignation to a national television audience on August 8, 1974 — a singular moment in U.S. history.

The Ford Presidency and the 1976 Election Nixon’s successor, Gerald R. Ford, would be left to grapple with the aftermath of Watergate as well as severe economic problems. Upon taking office, President Ford announced, “Our long national nightmare is over.” But he shocked many Americans one month later by granting Nixon a pardon for any and all offenses he may have committed during his presidency. By contrast, thirty of the former president’s associates ultimately pleaded guilty to or were convicted of crimes related to Watergate. Ford’s sweeping pardon saved Nixon from nearly certain indictment and trial, provoking a tremendous outcry from Congress and the public.

Democrats made impressive gains in the November congressional elections, many of them pledging to guard against the kinds of abuses revealed during Watergate. The Federal Election Campaign Act of 1974 established public financing of presidential campaigns and imposed some restrictions on contributions to curtail the selling of political favors. Congressional legislation had little impact, however. Politicians found other ways of raising money — for example, through political action committees (PACs) that permitted larger contributions than were allowed for individual candidates. The Supreme Court also struck down limitations on campaign

spending as violations of freedom of speech. Ever-larger campaign donations flowed to candidates from interest groups, corporations, labor unions, and wealthy individuals.

Congressional investigating committees discovered a host of illegal FBI and CIA activities stretching back to the 1950s, including surveillance of American citizens such as Martin Luther King Jr., harassment of political dissenters, and plots to assassinate Fidel Castro and other foreign leaders. In response to these revelations, President Ford placed new controls on covert operations, and Congress created permanent committees to oversee the intelligence agencies. Yet these measures did little to diminish the public’s cynicism about their government, nor did they seriously hamstring the CIA.

Dissatisfaction with the Ford administration grew as the nation struggled with serious economic problems, including a low rate of economic growth, high unemployment, a foreign trade deficit, and soaring energy prices. Ford carried these burdens into the election campaign of 1976, while contending with a major challenge from the Republican right. Blasting Nixon’s and Ford’s foreign policy of détente for causing the “loss of U.S. military supremacy,” California governor Ronald Reagan came close to capturing the nomination.

The Democrats nominated James Earl “Jimmy” Carter Jr., former governor of Georgia. A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Carter spent seven years as a nuclear engineer in the navy before returning to Plains, Georgia, to run the family peanut farming business. Carter stressed his faith as a born-again Christian and his distance from the government in Washington.

He selected liberal senator Walter F. Mondale of Minnesota as his running mate, but Carter’s nomination nonetheless marked a rightward turn in the Democratic Party.

In the wake of Watergate, Carter was an appealing candidate. He carried his own bags, lived modestly, and taught a Bible class at his Baptist church. Ford’s failure to tackle the country’s economic problems helped Carter win the traditional Democratic coalition of blacks, organized labor, and ethnic groups and even recapture some of the white southerners who had voted for Nixon in 1972. Still, Carter received just 50 percent of the popular vote to Ford’s 48 percent, while Democrats retained substantial margins in Congress.

��

How did Nixon’s policies reflect the increasing influence of conservatives in the Republican Party?

What challenges did the Carter administration face? Jimmy Carter promised to lead a government that was “competent” as well as “decent, open, fair, and compassionate.” He employed less soaring rhetoric than had Kennedy or Johnson, cautioning Americans “that even our great Nation has its recognized limits,” and “that we can neither answer all questions nor solve all problems.” Carter’s humility and personal integrity helped revive trust in the presidency. He made notable advances in environmental and energy policies, championed human rights, and achieved foreign policy successes concerning the Panama Canal, China, and the Middle East.

Yet Carter’s administration was beset by domestic and foreign problems, exposing his deficiencies in working with Congress and rallying public opinion. Energy shortages and stagflation worsened as the 1970s progressed. And near the end of his term, Soviet-American relations deteriorated, new crises emerged in the Middle East, and the economy plummeted, dooming his reelection campaign.

A Retreat from Liberalism Carter vowed “to help the poor and aged, to improve education, and to provide jobs,” but at the same time “not to waste money.” When these goals conflicted, budget balancing took priority over reform. Carter’s approach pleased Americans unhappy about their tax dollars being used to benefit the disadvantaged while stagflation eroded their own standard of living. But his

fiscal stringency frustrated liberal Democrats pushing for comprehensive welfare reform, national health insurance, and a substantial jobs program.

Carter did fulfill liberals’ desire to make government more inclusive by appointing unprecedented numbers of women and minorities to cabinet, judicial, and diplomatic posts. A number of factors, however, thwarted Carter’s policy goals. His outsider status helped him win the election but left him without strong ties to party leaders in Congress. Equally significant, the economic problems he inherited — unemployment, inflation, and sluggish growth — confounded economic doctrine. Usually, rising prices accompanied a humming economy with a strong demand for labor. In the 1970s, however, stagflation burdened the economy with both steep inflation and high unemployment, enlarging the federal budget deficit. The economist who developed a measure of the phenomenon gave it an apt title: the “misery index.”

As Americans struggled with inflation and unemployment, many found themselves paying higher taxes, especially higher property taxes as the value of their homes increased. Some were incensed to see their taxes fund government programs for people they considered undeserving. In the 1970s, a grassroots antitax movement gathered steam. In 1978, Californians revolted in a popular referendum, slashing property taxes and limiting the state legislature’s ability to raise other revenues. What a newspaper called a “primal scream by the People against Big Government” quickly spread to other states.

Carter’s response to these economic woes was to target unemployment through public works and public service jobs programs and by cutting taxes. Unemployment receded, but then inflation surged. Working people, wrote one journalist, “winced and ached” as their paychecks bought less and less, “hollowing their hopes and dreams, their plans for a house or their children’s college education.” To curb inflation, Carter curtailed federal spending, and the Federal Reserve Board tightened the money supply. These measures failed to halt inflation, which surpassed 13 percent in 1980; worse, they contributed to rising unemployment, reversing the gains made in Carter’s first two years.

Carter’s refusal to put forward a comprehensive national health insurance plan, long a Democratic priority, signaled a retreat from the expansive liberalism of the 1960s. So did his sharp cut of the capital gains tax, which benefited corporations and the wealthy, along with the government’s bailout of the auto giant Chrysler to prevent bankruptcy. Congress also acted on Carter’s proposals to deregulate airlines in 1978 and then the banking, trucking, and railroad industries in 1980, a policy shift in line with conservatives’ insistence on a free market and unfettered private enterprise.

Energy and Environmental Reform Complicating the battle with stagflation was the nation’s enormous energy consumption and dependence on foreign oil. Carter elevated the importance of this issue by establishing the Department of Energy and proposing a wide-ranging conservation program. The National Energy Act of 1978 that made it through Congress penalized manufacturers of gas-guzzling

automobiles and provided other incentives for conservation and development of alternative fuels, such as wind and solar power. The act, however, fell far short of a long-term, comprehensive solution.

In 1979, a new upheaval in the Middle East, the Iranian revolution, triggered the most severe energy crisis yet. In midsummer, shortages caused 60 percent of gasoline stations to close down, resulting in long lines and high prices. In response, Congress reduced controls on the oil and gas industry to stimulate American production and imposed a windfall profits tax on producers to redistribute some of the profits they would reap from deregulation.

European nations were no less dependent on foreign oil than was the United States, but they more successfully controlled consumption. They levied high taxes on gasoline, encouraging people to use public transportation and manufacturers to produce more energy-efficient cars. In the automobile- dependent United States, however — with inadequate public transit, a sprawling population, and an aversion to taxes — politicians dismissed that approach. By the end of the century, the United States, with 6 percent of the world’s population, consumed more than 25 percent of global oil production.

A vigorous environmental movement opposed nuclear energy as an alternative fuel, warning of radiation leakage, potential accidents, and the hazards of radioactive wastes. In 1976, hundreds of people went to jail for attempting to block construction of a nuclear power plant in Seabrook, New Hampshire. The perils of nuclear energy attracted international attention in

March 1979, when a meltdown of the reactor core was narrowly averted at the nuclear facility near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Popular opposition and the great expense of building nuclear power plants limited development of the industry.

A disaster at Love Canal in Niagara Falls, New York, advanced other environmental goals by underscoring the human costs of unregulated development. Residents suffering high rates of serious illness discovered that their homes sat atop highly toxic waste products from a nearby chemical company. Finally responding to the residents’ claims in 1978, the state of New York agreed to help families relocate, and the Carter administration in 1980 created the so-called Superfund: $1.6 billion for cleanup of hazardous wastes left by the chemical industry.

Carter also signed bills to improve clean air and water programs, to expand the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) preserve in Alaska, and to control strip mining, which left destructive scars on the land. During the 1979 gasoline crisis, Carter attempted to balance the development of domestic fuel sources with environmental concerns, winning legislation to conserve energy and to provide incentives for the development of solar energy and environmentally friendly alternative fuels.

Promoting Human Rights Abroad “We’re ashamed of what our government is as we deal with other nations around the world,” Jimmy Carter charged, pledging to reverse U.S. support of dictators, secret diplomacy, interference in the internal affairs of other

countries, and excessive reliance on military solutions. Human rights formed the cornerstone of his approach. The Carter administration applied economic pressure on governments that denied their citizens basic rights, refusing aid or trading privileges to nations such as Chile and El Salvador, as well as to the white minority governments of Rhodesia and South Africa. In other cases, however, Carter prioritized strategic and security considerations over human rights principles, invoking no sanctions against repressive governments in Iran, South Korea, and the Philippines.

Carter’s human rights commitment faced a test when a popular movement overthrew an oppressive dictatorship in Nicaragua. U.S. officials were uneasy about the leftist Sandinistas who led the rebellion and had ties to Cuba. Once the Sandinistas assumed power in 1979, however, Carter held to his human rights stance, recognizing the new government and sending economic aid.

Applying moral principles to the U.S.-controlled Panama Canal, Carter signed a treaty in 1977 providing for its return to Panama in 2000. Supporters viewed the treaty as restitution for the use of U.S. power to gain control of the territory in 1903. Opponents denounced the loss of the vital waterway. “We bought it, we paid for it, it’s ours,” claimed Ronald Reagan during the presidential primaries of 1976. Only after a massive effort by the administration would the Senate ratify the Panama Canal treaty.

Carter also nurtured meaningful steps toward peace in the Middle East, seizing on the courage of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, the first Arab leader to risk his political career by talking directly with Israeli officials. In

1979, Carter invited Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin to Camp David, Maryland, where he applied tenacious diplomacy for thirteen days. These talks led to the Camp David accords, whereby Egypt became the first Arab state to recognize Israel, and Israel agreed to gradual withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula, which it had seized in the 1967 Six- Day War (Map 29.3).

MAP 29.3 The Middle East, 1948–1989

Preserving access to the rich oil reserves of the Middle East and commitment to the security of Israel were fundamental — and often conflicting — principles of U.S. foreign policy in the region.

Description “O P E C member: Libya in the West; Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates in the South; Iraq and Iran in the North. A callout pointing at Iraq reads, At

war with Iran, 1980 to 1988; Chemical attacks on Kurds, 1988.

An inset map shows:

Land gained by Israel in Six-Day War: Syria and Jerusalem; Israel before 1967: Tel Aviv. War of Independence, 1948 Sinai War, 1956 Six-Day War, 1967 Yom Kippur War, 1973 Palestinian uprising begins, 1987. U.S. aids pro-American government, 1958 Israel invades 1982 U.S. marine barracks bombed, 1983.

Land returned to Egypt, 1973 to 1981: Sinai.

Oil field: Ankara in Turkey, Tehran in Iran, Oman, Abu Dhabi in the Unites Arab Emirates, Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, Baghdad in Iraq, Kuwait and Bahrain.

Callouts point to specific regions and read as follows:

Iran: C I A stages coup against Mossadegh government, 1953; Shah overthrown, 1979; U. S. hostage crisis, 1979 to 1981; Secret U. S. arms sales to Iran; proceeds diverted to Nicaraguan Contras, 1985 to 1986.

Afghanistan: Soviet troops invade: U. S. imposes economic sanctions on Soviet Union and aids Muslim guerrillas, 1979; Gradual withdrawal of Soviet troops; civil war continues, 1988.

Iraq: At war with Iran, 1980 to 1988; Chemical attacks on Kurds, 1988.

Saudi Arabia: Arab oil embargo against U. S., 1973.

Israel: War of Independence, 1948; Sinai War, 1956; Six-Day War, 1967; Yom Kippur War, 1973; Palestinian uprising begins, 1987.

Lebanon: U. S. aids pro-American government, 1958; Israel invades, 1982; U. S. Marine barracks bombed, 1983.

Egypt: Suez crisis, 1956; Egypt and Israel agree to Camp David accords, 1978; Egypt and Israel sign peace treaty, 1979; Sadat assassinated, 1981.

The map also shows Pakistan, Soviet Union, Gulf of Oman, Strait of Hormuz, Oman, the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea, R. D. R. of Yemen, Yemen, Ethiopia, Sudan, Chad, Egypt,

Libya, the Mediterranean Sea, Cyprus, Syria, Greece, Albania, Italy, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Turkey, the Black Sea, and the Caspian Sea.”

New Foreign Crises Consistent with his human rights approach, Carter preferred to promote national security through nonmilitary means and initially sought cooperation with the nation’s Cold War enemies. Following up on Nixon’s initiatives, in 1979 he opened formal diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China and signed a second strategic arms reduction treaty with the Soviet Union.

That same year, however, Carter pursued a military buildup when the Soviet Union invaded neighboring Afghanistan, whose recently installed Communist government was threatened by Muslim opposition. Carter imposed economic sanctions on the Soviet Union, barred U.S. participation in the 1980 Summer Olympic Games in Moscow, and obtained legislation requiring all nineteen-year-old men to register for the draft.

Claiming that Soviet actions in Afghanistan jeopardized oil supplies from the Middle East, the president announced the “Carter Doctrine,” threatening the use of any means necessary to prevent an outside force from gaining control of the Persian Gulf. His human rights policy fell by the wayside as the United States stepped up support for the military dictatorship in neighboring Pakistan, and the CIA funneled secret aid to the Afghan rebels. The thaw in superpower relations that had begun in the 1960s had ended.

Events in Iran also encouraged this hard-line approach. Generous U.S. arms and aid funneled to the shah had not subdued Iranian dissidents, who still resented the CIA’s role in the overthrow of the Mossadegh government in 1953 (see chapter 26). Opponents of the shah condemned his brutal attempts to quash opposition and detested his adoption of Western culture and values. These grievances fueled a revolution in 1979 that forced him out and brought to power Shiite Islamic fundamentalists led by Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini.

Carter’s decision to allow the shah into the United States for medical treatment enraged Iranians, who believed that the United States would restore him to power, as it had done in 1953. On November 4, 1979, a crowd broke into the U.S. Embassy in Iran’s capital of Teheran and seized sixty-six U.S. diplomats, CIA officers, citizens, and military attachés. Refusing the captors’ demands to return the shah to Iran for trial, Carter froze Iranian assets in U.S. banks and placed an embargo on Iranian oil. In April 1980, he sent a small military operation into Iran to rescue the hostages, but the mission failed.

The disastrous rescue attempt and scenes of blindfolded American citizens paraded before TV cameras fed a sense of U.S. impotence, simmering since the defeat in Vietnam. Iran released a handful of the captives (primarily women and African Americans), but the Iran hostage crisis — lasting 444 days — dominated the news during the 1980 presidential campaign and contributed to Carter’s defeat. In a final blow, Iran freed the remaining fifty- two hostages minutes after Carter left office. The hostages boarded a plane

in Teheran as his successor, Ronald Reagan, delivered his inaugural address.

Iran Hostage Crisis Iranian demonstrators show their support for the militants who seized the U.S. Embassy in Teheran, taking sixty-six Americans hostage. In this photograph from November 13, 1979, demonstrators inside the embassy burn an effigy of Uncle Sam, a reference to the CIA visible on one arm.

��

How did Carter put into practice his commitment to human rights, and when and why did this commitment give way to other priorities?

Conclusion: How did the constraints of the 1970s reshape U.S. policy and politics? American military and economic might suffered severe blows in the 1970s. Defeat in Vietnam did not make the United States the “pitiful, helpless giant” predicted by Nixon, but it did signify a relative decline of U.S. power and the impossibility of containment on a global scale. Overestimating the effectiveness of American technological superiority, U.S. officials badly misjudged the tenacity of a revolutionary movement determined to achieve national independence, and they failed to realize how easily the United States could be perceived as an imperial intruder.

There would be other setbacks — both domestic and geopolitical — in the 1970s, ranging from the Watergate scandal to the Iran hostage crisis. The Vietnam War created deep political fractures and a distrust of the federal government that would linger long after. Large military outlays led to budget deficits, triggering inflation and contributing to ongoing economic crises. Energy shortages and spikes in gasoline prices, along with stagflation in the 1970s announced a decisive end to post–World War II prosperity. Americans chafed against this new age of limits. Some, including a good number of traditional Democrats, responded by voting down taxes, withdrawing their support for sixties-era social welfare programs, and moving rightward in their politics.

Chapter Review

��

Berlin Wall Cuban missile crisis Agent Orange Tet Offensive détente Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) My Lai massacre Pentagon Papers War Powers Act “silent majority” Watergate National Energy Act of 1978 Camp David accords Iran hostage crisis

�� The Vietnam War

How were Kennedy’s decisions with respect to Vietnam shaped by the Cold War?

Why did Johnson disregard those advisers who urged him to disengage from Vietnam, and what led him instead to escalate U.S. involvement?

The Conservative Turn

What combination of developments contributed to a Republican victory in 1968, and which were the most important?

What aspects of Nixon’s domestic agenda appealed to conservatives? What aspects of his foreign policy might have concerned them?

Governance in the 1970s

What was the political fallout of the Watergate scandal?

Why did Carter campaign as a Washington “outsider”? How did his domestic policies depart from those of recent Democratic administrations?

�� , ��

How did U.S. policies in the 1950s and 1960s help foster the energy crises of the 1970s?

What impact would American dependence on foreign oil have on future U.S. conflicts and commitments abroad?

��

1961 CIA-trained Cuban exiles invade Bay of Pigs. Berlin Wall erected. Kennedy increases military aid to South Vietnam.

1962 Cuban missile crisis unfolds.

1963 United States, Soviet Union, and Great Britain sign limited nuclear test ban treaty. Military leaders overthrow South Vietnam’s premier, Ngo Dinh Diem.

1964 LBJ sends troops to Panama Canal Zone. Gulf of Tonkin Resolution passes.

1965 Johnson orders sustained bombing of North Vietnam. First combat troops sent to Vietnam. U.S. troops invade Dominican Republic. First major demonstration against Vietnam War draws 20,000.

1967 Israel wins vast territory in Six-Day War.

1968 Tet Offensive launched. Johnson decides not to seek second term.

Peace negotiations begin in Paris. Antigovernment protests erupt around globe. Student strike closes down Columbia University. Violence breaks out at Democratic convention in Chicago. Richard M. Nixon elected president.

1969 American astronauts land on moon. Nixon launches secret air war in Cambodia. Warren E. Burger appointed chief justice of Supreme Court.

1970 U.S. invades Cambodia. Students killed during antiwar protests at Kent State and Jackson State. Congress terminates Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. Courts-martial proceeds for those involved in My Lai massacre. Inflation and unemployment each hit 6 percent, leading to “stagflation.”

1971 Vietnam veterans demonstrate against war. Portions of Pentagon Papers published by New York Times. U.S. imports exceed exports for first time since World War II.

1972 Nixon visits China and Moscow. U.S. signs arms limitation treaties with Soviets. Watergate scandal begins. Nixon reelected in landslide victory.

1973 Paris Peace Accords end U.S. fighting in Vietnam. CIA backs military coup in Chile. Arab oil embargo follows Yom Kippur War. War Powers Act passes. U.S. faces first energy crisis. Vice President Agnew resigns.

1974 Violence greets court-ordered busing in Boston. Nixon resigns; Vice President Gerald Ford becomes president. Ford pardons Nixon. Federal Election Campaign Act passes.

1975 North Vietnam seizes Saigon; U.S. evacuates. Helsinki accords signed.

1976 James Earl “Jimmy” Carter Jr. elected president.

1977 United States signs Panama Canal treaty.

1978 Regents of the University of California v. Bakke upholds affirmative action. Proposition 13 passes in California. Congress deregulates airline industry. National Energy Act passes.

1979 Major energy crisis hits. Carter recognizes leftist Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Camp David accords signed. United States establishes formal diplomatic relations with China. Soviet Union invades Afghanistan. Iranian hostage crisis begins.

1980 Congress deregulates banking, trucking, and railroad industries. Inflation rate surpasses 13 percent. Superfund legislation signed. Hostage rescue mission fails.

�� 30 �� 1980–2000

�� This chapter will explore the following questions:

What conservative goals were realized during Reagan’s presidency? What strategies did liberals use to fight the conservative turn? Why did the Cold War intensify, and how did it end? What led to increased political polarization in the 1990s? How did Clinton respond to the challenges of globalization? Conclusion: What were the legacies of the “Reagan Revolution”?

�� ONE OF THE “MOST EXCITING DAYS” OF PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY’S LIFE WAS hearing Barry Goldwater address the Federation of Republican Women in 1963. In line with other conservatives in that decade, Schlafly insisted that the United States needed not simply to contain communism but to eliminate it. She also wanted to shrink the federal government, especially its role in providing social welfare and enforcing civil rights. In the 1970s, however, Schlafly added new social and cultural issues to the conservative docket, cultivating a grassroots movement that would redefine the Republican Party and American politics well into the twenty-first century.

Phyllis Stewart was born in St. Louis in 1924, attended Catholic schools, and worked her way through Washington University testing ammunition at a World War II defense plant. After earning a master’s degree in government from Radcliffe College, she worked at the American Enterprise Institute, where she imbibed the think tank’s conservatism. Returning to the Midwest, she married Illinois attorney Fred Schlafly and bore six children, commenting, “I don’t think there’s anything as much fun as taking care of a baby.”

While insisting that tending a family was women’s most important career, Schlafly spent much of her time writing or on the road leading Republican women’s organizations and testifying before legislative committees. She ran twice, unsuccessfully, for Congress. In 1964, she

wrote A Choice Not an Echo, a book promoting Barry Goldwater for president that sold more than three million copies. In 1967, she began publishing a monthly political affairs newsletter, the Phyllis Schlafly Report.

In the 1970s, Schlafly began to champion the concerns of Christian conservatives, who had mobilized against rapid changes in family life and gender roles. She spoke out against abortion, homosexuality, and sexual permissiveness, calling for a larger role for religion and traditional morality in public life. Schlafly’s ideas resonated with many who opposed sixties-era liberalism, traveling all the way to the White House with Ronald Reagan in 1980.

As president, Reagan addressed the priorities of the traditional right by cutting taxes, government regulations, and social programs, and by strengthening the military. He also embraced much of the conservative cultural agenda. Although he faced resistance from feminists, civil rights groups, and environmentalists, Reagan’s popularity and policies shifted the entire political spectrum rightward — evident in the campaigns of centrist “new Democrats” and in many initiatives of the Clinton administration during the 1990s.

Another priority of Schlafly’s, resisting communism, took a surprising turn in the late 1980s, thanks to a changing situation in the USSR and bold moves by Reagan and his Soviet counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev. Eastern bloc countries threw off communism with no crackdown from the Soviet leader. Shortly thereafter, the Soviet Union itself was

dissolved, leading Reagan’s successor, George H. W. Bush, to proclaim the arrival of a “new world order.”

Yet culture wars at home and new wars abroad marked the 1990s. United States contended with the challenges of globalization, ethnic conflict, and terrorism, while hampered by a polarized electorate and an increasingly deadlocked political system.

What conservative goals were realized during Reagan’s presidency? Ronald Reagan’s inauguration day was marked by the release of the American hostages in Iran and by the new president’s pronouncement, after a decade of economic and global decline, that “we’re too great a nation to limit ourselves to small dreams.” Reagan’s election in 1980 marked the most important turning point in American politics since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s election in 1932. His victory established conservatism’s dominance in the Republican Party, while Democrats adapted by moving toward the right. The United States was not alone in this political shift. Conservatives rose to power in Britain with the election of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and in Germany, Canada, and Sweden as well. Social democratic governments elsewhere trimmed their welfare states.

The Reagan administration embraced the values of the New Christian Right but left its most important mark on the economy: controlling inflation, deregulating industry, slashing taxes, and generating a staggering federal budget deficit. A fascination with finance and large fortunes characterized popular culture in the 1980s, but poverty increased and economic inequality grew. Although the Reagan era did not see a policy revolution comparable to that of the New Deal, it dealt a strong blow to the once-dominant liberal agenda, fostering antigovernment sentiment and sharply reversing the course of American politics.

Appealing to the New Right and Beyond Sixty-nine-year-old Ronald Reagan was the oldest candidate ever nominated for the presidency as well as the first divorcé and former union leader (of the Screen Actors Guild). Gaining national attention first as a movie actor, Reagan was a New Deal Democrat until the 1950s, when he shed that affiliation and became a critic of the liberal state and a national spokesperson for General Electric and free enterprise.

A fervent anti-Communist and prominent supporter of Barry Goldwater in 1964, Reagan’s own political career took off when he was elected governor of California in 1966 (see chapter 28). Reagan ran as a conservative, but in office he displayed flexibility, approving a major tax increase, a strong water pollution bill, and a liberal abortion law. He displayed similar agility in 1980, softening his attacks on Social Security, public school funding, and assistance to the poor and choosing the moderate George H. W. Bush as his running mate.

Reagan campaigned in favor of states’ rights and against school busing, affirmative action, and welfare fraud — a set of issues sparked by civil rights gains and that had rallied Republicans since the Nixon years. Although not particularly religious himself, Reagan’s campaign revealed the growing clout of the Christian Right and its emphasis on traditional morality and family structures. Indeed, some Republicans balked at his nomination and the party platform. After Phyllis Schlafly persuaded the party to reverse its forty-year support for the Equal Rights Amendment,

moderate and liberal Republicans protested outside the convention hall. Moderate John B. Anderson, congressman from Illinois, deserted his party to run as an independent.

Reagan’s campaign capitalized on the economic recession and the loss of U.S. prestige in the world symbolized by the Iran hostage crisis. Reagan asked voters, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” He promised to “take government off the backs of the people” and to restore Americans’ morale and other nations’ respect. Not only did Reagan win the election, but Republicans also took control of the Senate for the first time since the 1950s.

Reagan’s victory was a triumph for the grassroots conservative movement that emerged in the 1960s. That movement grew with the politicization of religious conservatives, predominantly Protestants who traditionally had refrained from partisan politics and who came to be known as the New Christian Right. During the 1970s, evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity claimed thousands of new adherents, while mainstream Protestant congregations waned. Evangelical ministers such as Pat Robertson preached to huge television audiences, attacking feminism, abortion, and homosexuality and calling for the restoration of old-fashioned “family values.” A considerable number of Catholics, such as Phyllis Schlafly, shared this goal, speaking out against court rulings and legislation that seemed to favor moral permissiveness and undermine traditional religious beliefs.

Conservative political organizations such as the Moral Majority, launched by the Reverend Jerry Falwell in 1979, fought “left-wing, social welfare bills, … pornography, homosexuality, [and] the advocacy of immorality in school textbooks.” Dr. James Dobson, a psychologist who hosted a popular Christian talk show, founded the Family Research Council in 1983 to lobby Congress for measures to curb abortion, divorce, homosexuality, and single motherhood. The monthly Phyllis Schlafly Report helped merge these concerns with the traditional conservative platform of limited government at home and militant anticommunism abroad.

Reagan endorsed the positions of the Christian Right on issues such as abortion and school prayer, but he did not push hard for so-called moral policies. His major achievements instead fulfilled goals of the older right — strengthening the nation’s anti-Communist posture and reducing taxes and restraints on free enterprise while attacking “big government” through his rhetoric and his policies. “Government,” Reagan declared in his inaugural address, “is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

Ronald Reagan Addresses Religious Conservatives Reagan’s victory in 1980 helped to reshape the Republican Party by attracting millions of evangelical Christians to its ranks. In his 1983 address to the National Association of Evangelicals, Reagan called the Soviet Union an “evil empire” and appealed to religious conservatives with strong words about abortion and prayer in the schools, rejoicing that “America is in the midst of a spiritual awakening and a moral renewal.”

Reagan, known as “the Great Communicator,” was a popular figure, appealing even to Americans who opposed his policies but warmed to his optimism, charisma, and easygoing humor. Ignoring the darker moments of the American past, he presented a version of U.S. history that its citizens could feel good about. Proclaiming that “the era of self-doubt is over,” he reassured his fellow citizens that it was “morning in America.”

Unleashing Free Enterprise Reagan faced economic problems that had challenged the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations alike: slow growth, stagflation, and a ballooning trade deficit. His proposed solution was to reduce government intervention, oversight, and spending. He hoped to stimulate the economy by cutting taxes and deregulating industry.

Reagan regarded taxation as a form of theft that prevented Americans from keeping what they had rightfully earned. His first domestic initiative, despite a large budget deficit, was a massive tax cut. To justify it, Reagan relied on a new theory called supply-side economics, which held that lowering taxes would actually increase revenue. In theory, businesses would expand, and individuals would work harder because they could keep more of their earnings. The resulting increase in production of goods and services — the supply — would in turn boost demand. Reagan promised that the economy would grow so much that the government would recoup the lost taxes. Instead, it incurred a galloping deficit.

In the summer of 1981, Congress passed the Economic Recovery Tax Act, the largest tax reduction in U.S. history. Rates were cut from 14 percent to 11 percent for the lowest-income individuals and from 70 percent to 50 percent for the wealthiest, who also benefited from reduced levies on corporations, capital gains, gifts, and inheritances. A second measure, the Tax Reform Act of 1986, cut taxes still further. Although the 1986 law narrowed loopholes used primarily by the wealthy, affluent Americans

saved far more on their tax bills than did average taxpayers, and the distribution of wealth tipped further in favor of the rich.

Rolling back regulations on business was another of Reagan’s priorities. Carter had deregulated a number of industries, such as air transportation and banking, while increasing health, safety, and environmental regulations. The Reagan administration, by contrast, pursued across-the-board deregulation. It declined to enforce the Sherman Antitrust Act (see chapter 18), which limited monopolies, allowing an unprecedented number of business mergers and takeovers.

Reagan also loosened regulations protecting employee health and safety, and he weakened labor unions. When members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization — one of the few unions to support Reagan in 1980 — struck in 1981, the president fired them, destroying the union and intimidating organized labor.

Reagan targeted environmental laws, blaming them for the nation’s sluggish economic growth. His first secretary of the interior, James Watt, announced, “We will mine more, drill more, cut more timber,” as he released federal lands to private exploitation. Meanwhile, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency relaxed enforcement of air and water pollution standards. Of environmentalists, Reagan wisecracked, “I don’t think they’ll be happy until the White House looks like a bird’s nest.” Their numbers grew in opposition to his policies, with popular support for environmental protection forcing several officials to resign and blocking full realization of Reagan’s deregulatory goals.

Deregulation of the banking industry, begun under Carter with bipartisan support, created a crisis in the savings and loan (S&L) industry. Some of the newly deregulated S&L institutions extended enormous loans to real estate developers and invested in other high-yield but risky ventures. The lenders reaped lavish profits, and their depositors enjoyed high interest rates. But when real estate values plunged, hundreds of S&Ls went bankrupt, resulting in the largest financial scandal in U.S. history. The government bailout of the industry in 1989 cost American taxpayers more than $100 billion, deepening the federal deficit.

Reagan entered the White House with a pledge to reverse what he billed as the failed and expensive initiatives of the Great Society. Although his proposals to overhaul Social Security were overwhelmingly rejected by Congress, his administration made good on its promise to roll back other social welfare programs. Reagan cut funds for food stamps, job training, and student aid, which critics condemned as a “war on the poor,” and which led to hundreds of thousands of people losing benefits. Increases in defense spending, however, far exceeded the budget savings and, along with the tax cuts, caused the deficit to soar. The nation’s debt tripled to $2.3 trillion, with interest payments on the debt consuming one-seventh of all federal expenditures. Despite Reagan’s antigovernment rhetoric, both the federal budget and the number of federal employees increased during his presidency.

It took the severest recession since the 1930s to reduce inflation in the U.S. economy. Unemployment approached 11 percent late in 1982, and record numbers of banks and businesses closed. The threat of joblessness further

undermined organized labor, forcing unions to make concessions that management insisted were necessary for industry’s survival.

In 1983, the economy recovered and entered a period of unprecedented growth. That economic upswing and Reagan’s own popularity posed a formidable challenge to the Democrats in the 1984 election. They nominated Carter’s vice president, Walter F. Mondale, to head the ticket, but even his precedent-breaking choice of a woman as his running mate — New York representative Geraldine A. Ferraro — did not save the Democrats from a humiliating defeat. Reagan charged his opponents with a fixation on America’s failures. Democrats, he claimed, “see an America where every day is April 15th,” the deadline for income tax returns, whereas “we see an America where every day is the Fourth of July.” Reagan was reelected in a landslide victory, winning 59 percent of the popular vote and every state but Mondale’s Minnesota.

Winners and Losers in a Flourishing Economy After the economy recovered in 1983, some Americans won great fortunes. Money making and lavish displays of wealth were splashed across popular culture. Books by business gurus topped best-seller lists, and a new television show, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, drew large audiences. College students ranked making money as a primary ambition.

Many of the newly wealthy got rich not from producing goods but from moving assets around by manipulating debt and restructuring corporations

through mergers and takeovers. Notable exceptions included Steve Jobs, who invented the Apple computer in his garage, and Bill Gates, who transformed the software industry with his company Microsoft. Most financial wizards operated within the law, but the 1980s also witnessed a series of criminal convictions for fraud and insider trading.

Older industries faced global pressures. German and Japanese corporations overtook U.S. manufacturing in steel, automobiles, and electronics. International competition forced the collapse of some companies, while others moved factories and jobs abroad to be closer to foreign markets or to benefit from low-wage labor in Mexico or Korea. Service industries expanded, creating new jobs at home, but with substantially lower paychecks. The number of full-time workers earning wages below the poverty level ($12,195 for a family of four in 1990) rose from 12 percent to 18 percent of all workers in the 1980s.

The weakening of organized labor combined with the decline in manufacturing to erode the position of blue-collar workers. Chicago steelworker Ike Mazo, who contemplated the $6-an-hour jobs available to him, fumed, “It’s an attack on the living standards of workers.” Increasingly, a second income was needed to stave off economic decline. By 1990, nearly 60 percent of married women with young children worked outside the home. Yet even with two incomes, families struggled. The gap between men’s and women’s annual earnings — an average of $10,000 — made things even harder for female-headed families, which made up nearly 20 percent of all households in the 1980s.

In keeping with conservative philosophy, Reagan adhered to “trickle-down” economics, insisting that the benefits of a booming economy would be passed along from the wealthiest to everyone else. Average personal income rose during his tenure, but the trend toward greater economic inequality that had begun in the 1970s intensified in the 1980s, in part because of Reagan’s tax policies. During his presidency, the percentage of Americans living in poverty increased from 11.7 to 13.5, the highest poverty rate in the industrialized world, and homelessness climbed dramatically. Social Security and Medicare helped to stave off destitution among the elderly. Less fortunate were other groups that the economic boom bypassed: racial minorities, female-headed families, and children, one in five of whom lived in poverty.

��

What factors led to increased economic inequality during the 1980s?

What strategies did liberals use to fight the conservative turn? Liberal social movements were on the defensive in the 1980s as the government retreated from a commitment to equal opportunity, a shift reflected in Reagan’s federal court appointments. Feminists and minority groups fought to retain protections they had recently won, while the gay and lesbian rights movement made some gains.

Battles in the Courts and Congress Ronald Reagan agreed with conservatives that the nation had moved too far in guaranteeing rights to minority groups. Crying “reverse discrimination,” conservatives maintained that affirmative action harmed whites, ignoring evidence that minorities and white women still lagged far behind white men in both opportunities and income. Black labor leader Cleveland Robinson pointed to the difficulty of achieving equal opportunity in a faltering economy, calling full employment “the basic ingredient of successful affirmative action.” Without it, “you will have both blacks and whites fighting for the same job.”

Intense mobilization by civil rights groups, educational leaders, labor, and even corporate America prevented the administration from abandoning affirmative action, and the Supreme Court upheld important antidiscrimination policies. Against Reagan’s wishes, Congress extended the Voting Rights Act with veto-proof majorities. The administration, however, limited civil rights enforcement by appointing conservatives to the

Justice Department, the Civil Rights Commission, and other agencies, as well as by slashing their budgets.

Congress stepped in to defend antidiscrimination programs after the Justice Department persuaded the Supreme Court to severely weaken Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, a key law promoting equal opportunity in education. In 1988, Congress passed the Civil Rights Restoration Act over Reagan’s veto, banning government funding for any organization that practiced discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, disability, or age.

Liberals had once counted upon the federal judiciary as a powerful ally, but the courts were trending toward the right in the 1980s. With the opportunity to appoint half of the 761 federal court judges and three new Supreme Court justices, President Reagan remade the courts with carefully selected candidates who were both younger and more conservative than the federal judiciary as a whole. The full impact of these appointments became clear after Reagan left office, as the Court allowed states to impose restrictions that weakened access to abortion for poor and rural women, reduced protections against employment discrimination, and whittled down legal safeguards against the death penalty.

The Abortion Debate Starting in the late 1970s, the religious right pressured states to enact restrictions on abortion. In 1989, the Supreme Court upheld a Missouri law prohibiting public employees from performing abortions except to save a woman’s life. The law also banned abortions in public buildings and required physicians to perform viability tests on the fetus after twenty weeks. In this photograph, activists on both sides rally before the Supreme Court.

Feminism on the Defensive A signal achievement of the New Right was capturing the Republican Party’s position on women’s rights. For the first time in its history, the party took an explicitly antifeminist tone, opposing the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and abortion rights, key goals of the women’s movement (see chapter 28). When the time limit for ratification of the ERA ran out in 1982, Phyllis Schlafly and her followers celebrated the defeat of this central feminist objective.

Regrouping, feminists in the 1980s focused more on women’s economic and family issues. They found some common ground with the Reagan administration, securing legislation that helped single and divorced mothers collect court-ordered child support payments from absent fathers. Other legislation strengthened women’s claims to their husbands’ pensions and made it easier for them to qualify for private retirement pensions.

By 1980, American women comprised more than 40 percent of the U.S. workforce, and activists debated how best to remedy persistent gender inequality. With new career paths open to them, women were told that they could “have it all”: satisfying work and family lives both. Yet typically paid less than their male counterparts — and responsible for the majority of housework and child rearing, with little in the way of parental leave or subsidized day care — professional women began to point to an unrealistic “superwoman” image in American society. Working-class women and divorced or single mothers faced different problems, finding themselves more vulnerable financially as the government safety net was trimmed. Given their higher poverty rates than men, women suffered most from Reagan’s cuts in social programs.

Reagan’s advisers had their own concerns about women, specifically about the gender gap in voting: women’s tendency to support liberal and Democratic candidates in larger numbers than did men. Reagan appointed three women to cabinet posts. In 1981, he selected the first woman, Sandra Day O’Connor, a moderate conservative, for the Supreme Court, despite the Christian Right’s objection to her support of abortion. But overall, the

number of women and minorities in high-level government positions declined.

Although the Reagan administration threw its weight behind abortion restrictions, feminists fought successfully to retain the basic principles of Roe v. Wade, supported by narrow majorities on the Supreme Court. They won a key victory from the Court in Meritor v. Vinson (1986), which ruled that sexual harassment severe or pervasive enough to create a “hostile work environment” constituted sex discrimination. Feminists also made some gains at the state level on such issues as pay equity, rape, and domestic violence.

The Gay and Lesbian Rights Movement In contrast to other social movements, gay and lesbian rights activism expanded during the 1980s. Activists were galvanized in part by the discovery in 1981 of a devastating disease, acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), which initially affected gay men disproportionately. Wary of provoking religious conservatives, Reagan refused to prioritize the epidemic or to devote public health resources to combat it. Outraged activists took to the streets to demand AIDS education, prevention, and treatment. Groups like the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), which formed in 1987, successfully pressured Congress to allocate funding to fight the disease.

Since the 1970s, the gay and lesbian rights movement had encouraged closeted homosexuals to “come out,” and their visibility increased awareness, if not always acceptance, of homosexuality. Several openly gay politicians won offices, and Democrats began to include gay rights in their party platforms. Activists organized gay rights marches throughout the country, turning out half a million people in New York City in 1987.

Popular attitudes about homosexuality moved toward greater tolerance but remained complex, leading to uneven changes in policies. Dozens of cities banned job discrimination against homosexuals, and beginning with Wisconsin in 1982, some states made sexual orientation a protected category under civil rights laws. Local governments and large corporations began to offer health insurance and other benefits to same-sex domestic partners.

Yet a strong countermovement challenged the drive for gay rights. The Christian Right targeted gays and lesbians as symbols of national immorality, with some fundamentalists even describing the AIDS epidemic as “the wrath of God upon homosexuals.” Conservatives succeeded in overturning some homosexual rights measures, which already lagged far behind protections for women and minorities. Many states removed anti- sodomy laws from the books, but in 1986, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of such laws, ruling that the right to privacy did not extend to homosexuals because their sexual behavior had “no connection” to “family, marriage, or procreation.” Until the Court reversed that opinion in 2003, more than a dozen states retained statutes that left homosexuals vulnerable to criminal charges for private consensual behavior.

��

How did the prospects for progressive reform change during the Reagan years?

Why did the Cold War intensify, and how did it end? Reagan accelerated Carter’s arms buildup and harshly censured the Soviet Union, calling it “an evil empire.” On the periphery of the Cold War, Reagan also practiced militant anticommunism, assisting anti-leftist movements in Asia, Africa, and Central America and dispatching troops to the Middle East and the Caribbean. Despite this new aggressiveness — or, some argued, because of it — Reagan presided over the most impressive thaw in superpower conflict since the Cold War had begun.

Militarization and Interventions Abroad A fierce critic of containment, détente, and arms reduction talks, Reagan insisted on an unyielding stance against communism. He expanded the military with new bombers and missiles, an enhanced nuclear force in Europe, a larger navy, and a rapid-deployment force. Casting aside the established principle of “mutually assured destruction” as well as scientists’ skepticism, Reagan proposed developing a space-based shield that would protect the United States from missile attacks. During his presidency, defense spending averaged $216 billion a year, up from $158 billion in the Carter years and higher even than in the Vietnam era.

Reagan justified the military buildup as a means to negotiate with the Soviets. But his policy of “peace through strength” provoked an outburst of pleas to halt the arms race. In 1982, 700,000 people marched in New York

City to demand a “nuclear freeze,” making it the largest political demonstration in U.S. history. That same year the National Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a call for nuclear disarmament. Hundreds of thousands protested across Europe, stimulated by fears of new U.S. missiles scheduled for deployment there in 1983. People marched even in the Soviet Union, where they passed the U.S. Embassy to make sure that news of their demonstration could not be censored. A new wave of domestic anxiety about the nuclear threat was evident in the blockbuster television film The Day After, which aired on ABC in 1983. More than one hundred million tuned in to watch a harrowing fictional portrayal of the aftermath of a nuclear attack on American soil, including graphic portrayals of radiation sickness.

The revived arms race was only one of Americans’ concerns on the world stage. Another was the growing threat of terrorism by nonstate organizations that sought to achieve political objectives by attacking civilian populations. Terrorism had a long history, but in the 1970s and 1980s, Americans saw it escalate among groups hostile to Israel and Western policies. In 1972, after the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Palestinian terrorists murdered eleven Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. The terrorist organization Hezbollah, composed of Shiite Muslims and backed by Iran and Syria, arose in Lebanon in 1982, after Israeli forces invaded to stop the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from using sanctuaries in Lebanon to launch attacks on Israel.

Reagan’s effort to stabilize Lebanon by sending two thousand Marines to join an international peacekeeping mission failed. In 1983, a suicide attack

on the U.S. Embassy in Beirut killed sixty-three people; later that year, a Hezbollah fighter drove an explosives-filled truck into a U.S. barracks there, killing 241 Marines. The attack prompted the withdrawal of U.S. troops, signaling that political violence could affect U.S. policy. Lebanon remained in chaos, while incidents of murder, kidnapping, and hijacking by various Middle Eastern extremist groups continued.

Following a familiar Cold War script, the Reagan administration sought to contain leftist movements across the globe. In October 1983, five thousand U.S. troops invaded Grenada (Map 30.1), a small Caribbean nation where Marxists had staged a successful coup. In Asia, the United States covertly aided the Afghan rebels’ war against Afghanistan’s Soviet-backed government. In the African nation of Angola, where the government had ties to the Soviet Union and Cuba, the United States armed rebel forces. Reagan also stood with the South African government, despite its brutal suppression of black protest against apartheid, forcing Congress to override his veto to impose economic sanctions.

MAP 30.1 U.S. Involvement in Latin America and the Caribbean, 1954–1994

During the Cold War, the United States frequently intervened — directly or indirectly — in Central American and Caribbean countries to suppress Communist or leftist movements.

Description “The map shows the following data:

Havana in Cuba: Castro ousts dictator Batista, 1959; C I A-backed Cuban exiles launch unsuccessful invasion at Bay of Pigs, 1961 Cuban missile crisis; U.S. blockades Cuba, 1962.

Haiti: Military coup ousts President Aristide, 1991.

U. S. troops oversee peaceful return of Aristide to power, 1994.

Santo Domingo in Dominican Republic: U. S. troops invade to prevent leftist takeover, 1965.

Grenada: U. S. troops invade to thwart leftist coup, 1983.

Panama: U. S. troops quell anti-American rioting in Canal Zone, 1964; 1977 treaty provides for joint U. S.- Panama control of Canal Zone until 2000, when Panama assumes control U.S. troops invade, capturing dictator Noriega, 1989.

Managua in Nicaragua: Somoza regime overthrown; Sandinistas come to power, 1979; U. S. backed Contra rebels and Sandinistas fight civil war, 1979 to 1989; Sandinistas defeated in elections; coalition government comes to power, 1990.

San Salvador in El Salvador: U. S. sends money and military advisers to aid government against leftist uprising, 1980s.

Guatemala: U. S. backed coup overthrows Arbenz socialist government, 1954.”

The Iran-Contra Scandal Administration officials were most fearful of left-wing movements in Central America, which Reagan claimed could “destabilize the entire region from the Panama Canal to Mexico.” When a leftist uprising occurred in El Salvador in 1981, the United States sent money and military advisers to prop up the authoritarian government. In neighboring Nicaragua (see Map 30.1), the administration funneled aid to the Contras, an armed coalition seeking to unseat the left-wing Sandinistas, who had toppled a long- standing dictatorship.

Fearing being drawn into another Vietnam, many Americans opposed U.S. involvement with reactionary forces not supported by the majority of Nicaraguans. Congress repeatedly instructed the president to halt aid to the Contras. But the administration, describing the Contras as “freedom fighters,” quietly continued to supply them with weapons and training.

Eventually, it also helped to wreck Nicaragua’s economy and unseat its president.

Secret aid to the Contras was part of a larger project that came to be known as the Iran-Contra scandal. It began in 1985, when officials of the National Security Council and the CIA covertly arranged to sell arms to Iran, then in the midst of an eight-year war with neighboring Iraq, even while the United States openly supplied Iraq with funds and weapons. The purpose was to get Iran to pressure Hezbollah to release American hostages being held in Lebanon.

Profits from the arms sales were then channeled through Swiss bank accounts to aid the Nicaraguan Contras. Over the objections of his secretaries of state and defense, Reagan approved the arms sales to Iran, but all three subsequently denied knowing that the proceeds were diverted to the Contras. When news of the affair surfaced in November 1986, the Reagan administration faced serious charges. The president’s aides had defied Congress’s express ban on military aid to the Contras.

Investigations by an independent prosecutor led to a trial in which seven individuals pleaded guilty or were convicted of lying to Congress and destroying evidence. (One conviction was later overturned on a technicality; President George H. W. Bush pardoned the other six officials.) The independent prosecutor’s final report found no evidence that Reagan had broken the law, but it concluded that he had known about the diversion of funds to the Contras and had “knowingly participated or at least acquiesced” in covering up the scandal.

Soviet-American Relations Transformed The Iran-Contra scandal was soon overshadowed by a momentous reduction in Cold War tensions. The surprising new Soviet-American accord depended both on Reagan’s flexibility and profound desire to end the possibility of nuclear war and on an innovative Soviet head of state who recognized that his country’s domestic problems demanded an easing of Cold War antagonism.

When Mikhail Gorbachev assumed power in the Soviet Union in 1985, he was determined to reform a collapsing economy incapable of satisfying basic consumer needs. The new Soviet leader lifted some economic regulations and also proclaimed an era of glasnost (greater freedom of expression), eventually allowing contested elections and challenges to Communist rule. In time, these steps would dramatically alter the Soviet Union’s government and economy.

Concerns about skyrocketing defense budgets brought both Reagan and Gorbachev to the negotiating table. Enormous military spending stood in the way of Gorbachev’s goal of economic revival. Heeding growing calls for arms reductions, Reagan made disarmament a major goal in his last years in office and readily responded when Gorbachev took the initiative. The two developed a rapport, agreeing to meet four times between 1985 and 1988. Reagan had to fend off criticism from the anti-Communist right, but by December 1987, the superpowers had completed an intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) agreement, a major turning point in U.S.-Soviet

relations. The treaty eliminated all short- and medium-range missiles from Europe and provided for on-site inspection for the first time. It was also the first time that either nation had agreed to eliminate weapons already in place.

Beginning his presidency with a harsh posture toward the Soviet Union and a huge military buildup, Reagan left office having moved the two superpowers to the highest level of cooperation since the Cold War began. Reagan’s national security adviser, Colin L. Powell, reflected in 1988, “Up until now, as a soldier, my mission had been to confront, contain, and, if necessary, combat communism. Now I had to think about a world without a Cold War.”

Powell’s sense that Gorbachev’s policies would transform the Cold War became a reality more quickly than anyone anticipated. In 1988, Gorbachev further reduced tensions by announcing a gradual withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Soviet equivalent of America’s Vietnam. In addition, the Soviet Union, the United States, and Cuba agreed on a political settlement of the civil war in Angola. In the Middle East, both superpowers supported a cease-fire and peace talks in the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq.

Within three years, the Cold War that had defined the world for nearly half a century would be history. In 1989, the progressive forces that Gorbachev had encouraged in the Communist world swept through Eastern Europe, where popular uprisings demanded an end to authoritarian states and inefficient economic bureaucracies. Communist governments toppled like dominoes (Map 30.2), virtually without bloodshed, Gorbachev refusing to

prop them up with Soviet armies. East Germany opened its border with West Germany, and in November 1989, ecstatic Germans danced on the Berlin Wall.

MAP 30.2 Events in Eastern Europe, 1985–1995

The overthrow of Communist governments throughout Eastern Europe and the splintering of the Soviet Union into more than a dozen separate nations were among the most momentous developments in world history in the twentieth century.

Description “The map shows the following data:

Republics of the former Soviet Union: Russia (Gorbachev comes to power, 1985; Moscow coup fails and USSR dissolves, August 1991); Kazakhstan; Turkmenistan; Uzbekistan; Tajikistan; Kyrgyzstan; Latvia; Estonia; Lithuania; Belarus; Moldova; Georgia; Armenia; and Azerbaijan.

Commonwealth of Independent States: The borders of Russia and further south along Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. It also included Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.

Other Communist regimes overthrown since 1989: Poland (Solidarity Party wins elections, June 1989); East Germany (Berlin Wall falls, November 1989; East and West Germany reunited, October 1990); Czechoslovakia (Communist leadership ousted, November 1989; Vaclav Havel named president, December 1989; Splits into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, 1993); Hungary (Free elections sweep non- Communists into power, April 1990); Romania (Communist dictator overthrown and executed, December1989; Salvation Front wins elections, May 1990); Bulgaria (Communist leader ousted, November 1989; Free elections held, August 1990); Yugoslavia (Dissolves in civil war, 1991; Truce, 1995).”

Unification of East and West Germany was accomplished in 1990. Soon Poland, Hungary, and other former iron curtain countries lined up to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Eight former Soviet satellites joined the European Union and the common economic market. Inspired by the liberation of Eastern Europe, republics within the Soviet Union soon established their own independence. With nothing left to govern, Gorbachev resigned. The Soviet Union itself dissolved in 1991, and with it, the Cold War conflict that had governed U.S. foreign policy for decades.

A “New World Order” President George H. W. Bush, elected in 1988 after serving eight years as Reagan’s vice president, cheered the dramatic events that ended the Cold War as a victory for the United States. The contest between the free and Communist worlds, it appeared, was finally settled. Bush declared the dawn of a “new world order,” while Democrats called for a “peace dividend,”

arguing that the nation could now cut back on its defense spending. But ongoing turmoil in Latin America and the Middle East, along with a new war in the Persian Gulf, dashed hopes that an era of democracy and world peace was at hand.

The United States emerged from the Cold War as the sole superpower at a moment when liberalizing tides seemed to be sweeping the globe. In the early 1990s, democracy came not just to Eastern Europe but also to South Africa, where apartheid was finally defeated. In 1994, voters elected the country’s first black president, Nelson Mandela.

Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, joked that he was “running out of villains. I’m down to Castro and Kim Il-sung,” referring to the leaders of Cuba and North Korea. Both were still Communist dictatorships, with the latter committed to developing nuclear weapons. China too remained a Communist regime, and in 1989, when thousands of pro-democracy students demonstrated in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, the government responded with a brutal crackdown. Chinese soldiers killed hundreds of protesters, and some ten thousand reformers were arrested.

As American leaders would learn, the end of the Cold War brought new instabilities even as old threats receded. In 1990, the United States and the Soviet Union signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) treaty, which cut about 30 percent of each superpower’s nuclear arsenal. In 1996, the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a total nuclear test ban treaty. Yet India and Pakistan, hostile neighbors, refused to sign the treaty, and both exploded atomic devices in 1998. The Republican-

controlled U.S. Senate defeated ratification of the treaty. “The post–Cold War world is decidedly not post-nuclear,” declared one U.S. official. The potential for rogue nations and terrorist groups to develop nuclear weapons posed an ongoing threat.

War in Central America and the Persian Gulf The United States in the Bush years did not hesitate to exercise its military power near its borders. In Central America, U.S. officials had supported Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, an anti-Communist. But in 1989, Noriega was indicted for drug trafficking, and his troops killed an American Marine, leading Bush to order twenty-five thousand military personnel into Panama (see Map 30.1) to capture him. U.S. forces quickly overcame Noriega’s troops, at the cost of killing hundreds of Panamanians, including many civilians. Both the United Nations and the Organization of American States condemned the unilateral action by the United States.

Bush’s second military engagement, by contrast, rested solidly on international approval. Viewing Iran as America’s major enemy in the Middle East, U.S. officials had quietly assisted the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war from 1980 until its end in 1988. In 1990, struggling with an enormous war debt, Hussein invaded the small country of Kuwait, moving his troops near the Saudi Arabian border. Faced with this threat to the world’s largest oil reserves, President Bush ordered a massive military mobilization and assembled an international coalition to stand up to Iraq. Although he invoked principles of national self-

determination and international law, access to Middle Eastern oil was also a key concern.

Reflecting the easing of Cold War tensions, the Soviet Union supported a UN embargo on Iraqi oil and authorization for using force if Iraq did not withdraw from Kuwait by January 15, 1991. By then, the United States had deployed more than 400,000 soldiers to Saudi Arabia, joined by 265,000 troops from two dozen other nations, including several Arab states. “The community of nations has resolutely gathered to condemn and repel lawless aggression,” Bush announced. “With few exceptions, the world now stands as one.”

When the UN-imposed deadline for Iraqi withdrawal expired, Bush asked Congress to approve war. After a three-day debate, Congress gave its authorization, and U.S. forces led a forty-day bombing campaign against Iraqi military targets, power plants, oil refineries, and transportation networks. The coalition then stormed into Kuwait, forcing Iraqi troops to withdraw, although without deposing Hussein. Instead, U.S. leadership extracted a pledge from him not to rearm or develop weapons of mass destruction and to accept a system of UN inspections.

“By God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all,” President Bush exulted when the fighting ended. Most Americans found no moral ambiguity in the Persian Gulf War and took pride in their country’s display of military prowess. With the United States steering a coalition in which Arab nations fought beside their former colonial rulers, the war also seemed to signal a new phase of American global leadership.

Israel, which had endured Iraqi missile attacks, was more secure after the Gulf War, but the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continued to boil. Despite military losses, Hussein remained in power in Iraq and turned his war machine on Iraqi Kurds and Shiite Muslims, whom the United States had encouraged to rebel. Hussein also found ways to conceal arms from UN inspectors, ultimately throwing them out altogether in 1998. And the decision to keep U.S. troops based in Saudi Arabia, the holy land of Islam, fueled the hatred and determination of Muslim extremists like Osama bin Laden. The “new world order” appeared to usher in not order but rather global instability.

��

How did George H. W. Bush respond to threats to U.S. interests as the Cold War came to an end?

What led to increased political polarization in the 1990s? Compared to the dramatic global developments of the late 1980s and early 1990s, President Bush’s domestic record was uneventful. He proposed few initiatives of his own, although he signed significant environmental and disability rights legislation. Bush grappled with economic and fiscal problems, some of them resulting from Reagan’s policies, but his options were constrained by those in his own party who opposed any new taxes.

His successor, Democrat Bill Clinton, operated in a political climate remade by conservative gains. Public opposition to taxes and federal social programs, a Republican-controlled Congress, and the Democratic Party’s own move to the center hemmed in his domestic agenda. Clinton did not completely abandon liberal principles. He extended benefits for the working poor, delivered incremental reforms to feminists and environmentalists, and spoke out for affirmative action and gay rights. Yet his administration restricted welfare benefits, could not enact health care reform, and was placed on the defensive by the divisive “culture wars” of the 1990s.

Clinton’s two-term presidency witnessed the longest economic boom in history and ended with a budget surplus. Americans identified Clinton with the buoyant economy, elected him to a second term, and supported him even when his reckless sexual behavior led to impeachment, crippling his leadership in his last years in office.

Gridlock in Government The son of a wealthy U.S. senator from New England, George Herbert Walker Bush fought in World War II, served in Congress, and headed the Central Intelligence Agency under Richard Nixon. When Ronald Reagan tapped him for second place on the Republican ticket in 1980, Bush tailored his moderate positions on civil rights, abortion, and the ERA to Reagan’s conservative agenda. At the end of Reagan’s second term, Republicans rewarded him with the presidential nomination.

In the Democratic primaries in 1988, civil rights leader Reverend Jesse Jackson — whose Rainbow Coalition campaign brought together minorities, women, workers, and the poor — won several primaries and seven million votes. But the centrist candidate, Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis, secured the nomination. On election day, Bush won 54 percent of the vote, while the Democrats gained seats in Congress.

Promising “a kinder, gentler nation,” President Bush was more inclined than Reagan to support government activity in the private sphere. In 1990, Bush approved the Clean Air Act, the strongest, most comprehensive environmental law in history.

Some forty million Americans benefited when Bush signed another landmark regulatory measure that year, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), banning discrimination against people with disabilities and requiring that private businesses and public facilities be accessible to them. For Beverly Jones, a court reporter who had lost the use of her legs after an

automobile accident in 1984 and found few courthouses wheelchair- accessible, “the passage of the ADA was like opening a door that had been closed to me for so long.” Although states like Jones’s Tennessee would fight the new requirements, the law proved an important step toward equity for people with disabilities.

Bush also needed to satisfy party conservatives, and he would be haunted by a pledge he made on the campaign trail: “Read my lips: No new taxes.” Bush vetoed thirty-six bills from Congress, including those extending unemployment benefits, raising taxes, and mandating family and medical leave for workers. Press reports increasingly used the words stalemate and divided government.

Continuing a trend begun during the Reagan years, some states compensated for this paralysis with their own innovations. State legislatures enacted laws to establish parental leave policies, improve food labeling, and protect the environment. Dozens of cities passed ordinances requiring businesses receiving tax abatements to pay wages well above the federal minimum. In 1999, California passed a much tougher gun control bill than reformers had been able to get through Congress.

The huge federal budget deficit inherited from Reagan impelled Bush in 1990 to abandon his “no new taxes” pledge, enraging conservatives. The new law modestly raised taxes on high-income Americans and increased levies on gasoline, cigarettes, alcohol, and luxury items, while leaving intact most of Reagan’s massive tax cuts. Neither the new revenues nor controls on spending curbed the deficit, however, which was boosted by

rising costs for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and natural disaster relief.

As had Reagan’s, Bush’s judicial appointments led to a more conservative Supreme Court. His first nominee was a moderate. But in 1991, when the only African American member of the Court, Thurgood Marshall, retired, Bush nominated Clarence Thomas, a conservative black appeals court judge who had opposed affirmative action when he headed the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) under Reagan.

Charging that Thomas would not protect minority rights, civil rights groups and other liberal organizations fought the nomination. Then Anita Hill, a black law professor and former EEOC employee, accused Thomas of sexual harassment. Bitter debates broke out over whom to believe, and how to weigh dueling charges of racial and sexual discrimination — an indication of how deeply the lines of race and sex continued to divide Americans. Thomas angrily denied the accusation, and the Senate voted narrowly to confirm him. The hearings enraged many women, who noted that only two women sat in the Senate and who denounced male politicians for not taking sexual harassment seriously.

The 1992 Election Bush’s popularity after the Gulf War caused the most prominent Democrats to opt out of the presidential race of 1992. But that did not deter William Jefferson “Bill” Clinton, who at age forty-five had served as governor of Arkansas for twelve years. Like Carter in 1976, Clinton and his running

mate, Tennessee senator Albert Gore Jr., presented themselves as “New Democrats.” Although shaped in many ways by the liberal 1960s — he had participated in antiwar protests, smoked marijuana in the 1960s, and married a feminist, Hillary Rodham — Clinton sought to rid his party of its liberal image.

Clinton was a key player in the Democratic Leadership Council, which argued that the party’s survival depended on centrist policies, especially regarding the economy. Clinton curried favor with the “forgotten middle class” who “play by the rules.” He promised a middle-class tax cut, pledged to reinvigorate the economy, and vowed “to put an end to welfare as we know it.” Bush was vulnerable to an unemployment rate of 7 percent and to a challenge from self-made Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot, whose third- party organization revealed Americans’ frustrations with the government and the two major parties. Clinton won only 43 percent of the popular vote, Bush 38 percent, and Perot 19 percent — the strongest third-party finish in eighty years (Map 30.3).

MAP 30.3 The Election of 1992

Description “The map shows the following data:

Bill Clinton (Democrat): Electoral Vote, 370; Popular Vote, 44,909,889; Percent of Popular Vote, 43 percent.

Electoral votes by state: Maine, 4; Vermont, 3; New Hampshire, 4; Massachusetts, 12; Rhode Island, 4; Connecticut, 8; New Jersey, 15; Delaware, 3; Washington D.C, 3; Maryland, 10; New York, 33; Pennsylvania, 23; West Virginia, 5; Michigan, 18; Ohio, 21; Kentucky, 8; Tennessee, 11; Georgia, 13; Illinois, 22; Wisconsin, 11; Minnesota, 10; Iowa, 7; Missouri, 11; Arkansas, 6; Louisiana, 9; Montana, 3; Colorado, 8; New Mexico, 5; Nevada, 4; California, 54; Oregon, 7; Washington, 13; Hawaii, 4; and Washington D. C., 3.

George H. W. Bush (Republican): Electoral Vote, 168; Popular Vote, 39,104,545; Percent of Popular Vote, 37.5 percent.

Electoral votes by state: Virginia, 13; North Carolina, 14; South Carolina, 8; Florida, 25; Alabama, 9; Mississippi, 7; Indiana, 12; North Dakota, 3; South Dakota, 3; Nebraska, 5; Kansas, 6; Oklahoma, 8; Texas, 32; Wyoming, 3; Idaho, 4; Utah, 5; Arizona, 8; and Alaska, 3.

ross Perot (Independent): Electoral Vote, 0; Popular Vote, 19,742,267; Percent of Popular Vote, 18.9 percent.”

Clinton’s statement that “the era of big government is over” reflected the Democratic Party’s move to the right that had begun with Jimmy Carter, as well as conservatives’ capture of the terms of debate. Although he aimed for the middle ground, Clinton’s time in office would be marked by intense political acrimony and partisanship.

Clinton’s Reforms Clinton wanted to restore confidence in government as a force for good while not alienating antigovernment voters. But he inherited a huge budget deficit — $4.4 trillion in 1993 — that precluded substantial federal initiatives. Clinton was constrained by the Republican-controlled Congress after 1994. Throughout his presidency, he was also burdened by investigations into past financial activities and private indiscretions.

Despite these obstacles, Clinton achieved a number of reforms. He issued executive orders that eased restrictions on abortion and signed several bills that Republicans had previously blocked. In 1993, Congress enacted gun control legislation and the landmark Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), which mandated unpaid leave for childbirth, adoption, and family medical emergencies for workers in larger companies. The Violence against

Women Act of 1994 authorized $1.6 billion for combating sexual assault and domestic violence. Clinton won stricter air pollution controls and greater protection for national forests and parks. He also secured a minimum-wage increase and a large expansion of aid for college students.

Most significantly, Clinton pushed through a substantial increase in the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). Begun in 1975, the EITC implicitly recognized the inability of the free market to secure a living wage for all workers. It gave tax breaks to those who worked full-time at meager pay or, if they owed no taxes, a subsidy to lift their family income above the poverty line. By 2003, some fifteen million low-income families were benefiting from the EITC, which one expert called “the largest antipoverty program since the Great Society.”

Shortly before Clinton took office, the economy had begun to rebound. Economic expansion, along with spending cuts, tax increases, and declining unemployment, produced in 1998 the first U.S. budget surplus since 1969. Despite this, Clinton failed to achieve one of his key domestic initiatives: providing universal health insurance and curbing skyrocketing medical costs. Criticism of his proposal, which had been spearheaded by Hillary Rodham Clinton, as “government-run healthcare” doomed the initiative. Congress enacted important smaller reforms, such as underwriting health care for five million uninsured children. Yet forty million Americans remained uninsured.

Pledging to make the face of government “look like America,” Clinton built on the gradual progress toward political representation that women and

minorities had made since the 1960s. African Americans and women had become mayors in major cities from New York to San Francisco. Virginia had elected the first black governor since Reconstruction, and Florida the first Latino governor. Clinton’s cabinet appointments included six women, three African Americans, two Latinos, and an Asian American. In 1993, he named the second woman to the Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose arguments as an attorney in the 1970s had won major women’s rights rulings from that Court.

Accommodating the Right The 1994 midterm elections swept away the Democratic majorities in Congress. With Republicans in control of both houses for the first time since 1954, Clinton’s reform agenda was stymied, and he moved to the right politically. Republicans claimed the election results as a mandate for their conservative platform to end “government that is too big, too intrusive, and too easy with the public’s money” and for “a Congress that respects the values and shares the faith of the American family.” Their positions on economic and cultural issues would constrain Clinton’s remaining years in office.

Antigovernment momentum was propelled by the new Republican majority, who attempted to push through their “Contract with America,” including severe cuts in social, educational, and environmental programs. When budget talks broke down between Clinton and Congress, the government was forced to close down nonessential operations twice in the winter of 1995–1996.

The most extreme antigovernment sentiment developed far from Washington in the form of grassroots armed militias that championed white Christian supremacy and directed their hostility at institutions ranging from income taxes to the United Nations. The militia movement grew after the passage of new gun control legislation and after government agents stormed the headquarters of an armed religious cult in Waco, Texas, in April 1993, killing more than eighty. In 1995, on the second anniversary of that event, two militia sympathizers bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City, taking 168 lives in what was at that point the worst terrorist attack in the nation’s history.

Commentators in the 1990s began to point to a set of partisan standoffs they termed the “culture wars,” which pitted liberals against conservatives on an array of social issues, ranging from the teaching of evolution to government funding of the arts. Many of these battles, reflecting the increasing sway of groups like Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition, centered on the changing American family: the high rates of working women, divorce, and unwed mothers, as well as the greater visibility of gay relationships.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, a successful lawyer who played a far larger policy role in her husband’s administration than had most first ladies, was herself a lightning rod for such issues. Other battles were prompted by new demands for recognition of ethnic and racial differences — or “multiculturalism” — which opponents charged were, along with high immigration rates, fragmenting a common national identity.

Bowing to conservative views on gay and lesbian rights and following the advice of military leaders, Clinton backed away from his promise to lift the ban on gays in the military. Instead, he instituted a “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, a controversial halfway measure that prohibited discrimination only against service people who did not reveal their sexuality. Cathleen Glover, an army specialist in Arabic who lost her position along with thousands of other soldiers, lamented, “The army preaches integrity, but asks you to lie to everyone around you.” In 1996, Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), prohibiting the federal government from recognizing state- licensed marriages between same-sex couples.

In the 1990s, hardening attitudes about poverty were reflected in the rollback of the New Deal program Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), popularly called welfare. Using the term “welfare queen” to stigmatize AFDC recipients, and particularly urban African Americans, critics blamed poverty on the poor themselves and their failures of “personal responsibility.” Defenders of AFDC pointed instead to the lack of adequate employment and child care or to the disinvestment that had impoverished America’s inner cities — and they noted the far greater subsidies the government provided to other groups, such as large farmers, corporations, and homeowners.

After vetoing two welfare bills proposed by the Republican Congress, Clinton signed a less punitive measure as the 1996 election approached. The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program replaced AFDC. In line with Clinton’s declaration that welfare should be “a second

chance, not a way of life,” it limited welfare payments to two consecutive years, with a lifetime maximum of five years.

The End of Welfare After signing the bill that sharply curtailed government support for poor mothers and their children, Bill Clinton made it a part of his 1996 campaign for reelection. He highlighted the issue especially when campaigning in more conservative regions, as this photo from a campaign stop in Daytona, Florida, shows.

Clinton’s signature on the new law denied Republicans a partisan issue in the 1996 presidential campaign even as it signaled Democrats’ historic retreat from their commitment to poor Americans. The Republican Party also moved to the center, nominating Kansan Robert Dole, a World War II hero and former Senate majority leader. Clinton won 49 percent of the votes; 41 percent went to Dole and 9 percent to third-party candidate Ross Perot. Voters sent a Republican majority back to Congress.

In 1999, Clinton and Congress made a second retreat from the New Deal by further deregulating the financial industry and repealing key aspects of the Glass-Steagall Act, which had been passed in the 1930s to prevent another Great Depression. The Financial Services Modernization Act ended the separation between banking, securities, and insurance services, allowing financial institutions to engage in all three areas, practices that would contribute to the financial meltdown of 2008.

Impeaching the President Clinton’s magnetism, his ability to capture the middle ground, and the nation’s economic resurgence enabled him to survive scandals and impeachment. Early in his presidency, charges related to firings of White House staff, political use of FBI records, and the Clintons’ real estate investments in Arkansas led to an official investigation by an independent prosecutor, Kenneth Starr.

In 1998, Starr began to investigate a charge that Clinton had engaged in sexual relations with a twenty-one-year-old White House intern and lied

about it to a federal grand jury. Based on Starr’s report, the House of Representatives voted to impeach the president for perjury and obstruction of justice. In 1999, Clinton became only the second president (after Andrew Johnson, in 1868) to be impeached by the House and tried by the Senate.

A majority of Americans condemned the president’s behavior but approved of the job he was doing and opposed impeachment. One man said, “Let him get a divorce…. Don’t take him out of office and disrupt the country.” Some saw Starr as a fanatic invading individuals’ privacy. Others insisted that the president must set a high moral standard and that lying to a grand jury, even over a private matter, was a serious offense. The Senate votes fell far short of the two-thirds majority needed for conviction on either count. Even some Republicans seemed to agree with a Clinton supporter that the president’s behavior, though “indefensible, outrageous, unforgivable, shameless,” did not warrant his removal from office.

��

What policies of the Clinton administration moved the Democratic Party to the right?

How did Clinton respond to the challenges of globalization? Clinton’s ability to weather impeachment owed much to a booming economy, which in 1991 began a period of tremendous expansion. America’s prosperity was linked to its dominance in a world economy that was undergoing tremendous transformations through globalization, the accelerating integration and interdependence of national economies. Capital, products, information, and people crossed borders in greater numbers and at greater speed. President Clinton lowered a number of trade barriers, despite heated arguments about whether that was in the country’s best interest. Debates likewise arose over the large numbers of immigrants entering the United States.

Clinton agreed with Bush that the United States must retain its supreme position in the world. But the collapse of the Cold War had left no rationale for U.S. interventions around the globe, leading to uncertainty about whether military defense, economic interests, peacekeeping, or democratization — or some combination of these — ought to guide foreign policy. Clinton used military force in Somalia, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe; deployed troops in Haiti; and attempted to ease the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. He also strove to safeguard American interests from terrorist attacks around the world, a challenge in some ways more complex than combating communism.

The Booming Economy of the 1990s

During the 1990s, the U.S. gross domestic product grew by more than one- third, thirteen million new jobs were created, inflation remained in check, unemployment reached 4 percent — its lowest point in twenty-five years — and the stock market soared.

Clinton’s policies contributed to the boom. He made deficit reduction a priority, and in exchange, the Federal Reserve Board and bond market traders encouraged economic expansion by lowering interest rates. Businesses also prospered because they had lowered their costs through corporate restructuring and employee layoffs. Economic problems in Europe and Asia made American firms more competitive in the international market. The computer revolution and the application of new technologies boosted productivity, while the emergence of the World Wide Web and the Internet led to talk of a “new economy” tied less to the manufacture of products and more to the flow of information.

People at all income levels benefited from the economic boom, but income inequality, rising since the 1970s, persisted, with tax cuts favoring the rich (Figure 30.1). The growing use of computing increased demand for highly skilled workers. But the movement of manufacturing jobs abroad, along with deregulation and the decline of unions, eroded the opportunities and wages of unskilled laborers. Furthermore, the minimum wage failed to keep up with inflation.

FIGURE 30.1 The Growth of Inequality: Changes in Family Income, 1969–1998

For most of the immediate post–World War II period, income increased for all groups on the economic ladder. But after 1969, the income of the poorest families actually declined, while the income of the richest 20 percent of the population grew substantially.

Data from the New York Times, 1989.

Description “The map shows years along the horizontal axis and the percent of total income along the vertical axis.

1969: Top 5 percent, 15.6 percent; Bottom 40 percent, 18 percent.

1979: Top 5 percent, 15.3 percent; Bottom 40 percent, 17 percent.

1989: Top 5 percent, 17.9 percent; Bottom 40 percent, 15.2 percent.

1998: Top 5 percent, 21 percent; Bottom 40 percent, 14 percent.”

Although more minorities than ever attained middle-class status, people of color did not participate equally in the economic expansion. In 1999, the

median income for white households surpassed $45,000, but it stood at only $29,423 and $33,676 for African American and Latino households, respectively. In 2000, more than 20 percent of African Americans and Latinos were poor, in contrast to 7.5 percent of whites.

Debates over Free Trade Although the process of globalization was centuries old, new communications technologies such as the Internet and cell phones connected nations, corporations, and individuals at much faster speeds and much lower costs by the 1990s. Building on efforts by Reagan and Bush, Clinton sought to speed up the growth of a global marketplace by easing restrictions on international commerce.

To advance globalization and the U.S. economy, in 1993 Clinton won congressional approval of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), brokered by Bush, which eliminated all tariffs and trade barriers among the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Fearing loss of jobs and industries to Mexico, a majority of Democrats opposed NAFTA, but Republican support ensured approval. In 1994, the Senate ratified the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, establishing the World Trade Organization (WTO) to enforce substantial tariff and import quota reductions among some 135 member nations.

The free trade issue was intensely contested. Much of corporate America welcomed the elimination of trade barriers and opportunities to lower their taxes. “Ideally, you’d have every plant you own on a barge,” remarked Jack

Welch, CEO of General Electric. Critics linked globalization to the loss of good jobs, the weakening of unions and environmental regulations, and the growing gap between the rich and the poor. Demanding “fair trade” rather than simply free trade, critics wanted treaties to require decent wage and labor standards and human rights provisions. In 1999, in the “Battle of Seattle,” thirty thousand protesters shut down a meeting of the WTO with the cry “no globalization without representation” and demands to end “the enrichment of the few at the expense of all others.”

Globalization controversies centered on unequal power relations between the United States, which dominated the world’s industrial core, and developing nations on the periphery, whose cheap labor and lax environmental standards attracted investors. The American company Nike, for example, paid Chinese workers $1.50 per hour to produce shoes that sold for more than $100 in the United States. Yet leaders of developing nations actively sought foreign investment because even those low wages could offer impoverished people a higher standard of living. At the same time, developing countries pointed to American hypocrisy in advocating free trade in industry while heavily subsidizing the U.S. agricultural sector. “When countries like America, Britain and France subsidize their farmers,” complained a grower in Uganda, “we get hurt.”

Globalization’s champions pointed to the cheap consumer goods available to Americans and argued that everyone would benefit in the long run. Critics focused on the short-term victims. World Bank president James D. Wolfensohn acknowledged that “our challenge is to make globalization an instrument of opportunity and inclusion — not fear.”

Defining America’s Place in a New World Order The Cold War policy of containment had involved the United States in protracted civil wars and led it to trample on other nations’ sovereignty. But it had provided a durable framework for policymaking. No such framework existed for the 1990s. A central challenge for the Clinton administration was to define principles for the use of U.S. power in the world.

Africa, where civil wars and extreme human suffering rarely evoked a strong U.S. response, was a case in point. In 1992, President Bush had attached U.S. forces to a UN operation in the northern African country of Somalia, where famine and civil war raged. In 1993, President Clinton allowed that humanitarian mission to turn into “nation building” — an effort to establish a stable government — and eighteen U.S. soldiers were killed, one soldier’s corpse dragged through the streets.

The resulting American outcry suggested that most citizens were unwilling to sacrifice lives when no vital national interest was threatened. Both the United States and the UN stood by in 1994, when more than half a million people were massacred in a violent ethnic civil war in Rwanda. By contrast, Clinton sent troops into nearby Haiti that same year to restore the nation’s democratic government, which had been ousted by a military coup in 1991.

In Eastern Europe, the collapse of communism ignited a severe crisis when ruthless leaders exploited ethnic differences to bolster their power. Yugoslavia splintered into separate states and fell into civil war. Serbian

aggression under President Slobodan Milosevic against Bosnian Muslims, which included rape, torture, and mass killings, horrified much of the world, but European and U.S. leaders were reluctant to use military force. Finally in 1995, Clinton ordered U.S. fliers to join NATO forces in intensive bombing of Serbia. Along with offensives by the Croatian and Bosnian armies, that effort forced Milosevic to the bargaining table, where representatives from Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia hammered out a peace treaty.

In 1998, new fighting broke out in the southern Serbian province of Kosovo, where ethnic Albanians, who constituted 90 percent of the population, demanded independence. When the Serbian army retaliated, NATO launched a U.S.-led bombing attack on Serbian military and government targets, forcing Milosevic to agree to a settlement. Serbians voted Milosevic out of office in 2000, and he died in 2006 while on trial for genocide by a UN war crimes tribunal.

Elsewhere, Clinton deployed U.S. power when he could send missiles rather than soldiers, and he was prepared to act without international support or UN sanction. In August 1998, bombings at the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killed 12 Americans and more than 250 Africans. Clinton retaliated with missile attacks on training camps in Afghanistan and facilities in Sudan.

His target was Al Qaeda, an Islamist-extremist terrorist network controlled by Osama bin Laden, a Saudi-born millionaire who financed the embassy attacks. Clinton also bombed Iraq in 1993, when a plot to assassinate

former president Bush was uncovered; again in 1996 after Saddam Hussein attacked the Kurds in northern Iraq; and repeatedly between 1998 and 2000, after Hussein expelled UN weapons inspectors. Whereas Bush had acted in the Gulf War with the support of an international force that included Arab states, Clinton acted unilaterally and in the face of Arab opposition.

To defuse the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Clinton applied diplomatic rather than military might. In 1993, Norwegian diplomats had brokered an agreement between the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Israeli prime minister to recognize the existence of each other’s states. Israel agreed to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and Jericho, allowing for Palestinian self-government there. In July 1994, Clinton presided over another turning point as Israel and Jordan signed a declaration of peace. Yet difficult issues remained, especially control of Jerusalem and the presence of more than 200,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank, the land seized by Israel in 1967, where three million Palestinians were determined to establish their own state.

��

What were the major challenges for the Clinton administration on the global stage?

Conclusion: What were the legacies of the “Reagan Revolution”? “Ours was the first revolution in the history of mankind that truly reversed the course of government,” boasted Ronald Reagan in his farewell address in 1989. The word revolution exaggerated the change, but Reagan’s administration did undermine many of the liberal assumptions that had guided American politics since the New Deal, representing the “choice not an echo” that Phyllis Schlafly had called for in 1964.

Antigovernment sentiment grew along with a backlash against the reforms and cultural changes of the 1960s. Reagan’s tax cuts together with hefty increases in defense spending created a federal deficit crisis that justified cuts in social welfare, made new domestic initiatives unthinkable, and burdened the country for years to come. These policies also contributed to a widening income gap between the rich and the poor, weighing especially heavily on minorities, female-headed families, and children. These developments extended through the Bush years and hampered the reform agenda of the Clinton administration. The Democratic president’s support for time limits and other restrictions on welfare was the most obvious sign of the country’s rightward shift. Yet strong divisions remained, leading to presidential vetoes, government shutdowns, and concerns about a dysfunctional political system.

In the 1990s, Presidents Bush and Clinton would grapple with another of Reagan’s legacies, the collapse of the Cold War order. As the promising outbreak of democracy in Eastern Europe gave way to ethnic and religious

conflicts around the world, there were no obvious answers to the question of when the United States should intervene as a military, diplomatic, or peacekeeping force. In these same years, America became more embedded in the global economy. Products, information, and people crossed borders with amazing speed and frequency, a development that would also contribute to the threat of terrorism. New waves of immigration would likewise alter the face of the American population and the makeup of its culture. Championed by some and decried by others, these developments would generate fierce debates in the twenty-first century.

Chapter Review

��

New Christian Right supply-side economics Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) nuclear freeze Iran-Contra scandal intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) agreement Persian Gulf War Clean Air Act Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) World Trade Organization (WTO)

�� America’s Move to the Right

What combination of factors helped Ronald Reagan win the presidency?

What specific conservative goals were fulfilled during the 1980s and 1990s?

Liberalism on the Defensive

What tactics did liberal groups use to resist the conservative turn? How successful were they?

How did Bill Clinton’s domestic reforms reflect a link to, as well as a departure from, the liberalism of the 1960s?

U.S. Foreign Policy

How and why did U.S. foreign policy change under Reagan?

What were the major global issues that engaged Americans after the Cold War? How did the Bush and Clinton administrations respond to them?

�� , ��

How did U.S. foreign policy evolve from the 1950s through the 1990s?

In what ways have the culture wars of the Clinton years left their mark on contemporary American politics?

��

1979 Moral Majority founded.

1980 Ronald Reagan elected president.

1981 Iranian hostages released on the day of Reagan’s inauguration. Economic Recovery Tax Act passes. Reagan fires striking air controllers, destroying their union. AIDS virus discovered. Sandra Day O’Connor appointed as first woman Supreme Court justice. Reagan props up authoritarian government in El Salvador.

1982 Major recession hits. Time limit for ratification of ERA runs out. Wisconsin makes sexual orientation protected category under civil rights laws. Seven hundred thousand march in New York City in support of nuclear freeze.

1983 Family Research Council founded. Economic recovery and expansion begins. U.S. invades Grenada. Terrorist bomb kills 241 U.S. Marines in Beirut, Lebanon. The Day After airs on ABC.

1984 Reagan reelected president.

1985 Mikhail Gorbachev comes to power in Soviet Union.

1986 Further tax cuts pass. Sexual harassment in workplace ruled form of sex discrimination. Supreme Court upholds constitutionality of anti-sodomy laws. Iran-Contra scandal breaks.

1987 AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) founded. Intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) agreement signed.

1988 Civil Rights Restoration Act passes over Reagan’s veto. George H. W. Bush elected president.

1989 S&L crisis leads to $100 billion federal bailout. Communism collapses in Eastern Europe; Berlin Wall comes down. China’s Communist regime cracks down on pro-democracy movement. President Bush orders invasion of Panama.

1990 Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) treaty signed. Bush signs Clean Air Act. Americans with Disabilities Act passes.

1991 Soviet Union dissolves. Persian Gulf War won by U.S.-led coalition forces. Bush appoints Clarence Thomas to Supreme Court.

1992 William Jefferson “Bill” Clinton elected president.

1993 Family and Medical Leave Act signed. Clinton’s “nation building” effort fails in Somalia. Israel and PLO sign peace accords. North American Free Trade Agreement signed.

1994 Violence against Women Act passes. Republicans gain control of both houses of Congress. United States refuses to intervene in Rwanda.

Clinton sends troops to restore Haiti’s democratic government. General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade establishes World Trade Organization.

1995 Federal building in Oklahoma City bombed by antigovernment extremists. United States and NATO bomb Serbia.

1995–1996 Government shuts down twice when Clinton and Congress fail to pass budget.

1996 Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program established. Clinton signs Defense of Marriage Act. President Clinton reelected.

1998 United States bombs terrorist sites in Afghanistan and Sudan.

1999 Senate trial rejects impeachment of Clinton. Act passes to deregulate financial industry. Large crowds protest globalization during “Battle of Seattle.”

1998–2000 United States bombs Iraq.

�� 31 �� 2000

�� This chapter will explore the following questions:

How did George W. Bush alter the focus of U.S. foreign and domestic policy? What were the strengths and weaknesses of the American economy? What obstacles stood in the way of Obama’s reform agenda? How did new social movements change politics? What was the significance of the 2016 election? Conclusion: In a deeply polarized America, was there any common ground?

�� IN 1993, TWELVE-YEAR-OLD JOSE ANTONIO VARGAS BOARDED A U.S.-bound plane, leaving his family in the Philippines behind. The trip was arranged by his mother, who sought a better life for Jose with his maternal grandparents in Mountain View, California.

Vargas quickly found his footing in his new home and school, excelling in spelling bees. At sixteen, he applied for a driver’s permit. But when he offered his green card to a clerk as proof of U.S. residency, she handed it back, whispering: “This is fake … don’t come here again.” Only then did Vargas learn that he had been smuggled into the country under a false name and passport.

With the help of his grandfather, Vargas obtained the papers he needed to get a Social Security number and eventually a driver’s license. He worried constantly, however, about his citizenship status, as he watched voters support measures like Proposition 187 in California, which sought to prohibit undocumented immigrants from attending public school or accessing social services. Vargas came out as gay during his senior year of high school but did not dream of divulging his legal status.

As a student, Vargas found he loved language and writing. Securing internships at local newspapers, he went to college and became a successful journalist and documentary filmmaker. Part of a team at the Washington Post that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2008, Vargas recalled his

grandmother’s anxious response to the prestigious award: “What will happen if people find out?”

As a reporter, Vargas steered away from covering immigration, and he carefully shielded his personal story even from close friends. But in 2011, discussions of the DREAM Act, which promoted a path to citizenship for youth who had arrived in the country illegally, inspired him to step out of the shadows. Despite cautions from immigration lawyers about committing “legal suicide,” Vargas published an essay revealing his status. A year later, the Obama administration announced a halt to the deportation of undocumented immigrants aged 30 and under. Vargas, by then 31, cheered this victory, although he did not qualify.

Undocumented youth were just one flashpoint of intensely partisan struggles in the United States in the new century. Economic uncertainty contributed to anti-immigrant sentiment and concerns about jobs, border security, and national identity. In 2008, even the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, who was born in Hawai’i, faced questions about his citizenship status from the far-right “birther” movement. In 2016, the Republican candidate, Donald Trump, rallied conservatives with his pledge to “build a wall” along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Intense debates broke out about what stance the United States, often celebrated as a nation of immigrants, should take toward those fleeing persecution or poverty around the world. Vargas, who worked hard,

paid taxes, and claimed no other home, firmly believed that he was an American. Still, he knew that at any moment he could be deported, writing in a 2018 memoir: “I do not know where I will be when you read this…”

How did George W. Bush alter the focus of U.S. foreign and domestic policy? The dawn of a new century in the United States was marked by tragedy. In September 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C., dramatically exposed American vulnerability to nonstate actors and political violence. Islamist terrorism had replaced communism as the primary threat to U.S. security. The administration of George W. Bush sent soldiers into Afghanistan to overthrow the government that had harbored the attackers. In 2003, Bush went further, opening a second war against Iraq and sharply reversing long-standing policies of internationalism, multilateralism, and military restraint.

Bush won reelection in 2004, although stability in Iraq and Afghanistan remained elusive. He managed to advance legislation to improve public school education, subsidize prescription drugs for elderly citizens, and greatly reduce taxes for the wealthy. Bush, however, confronted serious foreign and domestic crises in his second term. His tax cuts, along with new spending, created the largest budget deficit in the nation’s history. A financial crisis near the end of Bush’s presidency sent the economy into a recession, and Democrats capitalized on widespread dissatisfaction with his administration to gain control of Congress in 2006 and the White House in 2008.

The Disputed Election of 2000

The oldest son of former president George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush was the governor of Texas when he won the Republican presidential nomination. Inexperienced in national and international affairs, Bush chose for his running mate a seasoned official, Richard B. Cheney, who had served in three previous Republican administrations.

Many observers predicted that the thriving economy would benefit the Democratic contender, Vice President Al Gore, and he did surpass Bush by more than half a million votes. But Florida’s twenty-five electoral college votes would decide the presidency. Bush’s tiny margin in Florida prompted an automatic recount of the votes, which eventually gave him an edge of 537 votes in that state. The Democrats asked for hand-counting of Florida ballots in several heavily Democratic counties, where machine errors and confusing ballots may have left thousands of Gore votes unrecorded. The Republicans in turn went to court to try to stop the hand-counts.

The legal battle over the rightful winner of the presidency meant that the outcome of the election hung in the balance for thirty-six days, as multiple lawsuits made their way to the Supreme Court. Finally, in Bush v. Gore (2000), the sharply divided justices ruled five to four against allowing the state of Florida to conduct further recounts. Democratic critics charged partisanship on the Court, noting that the conservative justices had abandoned their principle of favoring state over federal authority.

The spectacle of the Supreme Court determining the holder of the presidency along partisan lines troubled many observers, including Justice John Paul Stevens, who judged the real loser of the election the “Nation’s

confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.” Gore, meanwhile, conceded to Bush. For the first time since 1888, a president who failed to win the popular vote took office (Map 31.1).

MAP 31.1 The Election of 2000

Description “The map shows the state-wise votes secured by each candidate as follows:

George W. Bush (Republican): Electoral Vote, 271; Popular vote, 50,456,062; Percent of popular vote, 47.8 percent.

New Hampshire, 4; Virginia, 13; West Virginia, 5; Ohio, 21; North Carolina, 14; South Carolina, 8; Georgia, 13; Florida, 25; Alabama, 9; Mississippi, 7; Tennessee, 11; Kentucky, 8; Indiana, 12; Missouri, 11; Arkansas, 6; Louisiana, 9; North Dakota, 3; South Dakota, 3; Nebraska, 5; Kansas, 6; Oklahoma, 8; Texas, 32; Montana, 3; Wyoming, 3; Colorado, 8; Utah, 5; Arizona, 8; Nevada, 4; Idaho, 4; and Alaska, 3.

Al Gore (Democrat): Electoral Vote, 267; Popular vote, 50,996,862; Percent of popular vote, 48.4 percent.

Maine, 4; Vermont, 3; Massachusetts, 12; Rhode Island, 4; Connecticut, 8; Washington D.C., 3; New Jersey, 15; Delaware, 3; Maryland, 10; New York, 33; Pennsylvania, 23; Michigan 18; Illinois, 22; Iowa, 7; Wisconsin, 11; Minnesota, 10; New Mexico, 5; Washington, 11; Oregon, 7; California, 54; and Hawaii, 4.

Ralph Nader (Green Party): Electoral Vote, 0; Popular vote, 2,858,843; Percent of popular vote, 2.7 percent.

Patrick J. Buchanan (Reform Party): Electoral Vote, 0; Popular vote, 438,760; Percent of popular vote, 0.4 percent.”

The 9/11 Attacks On the morning of September 11, 2001, nineteen terrorists hijacked four planes. They flew two of them into the twin towers of New York City’s World Trade Center and one into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.; the fourth crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. Many Americans watched the horrific attacks in real time on television. For weeks thereafter in New York, firefighters and Army Reserve forces sifted through the rubble for bodies. Downtown Manhattan, one man observed, resembled “a war zone.” The toxic smoke and ash that filled the air posed its own dangers: Nearly ten thousand first responders had been diagnosed with cancer and two thousand deaths had been linked to 9/11 illnesses by 2018.

The attacks, the worst on U.S. soil since those at Pearl Harbor triggering America’s entry into World War II, claimed nearly 2,800 lives, including people from ninety different countries. Their impact was felt far beyond the United States. That a handful of terrorists had inflicted tremendous damage on the most powerful nation on earth led Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations, to declare that “A new insecurity has entered every mind.”

The hijackers belonged to Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda international terrorist network, which had been responsible for a series of attacks on U.S. targets in the 1990s and which sought to rid the Middle East of Western influence and install strict Muslim control. Organized in Afghanistan, which was ruled by the radical Muslim Taliban government, the attacks expressed Islamist extremists’ rage at the spread of Western culture and values into the Muslim world, as well as their opposition to the 1991 Persian Gulf War against Iraq, the stationing of American troops in Saudi Arabia, and U.S. support for Israel.

In the wake of the September 11 attacks, President Bush sought a global alliance against terrorism and won at least verbal support from most governments. In October, with NATO support, the United States and Britain began bombing Afghanistan, and American forces aided the Northern Alliance, the Taliban government’s primary opposition. By December, the Taliban government was destroyed, but bin Laden eluded capture. Afghans elected a new national government. However, the Taliban remained strong in large parts of the country, contributing to ongoing instability.

Security and Civil Liberties President Bush declared that “ours is a war not against a religion, not against the Muslim faith.” Nevertheless, anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States intensified after the September 11 attacks, with those appearing to be Middle Eastern or practicing Islam arousing particular suspicion. Authorities surveilled mosques, carried out “voluntary interviews” with Muslim Americans, and arrested more than one thousand Arabs and Muslims.

A Justice Department study later found that many people with no connection to terrorism spent months in jail, denied their rights as a consequence of racial profiling. Hate crimes against those associated with Islam jumped 1,600 percent by 2002, according to the FBI. Adam Soltani, an Oklahoma college student and president of the Muslim Student Association, saw participation in weekly prayer meetings plummet and realized that “life was not going to be the same for me as a Muslim in America as it had ever been before.”

In October 2001, Congress passed the USA Patriot Act, giving the government new powers to monitor suspected terrorists, including the ability to indefinitely detain immigrants, to intercept electronic communications, and to access Americans’ library and financial records. It quickly provoked calls for revision from both conservatives and liberals. Kathleen MacKenzie, a councilwoman in Ann Arbor, Michigan, explained why the council opposed the Patriot Act: “As concerned as we were about national safety, we felt that giving up [rights] was too high a price to pay.”

A security official countered, “If you don’t violate someone’s human rights some of the time, you probably aren’t doing your job.”

The Total Information Awareness (TIA) program, launched in 2003, similarly attempted to predict and prevent security risks through extensive surveillance of private data such as web browsing histories, phone data, bank deposits, credit card purchases, magazine subscriptions, and medical records. Though Congress suspended the program’s funding after a storm of public criticism, TIA’s data mining software quietly moved into the National Security Agency. A decade past 9/11, the government continued to gather personal information on individual citizens, and the debate over how much liberty Americans ought to sacrifice for the promise of security remained unresolved.

Insisting that presidential powers were virtually limitless in times of national crisis, Bush stretched his authority until he met resistance from the courts and Congress. One of his most controversial steps was to authorize the detention of more than 700 prisoners captured in Afghanistan at the U.S. military base at Guantánamo, Cuba, where — until the courts acted — they held no rights. Revelations about prisoner torture there led to widespread condemnations of American human rights abuses and calls by the United Nations to close the detention camp. Despite such pressure, Guantánamo remained open.

At home, the U.S. government sought to protect Americans from future terrorist attacks through the most extensive reorganization of the executive branch since 1948. In November 2002, Congress authorized the new

Department of Homeland Security, combining 170,000 federal employees from twenty-two agencies responsible for various aspects of domestic security. Chief among the department’s duties were intelligence analysis; immigration and border security; chemical, biological, and nuclear countermeasures; and emergency preparedness and response.

Unilateralism and the “War on Terror” The Bush administration sought collective action against the Taliban, but on most international issues it adopted a go-it-alone approach. In addition to violating international rules on the treatment of military prisoners, it withdrew from the UN’s International Criminal Court and rejected an agreement to enforce bans on biological weapons that all of America’s European allies had signed.

Nowhere was the policy of unilateralism more striking than in a new war against Iraq, a war pushed by many of Bush’s advisers. Addressing West Point graduates in 2002, President Bush proclaimed a new strategy based on preemption: “Traditional concepts of deterrence will not work against a terrorist enemy whose avowed tactics are wanton destruction and the targeting of innocents; whose so-called soldiers seek martyrdom in death and whose most potent protection is statelessness.” Because even weak countries and small groups could strike devastating blows to the United States, as Al Qaeda had done on 9/11, the nation had to “be ready for preemptive action.”

The president’s claim that the United States had the right to start a war was at odds with international law and with many citizens’ understanding of American ideals. It distressed most of the nation’s great-power allies, who wondered if the United States, with a defense budget and military capacity that far outstripped any other nation’s (Figure 31.1), had empire-building ambitions.

FIGURE 31.1 Global Comparison: Countries with the Highest Military Expenditures, 2005

During the Cold War, the military budgets of the United States and the Soviet Union were relatively even, but American expenditures would soon far outstrip those of its former enemy as

well as any other nation. Even before the Iraq War began in 2003, the U.S. military budget constituted 47 percent of total world military expenditures. Massive defense budgets reflected the determination of Democratic and Republican administrations alike to maintain dominance in the world, even while the capacities of traditional enemies diminished.

Description The illustration shows expenditure as follows: the United States, 478.2 billion dollars; the United Kingdom, 48.3 billion; France, 46.2 billion; Japan, 42.1 billion; China, 41 billion; Germany, 33.2 billion; Italy, 27.2 billion; Saudi Arabia, 25.2 billion; Russia, 21 billion; and India, 20.4 billion.

Nonetheless, the Bush administration applied the doctrine of preemption to Iraq, whose dictator, Saddam Hussein, appeared to be violating UN restrictions on Iraqi development of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. In November 2002, the United States obtained a UN Security Council resolution demanding that Iraq disarm or face “serious consequences.”

When Iraq failed to comply fully with UN inspections, the Bush administration decided on war. Making claims — later proved false — that Hussein had links to Al Qaeda’s terrorist network and held weapons of mass destruction, the president insisted that the threat was immediate, justifying preemptive action. Some ten to fifteen million people around the globe joined antiwar demonstrations in protest. Despite the absence of UN approval and opposition from the Arab world as well as France, Germany, China, and Russia, the United States and Britain invaded Iraq on March 19, 2003, supported by some thirty nations (Map 31.2).

MAP 31.2 Events in the Middle East, 1990–2018

Since the end of the Cold War, much of U.S. foreign policy has concerned the Middle East, a region rich in oil but politically unstable, and where extremist and terrorist organizations have taken root. The Arab League supported the war to liberate Kuwait in 1991, and after September 11, 2001, it also approved of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan. Yet only the countries where the United States had military bases supported the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. Arab hostility toward the United States also reflected the deterioration of Israeli-Palestinian relations after 1999.

Description “The map shows the following data:

O P E C members: Iran including Teheran; Iraq including Baghdad (A label reads U. S. bombs Iraq for failure to comply with 1991 agreement to destroy chemical weapons, 1998; Iraq War. U. S. and British forces invade Iraq. Bush declares victory, 2003; U. S. troop surge helps to reduce terrorist violence, 2007 to 2008; U. S. begins three-year process of withdrawal from Iraq, 2009; U. S. launches airstrikes in Iraq, 2014); Kuwait (Iraq invades

Kuwait, 1990; Persian Gulf War. U. S.-led coalition drives Iraqi forces out of Kuwait, 1991); Qatar; United Arab Emirates including Abu Dhabi; Saudi Arabia including Riyadh.

Oil field: Iraq; Iran; Saudi Arabia; Azerbaijan; and Turkmenistan.

Known U. S. military base: Kuwait; Turkey; Afghanistan; Abu Dhabi; Iraq; and Bahrain.

The map also shows the Arabian Sea, Oman, Yemen, Gulf of Oman, Persian Gulf, Eritrea, the Red Sea, Sudan, Egypt, the Mediterranean Sea, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, China, Pakistan, and India.”

Coalition forces won an easy victory, and Bush declared the end of the Iraq War on May 1. Saddam Hussein was captured in December 2003, tried by an Iraqi court, and executed. Chaos followed the quick victory, however. The damage from U.S. bombing was followed by widespread looting, a product of the failure of U.S. troops to secure order and provide basic necessities. Some Iraqis wondered what they had gained with the fall of a dictator. “With Saddam there was tyranny, but at least you had a salary to put food on your family’s table,” remarked one young father. Believing that the U.S. and British forces had been motivated by access to Persian Gulf resources, a Baghdad hospital worker complained, “They can take our oil, but at least they should let us have electricity and water.” Five years after the invasion, continuing violence had displaced 1.9 million within Iraq and had caused 2 million to flee their country.

The administration did not plan adequately for the postwar occupation. The 140,000 American forces there came under attack almost daily from remnants of the former Hussein regime, religious extremists, and hundreds

of foreign terrorists now entering the country. By the war’s end, nearly 4,500 U.S. soldiers had lost their lives.

Seeking to divide the population and undermine the occupation, terrorists also launched assaults that killed tens of thousands of Iraqis. Distant from most Americans’ concerns, the military occupation faded from newspapers even as the violence there persisted. As a handwritten note on the wall of the government center in Ramadi, Iraq, observed: “America is not at war. The Marine Corps is at war; America is at the mall.”

Still, the war was a central issue in the presidential campaign of 2004. U.S. senator John Kerry, the Democratic nominee and a Vietnam veteran who had come to oppose that war as well, criticized Bush’s unilateralist foreign policy and the administration’s actions in Iraq. A slim majority of voters, however, indicated their belief that Bush would better protect American security than would Kerry, giving the president a 286-to-252 victory in the electoral college, 50.7 percent of the popular vote, and Republican majorities in Congress.

In June 2004, the United States transferred sovereignty to a Shiite- dominated Iraqi government. This failed to satisfy Iraq’s other major groups — Sunnis and Kurds — and violence escalated against government officials, Iraqi civilians, and occupation forces. By 2006, a majority of Americans concluded that the Iraq War had been a mistake. Criticism of the war crossed party lines and included military leaders. The coalition forces had felled a brutal dictator but had been woefully unprepared for the turmoil that followed. They did not find the weapons of mass destruction or

links to Osama bin Laden that had been the Bush administration’s rationale for the invasion. Rather, the war unleashed disorder that drew more than one thousand terrorists to Iraq — the place, according to one expert, “for fundamentalists to go … to stick it to the West.”

The war and occupation exacted a steep price in American and Iraqi lives as well as dollars, with the effort costing more than $750 billion. U.S. relations with other great powers suffered, as did the nation’s reputation in the world, especially among Arab nations. Shocking revelations of torture and abuse in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, as at Guantánamo, fueled anti-Americanism around the world. The budget deficit swelled, and resources were diverted to Iraq from other national security challenges, including the stabilization of Afghanistan, the elimination of Al Qaeda, and the threats posed by both North Korea’s and Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Voters registered their dissatisfaction in 2006, giving Democrats control of Congress for the first time since 1994. A temporary troop surge in Iraq in 2007, along with actions by Iraqi leaders, contributed to a significant reduction in violence, and the administration began planning for the withdrawal of U.S. forces, not completed until the end of 2011. Peace eluded the Iraqis, however, who continued to live amid sectarian turmoil.

Domestic Achievements — and Disasters President Bush’s economic and cultural agenda was in line with trends in the Republican Party since the Reagan years. He called for tax cuts and the

privatization of Social Security and announced his opposition to gay marriage and abortion. Yet Bush also promised to govern as a “compassionate conservative.” Calling for the Republican Party to embrace the nation’s diversity, he appointed African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans to his cabinet.

A devout born-again Christian, Bush established the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, funding religious groups to run programs for prison inmates and the unemployed. Conservatives praised this step, which encouraged private institutions to replace government as the provider of welfare. Others called it a violation of the constitutional separation of church and state, and federal courts would rule in several dozen cases that faith ministries were using government funds to indoctrinate the people they served. A more substantial achievement under Bush was legislation authorizing a $15 billion anti-AIDS program in Africa, which eventually saved millions of lives.

The president’s fiscal policies were mostly compassionate to the rich. In 2001, he signed a bill reducing taxes over the next ten years by $1.35 trillion. A 2003 tax law slashed another $320 billion. The laws heavily favored the wealthy by reducing income taxes, phasing out estate taxes, and cutting tax rates on capital gains and dividends. They also provided benefits for married couples and families with children and offered tax deductions for college expenses. The tax cuts helped turn the budget surplus that Bush had inherited from Clinton into a mushrooming federal deficit — the highest in U.S. history up until that point. By 2009, the deficit surpassed $1 trillion as the government struggled to combat a recession. The national

debt rose to $9.6 trillion, making the United States increasingly dependent on China and other foreign investors, who held more than half of the debt.

Bush used executive powers to weaken environmental protection as part of his larger agenda to reduce government regulation, promote economic growth, and increase energy production. The administration opened millions of wilderness acres to mining, oil, and timber industries, and it relaxed standards under the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. Bush, along with oil and coal industry lobbyists, declared their skepticism regarding well-established scientific findings about the human-made causes of climate change. To worldwide dismay, the administration withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol, signed in 1997 by 178 nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that produce global warming.

Conservatives hailed Bush’s two appointments to the Supreme Court. In 2005, John Roberts, who had served in the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations, was named chief justice. When the moderate Sandra Day O’Connor resigned, Bush nominated Samuel A. Alito, a staunch conservative who was narrowly confirmed. While the Court upheld gay rights and stood up to the administration by affirming the rights of accused terrorists, it also permitted increasing restrictions on abortion and struck down regulations in the areas of voting rights, gun control, and sex discrimination in employment.

One of the Court’s most consequential rulings was Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission (2010), in which the conservative majority gutted regulation of election campaign financing. Holding that such

spending was a form of speech protected by the First Amendment, Citizens United opened the floodgates to political contributions by corporations and political action committees.

In contrast to partisan battles over judicial appointments, tax cuts, and environmental policies, Bush won support from Democrats and Republicans alike for a substantial expansion of the federal government into public education, an unusual move for a conservative. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 pledged to end, in Bush’s words, “the story of children being just shuffled through the system.” The law set national standards and imposed penalties on failing schools. The legislation was never adequately funded, however, and school officials criticized its one-size-fits-all approach, as well as its failure to tackle poverty as a source of student deficiencies. A decade later, Congress would return considerable control to the states and local districts.

President Bush also sought action on health care, traditionally a Democratic issue. In 2003, he signed a bill providing prescription drug benefits for the elderly and expanding the role of private insurers in the Medicare system. Most Democrats opposed the legislation because it subsidized private insurers with federal funds, banned imports of low-priced drugs, and prohibited the government from negotiating with drug companies to reduce prices. The law was a boon to the elderly, but medical costs overall continued to soar, and forty million Americans remained uninsured.

One domestic undertaking of the Bush administration found little approval anywhere: its response to natural disaster. In August 2005, Hurricane

Katrina devastated the coasts of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, ultimately taking some eighteen hundred lives. The catastrophe that ensued when the levees broke, flooding 80 percent of New Orleans, shook many Americans’ deeply rooted assumption that the government would protect citizens from natural disasters and other emergencies. New Orleans residents who were too old, too poor, or too sick to evacuate spent days waiting on rooftops for help. Others waded in filthy, toxic water or endured extreme heat, food shortages, and general disorder at the centers where they had been told to go for help.

Hurricane Katrina Residents of the poverty-stricken Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans pleaded for help in the flooding that followed Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, some residents waiting as long as five days to be rescued. A historian of the disaster observed, “Americans were not used to seeing their country in ruins, their people in want.”

Many judged the federal government’s response, managed through the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the new Department of Homeland Security, a failure. “How can we save the world if we can’t save our own people?” wondered one Louisianan. The storm displaced more than a million residents of the Gulf Coast region, many of whom were still without stable housing a month after the hurricane hit. A year later, New Orleans had lost half of its population. Many of Katrina’s hardest-hit victims were poor and black, and the disaster starkly highlighted persistent racial inequities in American society.

The Katrina disaster would be followed by a domestic crisis of equal magnitude: a deep economic recession that struck in late 2007. The crisis was rooted in loosened financial regulations under Clinton and regulators’ blind eye to predatory lending practices under Bush. The immediate cause was the breakdown of financial institutions that had accumulated trillions of dollars of bad debt, much of it from risky home mortgages. Housing values crashed, leading to more than a million foreclosures in 2008 alone.

As the mortgage crisis rolled through the economy, banking and lending collapsed, shuttering even huge investment firms such as Lehman Brothers. What became known as the Great Recession was so severe that Congress passed the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program in 2008 to inject credit into the economy and shore up banks and other businesses.

The financial collapse of 2007–2008 drew comparisons to the Great Depression of the 1930s. It also prompted broad criticism of the deregulation that U.S. leaders of both parties had embraced since the 1970s.

The failed Iraq War, the mismanagement of natural disaster, and the foreclosure crisis seriously eroded Bush’s support. In 2008, the Democrats would regain power and elect Barack Obama president.

��

What impact did the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, have on U.S. foreign and domestic policy?

What were the strengths and weaknesses of the American economy? By the twenty-first century, long-range developments were reshaping Americans’ economic prospects. Globalization continued to transform the U.S. economy through foreign capital and investment, the influx of immigrants from around the world, and the outsourcing of jobs. While the new economy based in the technology sector took off, industrial manufacturing declined, leading to uneven gains for Americans of different skills and regions. The boom in the high-tech industry alongside falling wages and deindustrialization in the Rust Belt painted a complex picture of the economy.

Globalized Labor and Production The United States experienced the dynamic forces of globalization in many ways. Already in the 1980s, Japanese, European, and Middle Eastern investors had purchased U.S. stocks and bonds, real estate, and corporations. Local communities welcomed foreign capital, and states competed to recruit foreign automobile plants. By 2002, the paychecks of nearly four million American workers came from foreign-owned companies such as Honda and BMW.

Paychecks and production traveled in the other direction as well. Whereas in 1960, 96 percent of all shoes bought in the United States were made within the country, nearly all came from abroad by 2000. Some American

companies built plants abroad to be close to burgeoning markets. More often, they moved production offshore to take advantage of cheaper labor as well as lower safety and environmental standards. An autoworker in Michigan remarked that “corporations are looking for a disposable workforce…. No commitment to community; no commitment to country.”

The reliance of U.S. corporations on overseas labor was not a brand-new development. The athletic shoe manufacturer Nike had been one of the first to exploit the advantages of production abroad, turning to Japan in the 1960s. When labor costs there began to rise, Nike shifted production to South Korea. When Korean workers demanded better wages and working conditions, the company turned to China and other Asian countries. Local contractors in Indonesia paid workers as little as fifteen cents an hour as they produced seventy million pairs of shoes in 1996.

The outsourcing of production was accelerated by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), passed under Clinton, and then by Bush’s lowering of more trade barriers through the Central American–Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement in 2005. The trend prompted Charles Seitz, who lost his job at Eastman Kodak when the company moved some of its operations to China and Mexico, to remark, “There’s nothing made here [in the United States] anymore.” Indeed, the invention of smartphones would deal a further blow to Kodak and its labor force, since none of the phones that came with built-in cameras were made in the United States.

In 2004, the 150-year-old company Levi Strauss, whose product had become an iconic American garment in the 1960s, shut down its last plants

in the United States, contracting the manufacture of jeans in fifty other countries, from Latin America to Asia. Marivel Gutierez, a side-seam operator in the San Antonio plant, acknowledged that workers in Mexico and elsewhere would benefit, suggesting the globalization of the American dream. “But,” she worried, “what happens to our American dream?” Workers like Gutierez stood as reminders that as many reaped the benefits of free enterprise across national borders, globalization left multitudes of victims in its wake.

Immigration and Its Discontents The United States experienced a tremendous surge of immigration in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Part of a worldwide movement of some 214 million immigrants in 2010 alone, those who came to the United States were drawn by the promise of economic opportunity. In contrast to earlier arrivals who had come largely from Europe, by the 1980s the vast majority came from Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 passed under Lyndon B. Johnson (see chapter 28) had enabled this change, allowing close relatives of U.S. citizens to enter above the annual ceiling of 270,000 immigrants, thus creating family migration chains. During the Cold War, the United States had also welcomed refugees from communism, including more than 800,000 Cubans and more than 600,000 Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians.

The new immigration was making America an ever more international and multiracial society. The largest numbers of immigrants flocked to

California, New York, Texas, Florida, New Jersey, and Illinois, but new immigrants dispersed throughout the country. Taquerias, sushi bars, and Vietnamese restaurants appeared in southeastern and midwestern towns, cable TV companies added Spanish-language stations, and the international sport of soccer soared in popularity.

Mixed marriages displayed the growing fusion of cultures, recognized in 2000 on Census Bureau forms, where Americans could for the first time check more than one racial category. By 2014, the United States’ 42.2 million immigrants constituted 13.2 percent of the population. Latinos constituted the largest U.S. minority group, at 55 million, or 17 percent of the population, although after 2010 more immigrants came from Asia than from Latin America.

The racial composition of the new immigration heightened the long- standing wariness of native-born Americans toward newcomers, as did forecasts of a “majority minority” society by 2050. New state laws establishing English as the official language suggested considerable resistance to a changing America. Pressure for restrictive immigration policies stemmed from beliefs that newcomers took jobs from the native- born, suppressed wages by accepting low pay, strained social services, or eroded the dominant culture.

Americans expressed particular hostility toward immigrants like Jose Antonio Vargas who were in the country illegally, even though the economy depended on their low-paid labor. In 1994, California voters supported Proposition 187, which denied schooling and public services to

undocumented immigrants and their children. Although the measure was struck down by a judge, its popularity focused politicians on the problem of illegal entry into the country, particularly at the U.S-Mexico border. President George W. Bush and his successors — Democrat and Republican alike — would greatly expand the U.S. Border Patrol. They also aggressively deported undocumented immigrants at the rate of roughly four hundred thousand a year. By 2016, the number of undocumented immigrants was estimated at 10.7 million, the lowest level in a decade.

Like their predecessors, the majority of post-1965 immigrants were unskilled and poor. They took the lowest-paying jobs, constituting nearly half of all farmworkers and housekeepers. Mexican immigrants, for example, constituted more than two-thirds of crop workers in 2015. Yet a significant number were highly skilled workers, sought after by burgeoning high-tech industries. In 2000, approximately 40 percent of all immigrants who entered the United States had a college education. By 2006, nearly one-third of all software developers were foreign-born, as were 28 percent of all physicians.

The New Economy and the Old Starting as early as the 1960s but gaining ground in the 1990s with the advent of the Internet and World Wide Web, many experts hailed the emergence of a new economy based around information rather than tangible products. New communication technologies, from e-mail to cell phones, advanced globalization and transformed daily life.

“Dot-com” companies, computer programming jobs, and wealth flowed into tech hubs such as California’s Silicon Valley as well as Seattle, Austin, and New York. By the 1990s, giant new firms like Amazon and Google attracted frenzied speculation. High-tech stock prices soared and thousands of new tech start-ups appeared before the bubble burst in 2000. Even after the shake-up, the surviving companies generated tremendous wealth. Financial industries also took in an increasing share of economic profits, although neither they nor the high-tech sector accounted for much job growth within the United States.

By contrast, areas of the United States that had revolved around heavy industry and manufacturing — the old economy — suffered. Deindustrialization led to a sustained economic downturn in the manufacturing centers of Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, widening income inequality and sharpening regional economic divides.

This transformation of the American economy had actually begun in the middle of the twentieth century. As nations abroad recovered after World War II, some U.S. manufacturers lost increasing shares of their markets to foreign products. Japanese and German factories adopted innovative production processes that enabled their steel and automobile makers to compete with General Motors and U.S. Steel. By 2015, both China and Japan manufactured more cars than the United States, and China produced more than five times as much steel.

Beginning in the 1970s, the process of deindustrialization affected major segments of the U.S. economy, including steel, appliances, machine tools, computers, furniture, and clothing. From a peak of 19.5 million in 1977, the number of manufacturing jobs fell below 12 million by 2012. The proportion of American workers in manufacturing jobs dropped as well: from one-third in the 1950s to 10 percent by the twenty-first century. Even before factory jobs began to move abroad, the so-called Rust Belt experienced a kind of deindustrialization as companies moved production from cities like Detroit to southern states and the Sun Belt (see chapter 27), where labor unions were weak or nonexistent and companies could pay lower wages.

Not all the job losses resulted from outsourcing production. Some corporations chose another way to cut costs: increasing productivity so that they could downsize their workforces. At Kodak, for example, a machine replaced fourteen workers who previously had mixed film-making ingredients. Whether a job was lost to a foreign worker, to automation, or to a work speedup, millions of workers saw their job security and standard of living slip away (Map 31.3).

MAP 31.3 Poverty in the United States, 2015

This map shows the percentage of people living in poverty by state in 2015. It shows the persistent gap between poverty levels in the north and south. There were also uneven economic prospects within regions, with extreme poverty concentrated in the deep South and Southwest, in many urban centers, and on Native American reservations, as in Arizona and New Mexico.

Although factory work was often grueling and tedious, blue-collar wages had provided a middle-class existence for millions of families. Industrial labor unions had boosted pay even for the non-unionized and provided other benefits such as health insurance and pensions for their members. As factories closed, union membership plummeted from nearly one in three workers in the 1950s to less than one in ten in 2015. Both the decline of manufacturing and the decline of unions contributed to economic insecurity.

Once the industrial heartland of America, the region fringing the Great Lakes and stretching from New York to Illinois became known as the Rust Belt, a reference not only to stilled steel and automobile plants but also to population loss and urban decay. Some Rust Belt cities pursued economic revival by building convention centers and casinos, others through nontraditional manufacturing or finance. Neither the old nor the new economy provided easy answers for the struggling region.

��

In what ways were processes of globalization transforming the United States in the twenty-first century?

What obstacles stood in the way of Obama’s reform agenda? Bush’s Democratic successor in 2008, President Barack Hussein Obama, sought to change course in both domestic and foreign policy. But first he was confronted with an economic crisis of major proportions, the worst that the United States had experienced since the Great Depression. Obama achieved significant anti-recession measures and laws to regulate Wall Street as well as major health care reform, but a determined grassroots movement on the Republican right opposed the president at every turn.

In foreign policy, Obama generally sought a less aggressive, more multilateral approach to challenges around the world. His administration drew down U.S. troops in Iraq, reopened diplomatic relations with Cuba, and negotiated a treaty with five major powers and Iran to keep that nation from developing nuclear weapons. But most of the Middle East remained unstable, and the United States seemed increasingly vulnerable to terrorist threats.

A Post-Racial America? Obama won an election that represented momentous changes in American politics. The Republican nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona, a Vietnam War hero, chose as his running mate Alaska governor Sarah Palin, the first Republican woman vice-presidential candidate. In the Democratic Party, for the first time, a woman and an African American candidate were the top two contenders, upsetting old notions of whom a president should

be. In a hard-fought primary battle, Obama edged out New York senator and former First Lady Hillary Clinton for the nomination.

A Historic Election On November 4, 2008, a crowd of 200,000 gathered in Chicago’s Grant Park to celebrate the election of the nation’s first African American president. Many hoped

Obama’s victory would help the nation overcome long-standing racial divisions. Yet although Obama — pictured here with his wife, Michelle, and daughters Malia and Sasha — won with 53 percent of the popular vote, including the majority of African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, women, and younger Americans, only a minority of whites, 43 percent, supported him.

In contrast to Clinton, long in the public eye, Obama was a relative newcomer to the national stage, serving just two years in the U.S. Senate before announcing his candidacy. Born in 1961 to a white mother and a black Kenyan father — a marriage that would have been illegal in many states at that time — Obama was raised in Hawai’i and Indonesia. The first African American to head the Harvard Law Review, he settled in Chicago, taught law, served in the Illinois Senate, and won election to the U.S. Senate in 2004. At the age of forty-seven, he won the Democratic presidential nomination with innovative grassroots and Internet organizing and by promising bipartisan cooperation and racial reconciliation. Obama won 53 percent of the popular vote and defeated McCain 365 to 173 in the electoral college, while Democrats increased their majorities in the House and Senate.

Despite the legal victories of the civil rights movement, many had predicted that an African American candidate simply could not win the presidency. Obama’s decisive election in 2008 galvanized progressives, and commentators rushed to announce the dawning of a “post-racial” or “color- blind” America that had finally put its troubled history of race relations to rest. Time magazine gushed that Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream “is being fulfilled sooner than anyone imagined.” A French newspaper declared that

“we … need to change our preconceptions about American prejudice,” adding, “It seems like America could teach us a thing or two about democracy.”

Others were not so sure, noting the ugly tenor of the presidential campaign, particularly the false rumors that tagged the Christian and Hawai’ian-born Obama as a Muslim and a noncitizen. The far-right “birther” movement suggested that the Democratic nominee was ineligible for the presidency because of his purportedly foreign citizenship, demanding that he produce his birth certificate. Although the Supreme Court would declare in 2013 that “our country has changed” in deciding to end federal oversight of election laws in the South, those states would quickly propose ways to restrict the vote in ways that disproportionally disfranchised African Americans.

During both the campaign and his presidency, Obama treaded cautiously when commenting on race and its legacy in the United States, aware that those reflections, coming from him, could easily be treated as divisive or even racist. And the Obama years would provide plenty of evidence of economic inequality and police brutality in black communities. Still, the 2008 election represented a significant milestone in the history of race and rights in the United States.

Governing with Resistance In the 2004 Democratic National Convention address that cemented his status as a rising star in the party, Obama proclaimed that “there is not a

liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America — there’s the United States of America.” Upon his election, the new president hoped to work across party lines to enact reforms in health care, education, the environment, and immigration policy.

Instead, the economic crisis that Obama inherited dominated his early months in office. As the recession spread from financial institutions to other parts of the economy and the world, mortgage foreclosures skyrocketed, major companies went bankrupt, and unemployment rose — reaching 9.8 percent in late 2010. Obama responded with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, $787 billion worth of spending and tax cuts to stimulate the economy and relieve unemployment. Though it was the largest single spending bill in American history, many experts judged even that infusion of money into the economy as inadequate, given the scope of the crisis.

Obama also orchestrated a federal bailout of General Motors and Chrysler, saving some one million jobs related to the automobile industry. Finally, to address the sources of the financial crisis, Congress expanded governmental regulation with the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in 2010. Nonetheless, the recovery was agonizingly slow, and income inequality reached its highest level since the 1920s.

In 2010, Obama faced another crisis, this one environmental, when a British Petroleum oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded. Over the course of

months, millions of gallons of oil were released into the Gulf, polluting the water and beaches along the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida and wreaking havoc on the fishing and tourist industries. As with the economic collapse, deregulation and the weakening of inspections and oversight — in this case of the oil industry — were partly to blame.

Beset by economic and environmental crises and with a Democratic- controlled Congress for only the first two years of his presidency, Obama’s domestic achievements fell short of his ambitions. His judicial appointments of Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor increased the number of women on the Supreme Court to three, with Sotomayor the first-ever Latina justice. He signed legislation that strengthened women’s right to equal pay and rolled back some of the Bush tax cuts that had disproportionately favored the wealthy.

The Obama years also saw significant victories for gay rights, including legislation ending discrimination against gay men and lesbians in the military. By the time Obama took office, a majority of the largest companies provided health benefits to same-sex domestic partners and included sexual orientation in their nondiscrimination policies. A majority of states banned discrimination in public employment, and many of those laws extended to private employment, housing, and education. Discrimination persisted, but in 2015, the Supreme Court ratified the enormous change in American attitudes toward homosexuality. In Obergefell v. Hodges, the Court declared by a vote of five to four that same-sex couples had a constitutional right to marry, making gay marriage legal in all fifty states.

Obama’s paramount achievement was passage of health care reform, putting the United States in step with the majority of industrial nations that subsidized some kind of health care for all citizens. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 required that nearly everyone carry health insurance, and to that end, it provided subsidies and compelled larger businesses to cover their employees. The law also included protections for health care consumers and contained provisions to limit medical costs.

Although liberals failed to get a public option to allow government- managed programs to compete with private insurance plans, the legislation represented the largest expansion of the federal government since the Great Society. It was bitterly resisted by Obama’s opponents, one sign of the near- total breakdown of bipartisan cooperation in Congress. Republicans had previously endorsed key elements of the measure, and it resembled Massachusetts’s health care program established under Republican governor Mitt Romney. Yet not a single Republican voted for the Affordable Care Act, and most Republican governors impeded its implementation in their states.

“Obamacare” (a derisive label later embraced by its supporters), along with the federal bailouts of big corporations, helped fuel a grassroots movement of mostly white, middle-class, and older voters. The Tea Party movement was funded by billionaire conservatives and fostered by right-wing media, particularly Fox News, a partisan cable news network that had become the nation’s largest and most watched. Those attracted to the Tea Party movement complained of an overreaching government and the sense that they and their values were being displaced. As one Tea Party supporter put

it, “The government is taking over everything — I want my freedom back.” Most Tea Party activists defended Social Security and Medicare as programs they had earned, but they resisted any new federal entitlement programs.

The intensely polarized political environment posed a roadblock to further economic legislation and thwarted Obama’s efforts to reform environmental and immigration policy. Obama carried the burden of a nearly 8 percent unemployment rate into the 2012 election, where he faced Republican Mitt Romney. With the electorate deeply divided over the role of the federal government, Obama won easily in the electoral college, with 332 votes to Romney’s 206, and he captured 51 percent of the popular vote to Romney’s 47 percent. Following the 2014 midterm elections, however, Republicans took over both houses of Congress.

Republicans in Congress used their majority to thwart Obama’s agenda. In response, the president employed executive authority to raise the minimum wage for federal workers and to chip away at some of the racial injustices in the criminal justice system. Calling undocumented immigrants like Jose Antonio Vargas “Americans in their heart, in their minds, in every single way but one: on paper,” the president issued an executive order protecting immigrant youth from deportation when legislation to that effect, the DREAM Act, was stalled in Congress. He likewise stiffened curbs on motor vehicle and power plant emissions and encouraged alternative energy development, directing the Environmental Protection Agency to adopt a Clean Power Plan. Obama also helped make possible a landmark climate

change agreement, signed in Paris in 2015 by 195 nations, that pledged action to reduce carbon emissions that threatened to devastate the earth.

Executive authority only went so far, however. When Obama nominated Merrick Garland for a spot on the Supreme Court upon the death of sitting justice Antonin Scalia in early 2016, the conservative congressional leadership pushed back. Garland was a moderate who had been praised by Republicans. Yet the Senate majority leader, backed by all the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, barred a vote on Garland’s nomination, arguing that the next president — not the current one, who had nearly a year left in office — should select the new justice. It was a startling partisan move and a major defeat for Obama. Although Democrats railed against this tactic, the seat would remained unfilled until after the election of 2016.

Multilateralism in Foreign Policy Obama criticized much of his predecessor’s foreign policy, described by Bush as a “global war on terror.” Obama believed that concept exaggerated the threat, justified disastrous decisions like the invasion of Iraq, sacrificed American ideals in the pursuit of security, and distracted attention from serious problems at home. Yet once in office, Obama left some Bush initiatives in place. The Bush administration had, after a national debate, ended its use of torture. Obama pledged to go further and close the detention center at Guantánamo altogether. But he met resistance in Congress, and forty prisoners remained there, without rights, in 2018. The president also greatly increased the use of unmanned drone strikes in other

countries, killing hundreds of people, both terrorists and innocent citizens, actions condemned by human rights advocates.

Obama followed the Bush administration’s plan to withdraw from Iraq, and the last troops departed in 2011, whereupon terrorist violence and sectarian strife grew stronger. Although he had also pledged to bring home all troops from Afghanistan, Obama dispatched fifty thousand more military personnel there, acknowledging that he could not end the longest military operation in American history; more than eight thousand of those troops remained in 2018.

In a dramatic mission in May 2011, U.S. special forces killed Osama bin Laden, who was hiding in Pakistan. Celebrated by many in the United States as a victory in a conflict with few such milestones, bin Laden’s removal weakened but did not destroy Al Qaeda and its offshoots.

Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between people,” and especially for his promise to regain the trust of Muslim nations. But he was confronted with difficult decisions about the U.S. role in the Middle East — in particular, how much and what kind of intervention in the region could bring stability without the charge of American domination.

In 2011, popular uprisings, collectively referred to as the “Arab Spring,” sought reforms from entrenched dictators in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Syria. Each country had experienced long-standing internal divisions,

decades of official corruption, and neglect of its population’s basic needs; moreover, terrorists operated in each country, hoping to exploit the situation to install a radical fundamentalist Islamic state. Although some rebellions toppled corrupt dictators, such as Libya’s Muammar al-Gaddafi, little progress was made toward stability, constitutional government, equal rights, and economic security. Protests in Syria turned into a civil war that took more than 200,000 lives and sent four million Syrians into exile, creating a refugee crisis in Europe.

The calamity of the Iraq War and the desire to improve the nation’s international reputation made Obama wary of intervention, even as the aftermath of the Arab Spring led to protracted chaos and violence in Libya, Syria, and Yemen. Unrest was exacerbated by the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), a more brutal and effective offspring of Al Qaeda (Map 31.2). By 2016, ISIS controlled key areas of Iraq and Syria and was linked to or inspired terrorist attacks on civilians in Egypt, Turkey, France, Belgium, and the United States — in both San Bernardino, California, and Orlando, Florida. Reluctant to commit military force beyond air strikes and some special forces on the ground, the Obama administration was subject to criticism for its indecisiveness and “leading from behind.”

Preferring to attack problems with diplomacy, in 2015 Obama worked with China, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, and Germany to secure a treaty with Iran to keep that nation from developing nuclear weapons. The harsh condemnation of the Iran nuclear deal by most Republicans reflected how much Americans disagreed about where their nation’s international interests

lay and about what the United States could and should do to protect national security.

In 2015, Obama determined to “bury the last remnant of the Cold War in the Americas” by opening diplomatic relations with Cuba. The new wars of the post-9/11 era, on the other hand, created ongoing dilemmas at home as well as abroad.

Leaks of classified information by National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden in 2013 revealed that Obama’s administration had maintained Bush’s surveillance programs. In particular, the NSA was exposed as having secretly collected data about millions of American citizens’ communications with the assistance of major telephone and Internet providers. The news launched a national debate about the constitutionality of U.S. mass surveillance and the secret intelligence courts that oversaw it.

Judging Snowden a traitor, some argued that protecting the nation from terrorist attacks was worth any incursion on individual liberty. Others praised Snowden as a whistleblower who had courageously unveiled the NSA’s trampling of Americans’ rights. The episode brought attention to the state of citizens’ privacy, with Americans ranking government infringement of civil liberties a greater concern than potential terrorist attacks for the first time in a decade. Broad-based outrage about the NSA’s bulk collection of telephone records also triggered bipartisan congressional efforts to rein in the agency’s intelligence apparatus or make it more accountable — a rare development in a polarized Washington.

��

What were the successes and failures of Obama’s presidency?

How did new social movements change politics? Gridlock in Congress was only part of the story of American politics in the twenty-first century. An array of activists used new media and organizing tools to press for social change in a flourishing of grassroots protest. Although many of the issues were enduring — income inequality, civil rights, police brutality, and sexual harassment — they received fresh attention. Some newer causes gained support as well, from the self- determination of transgender people to the rights of undocumented immigrants. Activists faced steep resistance. But they also won victories, whether through concrete reforms or by changing the public conversation.

Progressives Mobilize The bailout of huge financial institutions during the Great Recession, along with the declining fortunes of working-class Americans, produced some of the strongest political challenges to income inequality in decades. One manifestation was a grassroots protest movement calling itself Occupy Wall Street that began in 2011 in New York City. Beginning with a small group camped out in the city’s financial district, the movement took off, sparking rallies all over the country. Many were drawn to the Occupy slogan championing “the 99 percent” — that is, nearly everyone — over the “1 percent” of the wealthiest Americans who, protesters claimed, exerted outsize control over both economic and political affairs. Their attacks on monopolies and unearned wealth carried echoes of the progressive movement a century earlier (see chapter 21).

The youthful Occupy movement responded to developments long in the making: stagnating wages and the replacement of union positions by low- paid, insecure jobs on the one hand, and the concentration of wealth in the stock market and in the hands of the very rich on the other. By the time of the first Occupy protest, for example, the average income of the wealthiest 1 percent in America was $1.2 million per year. One study of the fifty largest employers of low-wage workers in the United States found that executive compensation averaged $9.4 million, with $175 billion returned to shareholders over a period of five years.

Attention to these stark inequalities, the most pronounced in the industrial world, galvanized a fight to raise the federal hourly minimum wage, which had stood at $7.25 since 2009. Some 4.5 million workers earned wages at or below that minimum, and they labored in the fastest-growing occupations in the United States, from food service and retail work to in-home health care. As a security guard at New York’s JFK airport who made $1,000 a month observed, “Half of the money goes to rent. After all of my expenses I don’t have anything left…. I can’t explain how much I need the minimum wage to increase.”

Led by a coalition of labor unions and community organizations, rallies to raise the minimum wage were launched in more than thirty cities in 2012. Strikes and civil disobedience targeted major low-wage employers such as Walmart and McDonald’s. Activists achieved some remarkable successes. In 2014, Seattle raised its citywide minimum wage to $15 per hour, the highest in the nation, with other states and cities following suit.

The economic pain of globalization, along with the erosion of economic security in rural America, the Rust Belt, and elsewhere, had unpredictable effects. It increased the appeal of populist movements across the political spectrum, bolstering the candidacies of two unusual presidential contenders in 2016: Democratic socialist Bernie Sanders and real estate mogul Donald Trump.

Civil Rights and Black Lives New civil rights causes emerged as well. Following the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, activists called upon U.S. society not simply to prevent discrimination against those differently abled but to recognize and honor multiple kinds of ability, including respect for neurodiversity. A movement focused on the rights of transgender people built on the legal and social victories of the gay liberation movement, demanding that gender identity be treated not as a biological given but as something for each individual to determine. Each of these movements raised questions about the limits of justice and inclusion in what had become a far more pluralistic American society.

The boundaries of national belonging would also be tested by the surprising outbreak in 2006 of a movement in support of undocumented immigrants’ rights. Prompted by a Republican bill that sought to criminalize assistance to those in the country illegally, these demonstrations were some of the largest in U.S. history, including a “Day Without Immigrants” protest in southern California. Some activists, who called themselves DREAMers, launched a national “coming out” campaign in 2010 by publicly declaring

their undocumented status. Their actions would both inspire Jose Antonio Vargas and put considerable pressure on Congress to create a path to legal residency.

Among the most visible of the new social movements was in fact a continuation of a long struggle against the unequal and often violent policing of black communities. It was ignited by the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teen in Florida, by a white “neighborhood watch” member, who was then acquitted. Black Lives Matter (BLM) was founded the next year to push back against racism in policing and to advocate for the political and economic empowerment of African Americans “in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise.”

When Michael Brown, an unarmed eighteen-year-old, was shot and killed by police in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, activists gathered in that city, mounting weeks of protests. Polls revealing racial gaps in attitudes toward law enforcement, as well as the appearance of a countermovement calling itself “Blue Lives Matter,” made clear that not all Americans agreed that police brutality was an urgent issue. Confrontations between protesters and the state police and National Guard in Ferguson recalled the urban rebellions of the 1960s, leading some to question how far the post–civil rights United States had traveled in overcoming its painful racial history.

After Ferguson, Black Lives Matter became a national movement. The shooting or killing of African Americans by the police — often with no repercussions for the officers involved — was the target of demonstrations

in more than one hundred cities, including New York City, Cleveland, Baltimore, and North Charleston. What became the Movement for Black Lives drew attention to the devastating toll of violence on people of color as well as the need for criminal justice reform. Its success depended on recordings of clashes between black civilians and white officers on smartphone cameras that spread quickly through social media. One result was a flurry of laws instituting body cameras for police officers to document their actions. The surveillance of police by activists through handheld devices suggested some of the ways new technologies and media platforms were transforming social protest and policy.

Social Media and Activism In the twenty-first century, access to the Internet and then to Internet- enabled smartphones spread rapidly in the United States and around the globe. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008 was one of the first to harness the power of online organizing to reach voters. Activists would also use digital networks to organize protests and broadcast their stories and images.

The Occupy and Black Lives Matter movements depended on social media platforms to coordinate the activities of strangers and even the discussion of high-level policy matters. Social media also played a notable part in the Arab Spring of 2011, with protesters garnering international support as much through Facebook and Twitter as through traditional news and print media.

In the years that followed, political issues often gained traction most swiftly online. A movement against sexual harassment and assault, #MeToo, made waves in 2017 — and ended some powerful men’s careers — by exposing the extent of workplace abuse women experienced in Hollywood, the restaurant industry, journalism, and corporate America more broadly. The campaign, organized in order to “give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem,” was conducted largely through Twitter posts by female celebrities and was followed by millions.

Likewise, responding to a mass shooting in 2018 at a Parkland, Florida, high school that left seventeen dead — one of a series of school shootings that shook the nation — students took it upon themselves to break through congressional inaction on gun control laws. Launching the organization #NeverAgain, inspired by #MeToo, youthful activists used their social media accounts to keep the tragedy in the news and to coordinate school walkouts as well as a national “March for Our Lives.” One of them, Emma González, had accrued 1.2 million Twitter followers less than a month after the Parkland massacre. That year, sixty-seven new gun safety laws were passed in twenty-six states and the District of Columbia, reforms that many credited to young activists.

By 2019, social media had become critical for attracting visibility and support to political causes. Some worried, however, that these platforms had significant downsides as a medium for public discussion because of their capacity to filter news, polarize views, and spread misinformation. That debate continues, but it seems clear that social media, along with its political uses, is here to stay.

��

How did new technologies affect social activism?

What was the significance of the 2016 election? The election of 2016 was among the most surprising in American history, leaving pundits at a loss to explain how a candidate with no prior political experience, and best known to voters for his appearances on a reality television show, had captured the U.S. presidency. But Donald Trump’s victory was the product of several long-term developments. The economic pain caused by globalization propelled Trump’s campaign, as did resentment toward progressive movements centered on race and gender. The power of celebrity, structural features of the U.S. electoral system, and widespread frustration with politics-as-usual also played a role.

Platforms, Polls, and Protests Donald Trump was not expected to win the Republican nomination in 2016. A billionaire New York City real estate developer and reality TV star, he had traveled in celebrity circles since the 1980s. Unprecedented for a major party’s presidential nominee, he had no prior government or military service. He would square off against Hillary Clinton, who had served as a U.S. senator and secretary of state as well as First Lady for eight years. The election was historic, with a woman heading the Democratic ticket. Clinton had bested another unusual candidate for the nomination: Bernie Sanders, a senator from Vermont and Democratic socialist who campaigned on a platform of economic justice that inspired many young voters.

Supporters at a Trump Rally An unusual candidate who flouted many of the norms of presidential campaigning, Donald Trump inspired fervent support from his conservative base. Although he was twice-divorced, embroiled in sexual scandals, and religiously nonobservant, Trump was also the candidate of white self-identified evangelical and born-again Christians. A resounding 81 percent of those voters pulled the lever for him in 2016, matching or exceeding the percentage who had supported the Republican candidate in the elections of 2004, 2008, and 2012.

The 2016 election was a study in contrasts. Clinton developed detailed position papers on many issues and ran on her extensive record of public service. Trump, on the other hand, spoke off the cuff and often inaccurately, avoiding specifics. In a populist and nationalist appeal that struck a chord with white conservatives, he railed against immigration, unfair trade policies, and the loss of American jobs, pledging to “Make America Great Again.” The fact that Trump did not sound like a traditional politician or

part of the establishment was part of his draw for voters, particularly as compared to Hillary Clinton, who had been involved in policymaking for decades and was intensely disliked by Republicans. Trump’s attacks on the mainstream media, which he claimed to be stacked against him, also seemed to resonate.

Most experts gave Trump little or no chance of winning the presidency. In nearly every pre-election poll, Clinton was predicted to be the victor. She did win the popular vote by a margin of nearly 2.9 million votes (Map 31.4). But Trump’s narrow edge in several key Rust Belt states — Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania — secured a stunning upset victory in the electoral college. It was the second time a Republican had won the electoral but not the popular vote in the twenty-first century.

MAP 31.4 The Election of 2016

Description “The map shows the state-wide votes for each candidate as follows:

Donald J. Trump (Republican): Maine, 1; Pennsylvania, 20; West Virginia, 5; Michigan, 16; Ohio, 18; Indiana, 11; Kentucky, 8; Tennessee, 11; North Carolina, 15; South Carolina, 9; Florida, 29; Alabama, 9; Georgia, 16; Mississippi, 6; Louisiana, 8; Arkansas, 6; Missouri, 10; Iowa, 6; Wisconsin, 10; North Dakota, 3; South Dakota, 3; Nebraska, 5; Kansas, 6; Oklahoma, 7; Texas, 38; Montana, 3; Wyoming, 3; Idaho, 4; Utah, 6; Arizona, 11; and Alaska, 3.

Electoral Vote: 304; Popular Vote: 62,984,825; Percent of Popular Vote: 46.1 percent.

Hillary Clinton (Democrat): Maine, 3; Vermont, 3; New Hampshire, 4; Massachusetts, 11; Rhode Island, 4; Connecticut, 7; New Jersey, 14; Delaware, 3; Maryland, 10; Virginia, 13; New York, 29; Minnesota, 10; Illinois, 20; New Mexico, 5; Colorado, 9; Washington, 12; Oregon, 7; Nevada, 6; California, 55; Washington D.C., 3; and Hawaii, 4.

Electoral Vote: 227; Popular Vote: 65,853,516; Percent of Popular Vote: 48.2 percent.”

This unexpected outcome subjected the electoral college and the 2016 election itself to scrutiny, including the vulnerability of the U.S. voting system to hackers. Charges of interference by Russian interests via “cyberattacks” on the U.S. presidential contest circulated. Concerns about the effects of “fake news,” and evidence of improper data sharing between a social media company and a political consulting firm — the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal of 2018 — raised further alarms about the integrity of U.S. democratic processes.

Following a campaign marked by what many considered to be racist and nativist rhetoric, as well as by revelations of Trump’s sexual misconduct, the new president was greeted by nationwide protests as he took office. The Women’s March, which gathered in Washington, D.C., the day after Trump’s inauguration in 2017, was one of the largest such events in U.S. history. Yet one of the most striking aspects of Trump’s presidency would be how differently Americans on opposite sides of a deeply divided electorate regarded it. Whereas Democrats viewed the state of national politics and foreign policy with mounting apprehension, Trump’s conservative base remained fiercely supportive of the forty-fifth president.

Once in office, Trump proved to be as unpredictable and unconventional a president as he had been a candidate. He secured a tax cut and quickly moved to reverse many of his predecessor’s executive orders. Trump promised to undo Obama’s Affordable Care Act and to “build a wall” on

the U.S.-Mexico border. Yet even with a Republican Congress in place, Trump met obstacles to these goals. With an erratic style, including a preference for dealing directly with foreign leaders and announcing policy changes via tweets, Trump’s White House was unlike any other that Americans could remember. Ethics violations and criminal charges related to Russian influence also shadowed his administration, leading in 2019 to an uncertain path forward for both Trump and the nation.

Right-Wing Populism on the Rise The 2016 election appeared to be part of a broader international swing toward right-wing populism. Populist movements on the right gained ground in Europe, one reaction to the economic insecurity wrought by globalization. In the United States, nationalist and anti-immigrant sentiment accompanied calls for border security and protectionist trade policy. In his somber inaugural address, Trump tapped into these concerns, referencing the “rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation,” and the “millions upon millions of American workers left behind.”

The wealthiest occupant of the White House in U.S. history, one who had managed to evade paying millions of dollars in personal income taxes, Donald Trump was an unlikely spokesman for the down-and-out. But his signature issues — lowering taxes, negotiating for better trade deals, and halting illegal immigration — aligned with workers’ unease about their economic futures.

Related concerns about threats to national identity and security underwrote some of Trump’s more controversial policies. One of his first moves as president was to call for a ban on travel to the United States by citizens of majority-Muslim countries, in what seemed to many a return to an earlier America’s ethnic and religious profiling. Although lower courts struck down two iterations of the travel ban, the Supreme Court upheld a modified version in 2018.

Trump’s refusal in 2017 to condemn a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, during which a young female protester was killed, also caused alarm. The episode seemed to indicate the president’s reluctance to alienate a like-minded section of his base and encouraged virulent expressions of racism, bringing denunciations from both inside and outside his party. Likewise, Trump’s aggressive policies to curb illegal immigration led to outcomes that many found inhumane, including the separation of children from their families in government detention camps at the U.S.-Mexico border.

With this focus on national identity and security, the humanitarian functions of government seemed to slip in importance. When two major hurricanes devastated Puerto Rico — a U.S. territory — in 2017, leaving much of the island without access to power, food, and water, the administration was criticized for its slow and ineffectual response. In California, where a series of massive wildfires caused enormous destruction, relief aid came only after a rebuke of the state’s forest management practices, which had not caused the fires but which the president suggested needed to be altered before federal assistance would be forthcoming.

Trump took up core issues on the Republican docket, trimming taxes and banking regulations while reversing environmental protections, including opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. Reflecting continuing partisan battles over sexual and cultural matters, Trump issued a ban on transgender individuals serving in the military. He also made good on a promise to install a raft of conservative justices, including two on the Supreme Court. Democratic senators furiously protested Trump’s nominees, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, but they met with approval from members of the religious right, who sought to overturn abortion rights.

On two of his biggest promises, however, Trump faltered. Although he had pledged to repeal “Obamacare,” the president had not grasped how popular federally guaranteed health insurance was, and how difficult it would be politically for some in his own party to oppose it. Multiple attempts to derail the Affordable Care Act failed, although the administration did succeed in modifying some of its provisions.

A More Diverse Congress in 2019 Voters in the 2018 midterms gave the Democrats a majority in the House and elected the most diverse Congress in history, which many interpreted as a rebuke to the policies of the Trump administration. Out of a total of 535 members of the Senate and House of Representatives in 2019, 102 were racial or ethnic minorities: 49 were African American, 38 Latino, and 15 Asian American. Just under 24 percent, or 127, were women.

Another of Trump’s oft-repeated campaign promises was the construction of a physical wall at the U.S.-Mexican border to stem illegal immigration, but this effort stalled as well. When, after the midterm elections in 2018, a Democratic-controlled House refused to fund a border wall, the standoff between Trump and Congress triggered the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, stretching for thirty-five days during the winter of 2018–19, and leaving many federal workers without pay.

The shutdown earned the president severe criticism, even from conservative commentators, particularly when it became clear that the Democrats would

not budge. Determined to build the wall nevertheless, Trump then attempted an end run around Congress, declaring a national emergency at the country’s southern border in order to release the necessary funds. Sixteen states and a series of other watchdog organizations launched lawsuits against the emergency declaration, calling it an illegal use of executive authority.

A Retreat from U.S. Global Leadership Donald Trump regularly departed from the norms of past presidential administrations. Nowhere was this more striking than in the conduct of foreign affairs, where he showed an impatience with traditional diplomacy, and sought instead to speak directly to Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s dictator, and to meet privately with Russian president Vladimir Putin. Trump cut the budget of the State Department and sidelined advisers there in favor of following his own instincts or those of close political advisers. Despite boasts of bringing his businessman’s “art of the deal” to the conduct of foreign policy, Trump’s personal diplomacy did not immediately advance U.S. economic or military objectives.

The Trump administration’s most significant impact on world affairs was in its marked retreat from U.S. global leadership. On the campaign trail, Trump outlined an “America First” policy, whereby U.S. interests, particularly economic interests, would be foremost. In office, he called upon the nation’s allies to compensate the United States for its role in their defense. He sought import tariffs on foreign goods, setting off trade

disputes with the European Union, Canada, and, most consequentially, China.

More generally, Trump’s administration stepped back from U.S. commitments and entanglements abroad, among them the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade negotiations, the Iran nuclear deal, and the Paris climate agreement. He also unilaterally recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and announced the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria. These moves undercut the planning of his own foreign policy team and provoked sharp criticism from other world leaders. Some experts wondered if an era of U.S. global leadership, embraced by Americans in the post–World War II years, was ending — and looked to France or Germany to step into that role.

Meanwhile, a Justice Department probe investigating Russian government interference in the 2016 election and its potential connections to the Trump campaign hung over the administration. By early 2019, several of Trump’s associates had pleaded guilty to criminal charges related to campaign finance violations, tax fraud, and lying under oath.

��

What social and political conflicts emerged in the wake of Trump’s election?

Conclusion: In a deeply polarized America, was there any common ground? From the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center to the ongoing threat of cyberattacks, the twenty-first century has held new challenges for the United States. International terrorism and instability in the Middle East preoccupied U.S. leaders, sparking new debates over the long-standing question of how the United States should act beyond its borders. Unilateralism and preemption under Bush, the more multilateral approach of Obama, and the seeming retreat of the United States from world leadership under Trump each had vocal critics.

Globalization reshaped American society, generating vast fortunes but also profound economic distress as low-wage, insecure work became the norm for many. Major natural and environmental disasters underscored other ways in which the most powerful nation on earth both contributed to and was affected by global developments. The United States was one of the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases, but it was unclear whether its leaders would be able to summon the political will to tackle the looming threat of climate change.

Questions stemming from within the United States were no easier. The sense of common national purpose born of the 9/11 attacks in 2001 turned out to be a brief pause in the escalating partisan combat in both Congress and the broader culture. Far-right movements, including nativism and white

nationalism, appeared to be on the rise in the second decade of the twenty- first century. But there were countercurrents in the explosion of progressive grassroots movements and the increasingly diverse makeup of the nation’s political leadership. Debates over who belonged in the United States, and to whom America belonged — posed by groups as different as Tea Party activists and undocumented immigrants — were not new, but rather the latest chapter in the nation’s unfolding story.

Chapter Review

��

Al Qaeda USA Patriot Act Department of Homeland Security Iraq War Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission No Child Left Behind Act Hurricane Katrina Great Recession Rust Belt Obergefell v. Hodges Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act Tea Party movement Occupy Wall Street Black Lives Matter

�� The Post-9/11 World

How were American international relations affected by the events of September 11, 2001?

What impact did the “war on terror” have on civil liberties at home and on the U.S. observance of human rights?

The New Economy

Were commentators correct in predicting the triumph of a new, high-tech economy?

What were the main factors contributing to inequality and poverty in the United States in the twenty-first century?

Polarized Politics

Why did the policies of the Obama administration meet intense resistance in Congress? How did political polarization play out in the first years of the Trump administration?

What prompted the formation of new social movements like Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, and what tactics did they use to further their goals?

�� , ��

Compare the place of the United States in the world in 1945, 1989, and 2020.

Defend or refute the following statement: In fifty years’ time, the United States will still be the most powerful nation in the world.

��

2000 George W. Bush pronounced president, following Bush v. Gore ruling. High-tech stock bubble bursts.

2001 Terrorists attack World Trade Center and Pentagon. U.S.-led coalition drives Taliban government out of Afghanistan. USA Patriot Act passes. Federal taxes cut by $1.35 trillion.

2002 No Child Left Behind Act signed. Department of Homeland Security established.

2003 United States attacks Iraq. Total Information Awareness program launched. Prescription drug coverage added to Medicare.

2004 President Bush reelected. Levi Strauss closes all its U.S. plants.

2005 Hurricane Katrina devastates Gulf states. Central American–Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement passes.

2006 Mass demonstrations show support for immigrants’ rights.

2007 Bush begins troop surge in Iraq. Great Recession begins.

2008 Troubled Asset Relief Program passed. United States faces worst financial crisis since Great Depression. Barack Obama elected president.

2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passes.

2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act passes. Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act passes. British Petroleum oil spill creates environmental disaster in Gulf of Mexico. United States ends combat operations in Iraq, increases troops in Afghanistan. DREAMers launch “coming out” campaign about undocumented status.

2011 Osama bin Laden killed. Arab Spring uprisings begin. Occupy Wall Street movement begins.

2012 Number of U.S. manufacturing jobs falls below 12 million. President Obama reelected. Strikes and rallies support raising minimum wage. Trayvon Martin killed.

2013 NSA surveillance of U.S. citizens exposed. Black Lives Matter founded.

2014 Immigrants constitute 13.2 percent of U.S. population. Seattle adopts $15-an-hour minimum wage, highest in nation. Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri, sets off weeks of protest.

2015 China and Japan surpass United States in automobile production. Same-sex couples gain constitutional right to marriage. Iran nuclear deal signed. Paris climate change agreement signed by 195 nations. U.S. restores diplomatic relations with Cuba.

2016 Republicans in Senate block consideration of Obama’s Supreme Court nominee. Donald Trump elected president.

2017 Women’s March launches major protest following Trump’s inauguration. White nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, turns violent. Hurricanes devastate Puerto Rico. #MeToo movement takes off on Twitter.

2018 “March for Our Lives” follows Parkland school shooting. Sixty-seven new state gun laws pass. Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal breaks. Supreme Court upholds Trump’s travel ban. Democrats capture House in midterm elections.

2018–2019 Longest government shutdown in U.S. history ends after thirty-five days.

2019 Trump declares national emergency at southern U.S. border.

Appendix

The Declaration of Independence In Congress, July 4, 1776,

T�� U�� D�� T�� U�� S�� A��

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established, should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are

accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having, in direct object, the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these States. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world: He has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and, when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature; a right inestimable to them, and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly for opposing, with manly firmness, his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused, for a long time after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the mean-time exposed to all the danger of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose, obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners, refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of, and superior to, the civil power.

He has combined, with others, to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them by a mock trial, from punishment, for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefit of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering, fundamentally, the powers of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection, and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is, at this time, transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun, with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens, taken captive on the high seas, to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends, and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions, we have petitioned for redress; in the most humble terms; our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them, from time to time, of attempts made by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them, by the ties of our common kindred, to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They, too, have been deaf to the voice of justice and consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our separation, and hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace, friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in general Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states: that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; and that, as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And, for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

The foregoing Declaration was, by order of Congress, engrossed, and signed by the following members:

John Hancock

New Hampshire Josiah Bartlett William Whipple Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts Bay Samuel Adams John Adams Robert Treat Paine Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island Stephen Hopkins William Ellery

Connecticut Roger Sherman Samuel Huntington William Williams Oliver Wolcott

New York William Floyd Phillip Livingston Francis Lewis Lewis Morris

New Jersey

Richard Stockton John Witherspoon Francis Hopkinson John Hart Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania Robert Morris Benjamin Rush Benjamin Franklin John Morton George Clymer James Smith George Taylor James Wilson George Ross

Delaware Caesar Rodney George Read Thomas M’Kean

Maryland Samuel Chase William Paca Thomas Stone Charles Carroll, of Carrollton

North Carolina William Hooper

Joseph Hewes John Penn

South Carolina Edward Rutledge Thomas Heyward, Jr. Thomas Lynch, Jr. Arthur Middleton

Virginia George Wythe Richard Henry Lee Thomas Jefferson Benjamin Harrison Thomas Nelson, Jr. Francis Lightfoot Lee Carter Braxton

Georgia Button Gwinnett Lyman Hall George Walton

Resolved, That copies of the Declaration be sent to the several assemblies, conventions, and committees, or councils of safety, and to the several commanding officers of the continental troops; that it be proclaimed in each of the United States, at the head of the army.

The Constitution of the United States Agreed to by Philadelphia Convention, September 17, 1787. Implemented March 4, 1789.

Preamble We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Article I Section 1 All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives.

Section 2 The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several States, and the electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State Legislature.

No person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the age of twenty-five years, and been seven years a citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.

Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other persons. The actual enumeration shall be made within three years after the first meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent term of ten years, in such manner as they shall by law direct. The number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty thousand, but each State shall have at least one Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to choose three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New York six, New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North Carolina five, South Carolina five, and Georgia three.

When vacancies happen in the representation from any State, the Executive authority thereof shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies.

The House of Representatives shall choose their Speaker and other officers; and shall have the sole power of impeachment.

Section 3 The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the legislature thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote.

Immediately after they shall be assembled in consequence of the first election, they shall be divided as equally as may be into three classes. The seats of the Senators of the first class shall be vacated at the expiration of the second year, of the second class at the expiration of the fourth year, and of the third class at the expiration of the sixth year, so that one-third may be chosen every second year; and if vacancies happen by resignation or otherwise, during the recess of the legislature of any State, the Executive thereof may make temporary appointments until the next meeting of the legislature, which shall then fill such vacancies.

No person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the age of thirty years, and been nine years a citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.

The Vice-President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no vote, unless they be equally divided.

The Senate shall choose their other officers, and also a President pro tempore, in the absence of the Vice-President, or when he shall exercise the office of President of the United States.

The Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments. When sitting for that purpose, they shall be on oath or affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: and no person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two-thirds of the members present.

Judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from the office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States: but the party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment and punishment, according to law.

Section 4 The times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives shall be prescribed in each State by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing Senators.

The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and such meeting shall be on the first Monday in December, unless they shall by law appoint a different day.

Section 5 Each house shall be the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members, and a majority of each shall constitute a quorum to do business; but a smaller number may adjourn from day to day, and may be authorized to compel the attendance of absent members, in such manner, and under such penalties, as each house may provide.

Each house may determine the rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and with the concurrence of two-thirds, expel a member.

Each house shall keep a journal of its proceedings, and from time to time publish the same, excepting such parts as may in their judgment require

secrecy; and the yeas and nays of the members of either house on any question shall, at the desire of one-fifth of those present, be entered on the journal.

Neither house, during the session of Congress, shall, without the consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to any other place than that in which the two houses shall be sitting.

Section 6 The Senators and Representatives shall receive a compensation for their services, to be ascertained by law and paid out of the treasury of the United States. They shall in all cases except treason, felony and breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest during their attendance at the session of their respective houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any speech or debate in either house, they shall not be questioned in any other place.

No Senator or Representative shall, during the time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil office under the authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the emoluments whereof shall have been increased, during such time; and no person holding any office under the United States shall be a member of either house during his continuance in office.

Section 7 All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other bills.

Every bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a law, be presented to the President of the United States; if he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it with objections to that house in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the objections at large on their journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such reconsideration two-thirds of that house shall agree to pass the bill, it shall be sent, together with the objections, to the other house, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and, if approved by two-thirds of that house, it shall become a law. But in all such cases the votes of both houses shall be determined by yeas and nays, and the names of the persons voting for and against the bill shall be entered on the journal of each house respectively. If any bill shall not be returned by the President within ten days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the same shall be a law, in like manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their adjournment prevent its return, in which case it shall not be a law.

Every order, resolution, or vote to which the concurrence of the Senate and House of Representatives may be necessary (except on a question of adjournment) shall be presented to the President of the United States; and before the same shall take effect, shall be approved by him, or being disapproved by him, shall be repassed by two-thirds of the Senate and House of Representatives, according to the rules and limitations prescribed in the case of a bill.

Section 8 The Congress shall have power

To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes;

To establish an uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States;

To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures;

To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States;

To establish post offices and post roads;

To promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;

To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court;

To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas and offences against the law of nations;

To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;

To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;

To provide and maintain a navy;

To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;

To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such district (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States, and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the

consent of the legislature of the State, in which the same shall be, for erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dock-yards, and other needful buildings;—and

To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.

Section 9 The migration or importation of such persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight; but a tax or duty may be imposed on such importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each person.

The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.

No bill of attainder or ex post facto law shall be passed.

No capitation, or other direct, tax shall be laid, unless in proportion to the census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.

No tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any State.

No preference shall be given by any regulation of commerce or revenue to the ports of one State over those of another; nor shall vessels bound to, or

from, one State be obliged to enter, clear, or pay duties in another.

No money shall be drawn from the treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law; and a regular statement and account of the receipts and expenditures of all public money shall be published from time to time.

No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States: and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.

Section 10 No State shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; emit bills of credit; make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts, or grant any title of nobility.

No State shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any imposts or duties on imports or exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing its inspection laws: and the net produce of all duties and imposts, laid by any State on imports or exports, shall be for the use of the treasury of the United States; and all such laws shall be subject to the revision and control of the Congress.

No State shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any duty of tonnage, keep troops, or ships of war in time of peace, enter into any agreement or

compact with another State, or with a foreign power, or engage in war, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay.

Article II Section 1 The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his office during the term of four years, and, together with the Vice-President, chosen for the same term, be elected as follows:

Each State shall appoint, in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress; but no Senator or Representative, or person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States, shall be appointed an elector.

The electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by ballot for two persons, of whom one at least shall not be an inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a list of all the persons voted for, and of the number of votes for each; which list they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates, and the votes shall then be counted. The person having the greatest number of votes shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such majority, and have an equal number of votes, then

the House of Representatives shall immediately choose by ballot one of them for President; and if no person have a majority, then from the five highest on the list said house shall in like manner choose the President. But in choosing the President the votes shall be taken by States, the representation from each State having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the States, and a majority of all the States shall be necessary to a choice. In every case, after the choice of the President, the person having the greatest number of votes of the electors shall be the Vice-President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal votes, the Senate shall choose from them by ballot the Vice-President.

The Congress may determine the time of choosing the electors, and the day on which they shall give their votes; which day shall be the same throughout the United States.

No person except a natural-born citizen, or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty-five years, and been fourteen years a resident within the United States.

In cases of the removal of the President from office or of his death, resignation, or inability to discharge the powers and duties of the said office, the same shall devolve on the Vice-President, and the Congress may by law provide for the case of removal, death, resignation, or inability, both of the President and Vice-President, declaring what officer shall then act as

President, and such officer shall act accordingly, until the disability be removed, or a President shall be elected.

The President shall, at stated times, receive for his services a compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that period any other emolument from the United States, or any of them.

Before he enter on the execution of his office, he shall take the following oath or affirmation:—“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of the President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.’’

Section 2 The President shall be commander in chief of the army and navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several States, when called into the actual service of the United States; he may require the opinion, in writing, of the principal officer in each of the executive departments, upon any subject relating to the duties of their respective offices, and he shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offences against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.

He shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States, whose

appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by law: but Congress may by law vest the appointment of such inferior officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments.

The President shall have power to fill up all vacancies that may happen during the recess of the Senate, by granting commissions which shall expire at the end of their next session.

Section 3 He shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the Union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary occasions, convene both houses, or either of them, and in case of disagreement between them, with respect to the time of adjournment, he may adjourn them to such time as he shall think proper; he shall receive ambassadors and other public ministers; he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed, and shall commission all the officers of the United States.

Section 4 The President, Vice-President and all civil officers of the United States shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and on conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.

Article III Section 1 The judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The judges, both of the Supreme and inferior

courts, shall hold their offices during good behavior, and shall, at stated times, receive for their services a compensation which shall not be diminished during their continuance in office.

Section 2 The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority;—to all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls;—to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction;—to controversies to which the United States shall be a party;—to controversies between two or more States;—between a State and citizens of another State;—between citizens of different States;— between citizens of the same State claiming lands under grants of different States, and between a State, or the citizens thereof, and foreign states, citizens or subjects.

In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a State shall be party, the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction. In all the other cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations, as the Congress shall make.

The trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be by jury; and such trial shall be held in the State where said crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any State, the trial shall be at such place or places as the Congress may by Law have directed.

Section 3 Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.

The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted.

Article IV Section 1 Full faith and credit shall be given in each State to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general laws prescribe the manner in which such acts, records, and proceedings shall be proved, and the effect thereof.

Section 2 The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.

A person charged in any State with treason, felony, or other crime, who shall flee from justice, and be found in another State, shall on demand of the executive authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having jurisdiction of the crime.

No Person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.

Section 3 New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the consent of the legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.

The Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to prejudice any claims of the United States, or of any particular State.

Section 4 The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion; and on application of the legislature, or of the executive (when the legislature cannot be convened), against domestic violence.

Article V The Congress, whenever two-thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two-thirds of the several States, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States, or by conventions in three-fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress; provided that no amendments which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article; and that no

State, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.

Article VI All debts contracted and engagements entered into, before the adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation.

This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several State legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by oath or affirmation to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

Article VII The ratification of the conventions of nine States shall be sufficient for the establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the same.

Done in convention by the unanimous consent of the States present, the seventeenth day of September in the year of our Lord one thousand seven

hundred and eighty-seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the twelfth. In witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names.

George Washington P�� D�� V��

New Hampshire John Langdon Nicholas Gilman

Massachusetts Nathaniel Gorham Rufus King

Connecticut William Samuel Johnson Roger Sherman

New York Alexander Hamilton

New Jersey William Livingston David Brearley William Paterson Jonathan Dayton

Pennsylvania Benjamin Franklin

Thomas Mifflin Robert Morris George Clymer Thomas FitzSimons Jared Ingersoll James Wilson Gouverneur Morris

Delaware George Read Gunning Bedford, Jr. John Dickinson Richard Bassett Jacob Broom

Maryland James McHenry Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer Daniel Carroll

Virginia John Blair James Madison, Jr.

North Carolina William Blount Richard Dobbs Spaight Hugh Williamson

South Carolina

John Rutledge Charles Cotesworth Pinckney Charles Pinckney Pierce Butler

Georgia William Few Abraham Baldwin

Passages no longer in effect are in italic type.i

Amendments to the Constitution (including the six unratified amendments)

Although the first ten amendments to the Constitution are commonly known as the Bill of Rights, only Amendments 1–8 actually provide guarantees of individual rights. Amendments 9 and 10 deal with the structure of power within the constitutional system. The Bill of Rights was promised to appease Antifederalists who refused to ratify the Constitution without guarantees of individual liberties and limitations to federal power. After studying more than two hundred amendments recommended by the ratifying conventions of the states, Federalist James Madison presented a list of seventeen to Congress, which used Madison’s list as the foundation for the twelve amendments that were sent to the states for ratification. Ten of the twelve were adopted in 1791. The first on the list of twelve, known as the Reapportionment Amendment, was never adopted (see Unratified Amendment). The second proposed amendment was adopted in 1992 as Amendment 27 (see Amendment XXVII).

Amendment I Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment II A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Amendment III No soldier shall, in time of peace, be quartered in any house without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Amendment IV The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment V No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.

Amendment VI In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defence.

Amendment VII In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

Amendment VIII Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Amendment IX The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Unratified Amendment Reapportionment Amendment (proposed by Congress September 25, 1789, along with the Bill of Rights)

After the first enumeration required by the first article of the Constitution, there shall be one Representative for every thirty thousand, until the number shall amount to one hundred, after which the proportion shall be so

regulated by Congress, that there shall be not less than one hundred Representatives, nor less than one Representative for every forty thousand persons, until the number of Representatives shall amount to two hundred; after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall not be less than two hundred Representatives, nor more than one Representative for every fifty thousand persons.

Amendment XI [Adopted 1798]

The judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by citizens of another State, or by citizens or subjects of any foreign state.

Amendment XII [Adopted 1804]

The electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same State with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice-President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate;—the President of the Senate shall, in the

presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted;—the person having the greatest number of votes for President shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by States, the representation from each State having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the States, and a majority of all the States shall be necessary to a choice. And if the House of Representatives shall not choose a President whenever the right of choice shall devolve upon them, before the fourth day of March next following, then the Vice-President shall act as President, as in the case of the death or other constitutional disability of the President.

The person having the greatest number of votes as Vice-President shall be the Vice-President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed; and if no person have a majority, then from the two highest numbers on the list the Senate shall choose the Vice-President; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two-thirds of the whole number of Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a choice. But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.

Unratified Amendment Titles of Nobility Amendment (proposed by Congress May 1, 1810)

If any citizen of the United States shall accept, claim, receive or retain any title of nobility or honor or shall, without the consent of Congress, accept and retain any present, pension, office or emolument of any kind whatever, from any emperor, king, prince or foreign power, such person shall cease to be a citizen of the United States, and shall be incapable of holding any office of trust or profit under them or either of them.

The Civil War and Reconstruction Amendments (Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments)

In the four months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and his inauguration, more than 200 proposed constitutional amendments were presented to Congress as part of a desperate attempt to hold the rapidly dissolving Union together. Most of these were efforts to appease the southern states by protecting the right to own slaves or by disfranchising African Americans through constitutional amendment. None were able to win the votes required from Congress to send them to the states. The relatively innocuous Corwin Amendment seemed to be the only hope for preserving the Union by amending the Constitution.

The northern victors in the Civil War tried to restructure the Constitution just as the war had restructured the nation. Yet they were often divided in their goals. Some wanted to end slavery; others hoped for social and economic equality regardless of race; others hoped that extending the power of the ballot box to former slaves would help create a new political order. The debates over the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments were bitter. Few of those who fought for these changes were satisfied with the amendments themselves; fewer still were satisfied with their interpretation. Although the amendments put an end to the legal status of slavery, it took nearly a hundred years after the amendments’ passage before most of the descendants of former slaves could begin to experience the economic, social, and political equality the amendments had been intended to provide.

Unratified Amendment Corwin Amendment (proposed by Congress March 2, 1861)

No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.

Amendment XIII [Adopted 1865]

Section 1 Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2 Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Amendment XIV [Adopted 1868]

Section 1 All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Section 2 Representatives shall be appointed among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of Electors for President and Vice- President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a State, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

Section 3 No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or Elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each house, remove such disability.

Section 4 The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or

obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations, and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Section 5 The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Amendment XV [Adopted 1870]

Section 1 The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Section 2 The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

The Progressive Amendments (Sixteenth–Nineteenth Amendments)

No amendments were added to the Constitution between the Civil War and the Progressive Era. America was changing, however, in fundamental ways. The rapid industrialization of the United States after the Civil War led to many social and economic problems. Hundreds of amendments were proposed, but none received enough support in Congress to be sent to the states. Some scholars believe that regional differences and rivalries were so strong during this period

that it was almost impossible to gain a consensus on a constitutional amendment. During the Progressive Era, however, the Constitution was amended four times in seven years.

Amendment XVI [Adopted 1913]

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

Amendment XVII [Adopted 1913]

Section 1 The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of [voters for] the most numerous branch of the State legislatures.

Section 2 When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of such State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided, that the Legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the Legislature may direct.

Section 3 This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the election or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as part of the Constitution.

Amendment XVIII [Adopted 1919; repealed 1933 by Amendment XXI]

Section 1 After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof, for beverage purposes, is hereby prohibited.

Section 2 The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Section 3 This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided by the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission thereof to the States by the Congress.

Amendment XIX [Adopted 1920]

Section 1 The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Section 2 Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Unratified Amendment Child Labor Amendment (proposed by Congress June 2, 1924)

Section 1 The Congress shall have power to limit, regulate, and prohibit the labor of persons under eighteen years of age.

Section 2 The power of the several States is unimpaired by this article except that the operation of State laws shall be suspended to the extent necessary to give effect to legislation enacted by Congress.

Amendment XX [Adopted 1933]

Section 1 The terms of the President and Vice-President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3rd day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin.

Section 2 The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and such meeting shall begin at noon on the 3rd day of January, unless they shall by law appoint a different day.

Section 3 If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President-elect shall have died, the Vice-President-elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President-elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice-President-elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President-elect nor a Vice-President-elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice-President shall have qualified.

Section 4 The Congress may by law provide for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the House of Representatives may choose a President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them, and for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the Senate may choose a Vice-President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them.

Section 5 Sections 1 and 2 shall take effect on the 15th day of October following the ratification of this article.

Section 6 This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the Legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission.

Amendment XXI [Adopted 1933]

Section 1 The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.

Section 2 The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or Possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.

Section 3 This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission thereof to the States by the Congress.

Amendment XXII [Adopted 1951]

Section 1 No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of President more than once. But this article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.

Section 2 This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission to the States by the Congress.

Amendment XXIII [Adopted 1961]

Section 1 The District constituting the seat of Government of the United States shall appoint in such manner as the Congress may direct: A number of electors of President and Vice-President equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives in Congress to which the District would be entitled if it were a State, but in no event more than the least populous State; they shall be in addition to those appointed by the States, but they shall be considered for the purposes of the election of President and Vice- President, to be electors appointed by a State; and they shall meet in the District and perform such duties as provided by the twelfth article of amendment.

Section 2 The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Amendment XXIV [Adopted 1964]

Section 1 The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice-President, for electors for President or

Vice-President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.

Section 2 The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Amendment XXV [Adopted 1967]

Section 1 In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice-President shall become President.

Section 2 Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice-President, the President shall nominate a Vice-President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.

Section 3 Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice-President as Acting President.

Section 4 Whenever the Vice-President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the

Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice-President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice-President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department[s] or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice-President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.

Amendment XXVI [Adopted 1971]

Section 1 The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States

or by any State on account of age.

Section 2 The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Unratified Amendment Equal Rights Amendment (proposed by Congress March 22, 1972; seven- year deadline for ratification extended to June 30, 1982)

Section 1 Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Section 2 The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Section 3 This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

Unratified Amendment D.C. Statehood Amendment (proposed by Congress August 22, 1978)

Section 1 For purposes of representation in the Congress, election of the President and Vice-President, and article V of this Constitution, the District constituting the seat of government of the United States shall be treated as though it were a State.

Section 2 The exercise of the rights and powers conferred under this article shall be by the people of the District constituting the seat of government, and as shall be provided by Congress.

Section 3 The twenty-third article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.

Section 4 This article shall be inoperative, unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several states within seven years from the date of its submission.

Amendment XXVII [Adopted 1992]

No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.

Glossary acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) A disease discovered in 1981 that initially affected gay men disproportionately and created a heavy death toll. The epidemic would become politicized as activists charged the Reagan administration with neglect and mobilized to demand research and resources to fight the disease. affirmative action Requirement that employers holding government contracts align their hiring with the available pool of qualified candidates. Established by executive order of President Johnson in 1965, the program was intended to counter centuries of discrimination against African Americans and women. Agent Orange Herbicide used extensively during the Vietnam War to destroy the hideouts and food supply of South Vietnamese insurgents. Its use was later linked to a wide range of illnesses that U.S. veterans and Vietnamese suffered after the war, including birth defects, cancer, and skin disorders. Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) New Deal legislation passed in May 1933 aimed at cutting agricultural production and raising crop prices. Al Qaeda Radical Islamic terrorist organization that sought to rid the Middle East of Western, and especially U.S., influence. The organization was responsible for a series of attacks on U.S. targets in the 1990s as well as the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. American Expeditionary Force (AEF) U.S. armed forces under the command of General John Pershing who fought under a separate American command in Europe during World War I. They helped defeat Germany when they entered the conflict in full force in 1918. American Federation of Labor (AFL) Organization created by Samuel Gompers in 1886 that coordinated the activities of craft unions throughout the United States. The AFL worked to achieve immediate benefits for skilled workers. Its narrow goals for unionism became popular after the Haymarket bombing. American Indian Movement (AIM) Organization established in 1968 to address the problems American Indians faced in U.S. cities, including poverty and police harassment. AIM pushed to end relocation and termination policies and helped Indians win greater control over their cultures and communities. Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Act signed by President George H. W. Bush in 1990 that banned discrimination against the disabled. The law also required handicapped accessibility in public facilities and private businesses. appeasement

British strategy aimed at avoiding a war with Germany by not objecting to Hitler’s territorial aggressions. baby boom The surge in the American birthrate between 1945 and 1965, which peaked in 1957 with 4.3 million births. The baby boom both reflected and promoted Americans’ postwar prosperity. battle of the Little Big Horn 1876 battle begun when American cavalry under George Armstrong Custer attacked an encampment of Indians who refused to remove to a reservation. Indian warriors led by Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull annihilated the American soldiers, but their victory was short-lived. Battle of Midway June 3–6, 1942, naval battle in the Central Pacific in which American forces surprised and defeated the Japanese fleet planning to invade Midway Island. Berlin Wall Barrier erected by East Germany in 1961 to halt the exodus of East Germans into West Berlin. birth control movement Movement launched in 1915 by Margaret Sanger in New York City’s Lower East Side. Birth control advocates hoped that contraception would alter social and political power relationships: By having fewer babies, the working class could constrict the size of the workforce, thus making possible higher wages, and at the same time refuse to provide soldiers for the world’s armies. black codes Laws passed by state governments in the South in 1865 and 1866 that sought to keep ex-slaves subordinate to whites. At the core of the black codes lay the desire to force freedmen back to the plantations. Black Hills Mountains in western South Dakota and northeast Wyoming that are sacred to the Lakota Sioux. In the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, the United States guaranteed Indians control of the Black Hills, but it broke its promise after gold was discovered there in 1874. Black Lives Matter Movement founded in 2013 in response to police shootings and killings of unarmed African Americans, including Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. The organization protested racism in policing, advocated criminal justice reform, and called for the political and economic empowerment of black people. black power movement A collection of efforts in the 1960s and 1970s that emphasized black self-determination and racial pride rather than integration. Black power advocates encouraged African Americans to assert community control, with some rejecting the ethos of nonviolence. Bolshevik Russian revolutionary. Bolsheviks forced Czar Nicholas II to abdicate and seized power in Russia in 1917. In a separate peace with Germany, the Bolshevik government withdrew Russia from World

War I. Bonus Marchers World War I veterans who marched on Washington, D.C., in 1932 to peacefully lobby for immediate payment of the pension (“bonus”) promised them in 1924. President Herbert Hoover feared that the veterans would set off riots and sent the U.S. Army to evict them from the city. bossism Pattern of urban political organization that arose in the late nineteenth century in which an often corrupt “boss” maintains an inordinate level of power through command of a political machine that distributes services to its constituents. Boxer uprising Uprising in China led by the Boxers, an antiforeign society, in which 30,000 Chinese converts and 250 foreign Christians were killed. An international force rescued foreigners in Beijing, and European powers imposed the humiliating Boxer Protocol on China in 1901. bracero program A program begun in 1942 permitting Mexicans temporary entrance into the United States as agricultural laborers. Until the program ended in 1964, more than one hundred thousand Mexicans entered the United States each year. Brown v. Board of Education 1954 Supreme Court ruling that overturned the “separate but equal” precedent established in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. The Court declared that separate educational facilities were inherently unequal and thus violated the Fourteenth Amendment. Camp David accords Agreements between Egypt and Israel reached at the 1979 talks hosted by President Carter at Camp David. In the accords, Egypt became the first Arab state to recognize Israel, and Israel agreed to gradual withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula. Carlisle Indian School Institution established in Pennsylvania in 1879 to educate and assimilate American Indians. It pioneered the “outing system,” in which Indian students were sent to live with white families in order to accelerate acculturation. carpetbaggers Southerners’ pejorative term for northern migrants who sought opportunity in the South after the Civil War. Northern migrants formed an important part of the southern Republican Party. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Agency created by the National Security Act of 1947 to expand the government’s espionage capacities. The CIA attempted to thwart communism through covert activities, including propaganda, sabotage, economic warfare, and support for anti-Communist forces around the world. Chicano movement Mobilization of Mexican Americans in the 1960s and 1970s to fight for civil rights, economic justice, and political power and to combat police brutality. The movement worked to improve the lives of

migrant farmworkers and to end discrimination in employment and education. Chinese Exclusion Act 1882 law that effectively barred Chinese immigration and set a precedent for further immigration restrictions. The Chinese population in America dropped sharply as a result of the passage of the act, which was fueled by racial and cultural animosities. Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission A controversial Supreme Court decision of 2010 that ruled federal regulation of election campaign financing a restriction on free speech as protected by the First Amendment. The ruling led to large political contributions by corporations and to the explosion of political action committees. Civil Rights Act of 1866 Legislation passed by Congress in 1866 that nullified the black codes and affirmed that black Americans should have equal benefit of the law. President Andrew Johnson vetoed this expansion of black rights and federal authority, but Congress later overrode his veto. Civil Rights Act of 1964 Law that responded to demands of the civil rights movement by making discrimination in employment, education, and public accommodations illegal. It was the strongest such measure since Reconstruction and included a ban on sex discrimination in employment. Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) Federal relief program established in March 1933 that provided jobs on conservation projects to millions of unemployed young men and a token number of women. civil service reform Effort in the 1880s to end the spoils system and reduce government corruption. The Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883 created the Civil Service Commission to award government jobs under a merit system that required examinations for office and made it impossible to remove jobholders for political reasons. Clean Air Act Environmental legislation signed in 1990 by President George H. W. Bush. The act was the strongest and most comprehensive environmental law in the nation’s history. Comanchería Indian empire based on trade in horses, hides, guns, and captives that stretched from the Canadian plains to Mexico in the eighteenth century. By 1865, fewer than five thousand Comanches lived in the empire, which ranged from west Texas north to Oklahoma. Compromise of 1877 Informal agreement in which Democrats agreed not to block Rutherford Hayes’s inauguration and to deal fairly with freedmen; in return, Hayes vowed not to use the army to uphold the remaining Republican regimes in the South and to provide the South with substantial federal subsidies for railroads. The compromise brought the Reconstruction era to an end. Comstock Lode

Silver ore deposit discovered in 1859 in Nevada. Discovery of the Comstock Lode touched off a mining rush that brought a diverse population into the region and led to the establishment of a number of boomtowns, including Virginia City, Nevada. Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) Coalition of mostly unskilled workers formed in 1935 that mobilized massive union organizing drives in major industries. containment The foreign policy strategy that committed the United States to resisting the expansion of the Soviet Union and communism during the Cold War. court-packing plan Law proposed by Franklin Roosevelt to add one new Supreme Court justice for each existing judge who had served for ten years and who was over the age of seventy. Coxey’s army Unemployed men who marched to Washington, D.C., in 1894 to urge Congress to enact a public works program to end unemployment. Jacob S. Coxey of Ohio led the most publicized contingent. The movement failed to force federal relief legislation. Cripple Creek miners’ strike of 1894 Strike led by the Western Federation of Miners in response to an attempt to lengthen their workday to ten hours. With the support of local businessmen and the Populist governor of Colorado, the miners successfully maintained an eight-hour day. Cuban missile crisis 1962 standoff between the Soviet Union and the United States after the Soviets attempted to create a nuclear outpost in Cuba. In a negotiated settlement, the Soviet Union agreed to remove its missiles from Cuba, and the United States agreed to remove its missiles from Turkey. cult of domesticity Nineteenth-century belief that women’s place was in the home, where they should create havens for their families. This sentimentalized ideal led to an increase in the hiring of domestic servants and freed white middle-class women to spend time in pursuits outside the home. D Day The Allied invasion of northern France, on June 6, 1944, opening a second front against the Germans. Dawes Allotment Act 1887 law that divided up reservations and allotted parcels of land to individual Indians as private property. In the end, the U.S. government sold almost two-thirds of “surplus” Indian land to white settlers. The Dawes Act dealt a crippling blow to traditional tribal culture. Department of Homeland Security Federal agency created in 2002 in response to the 9/11 attacks. In an effort to better coordinate domestic security, the department combined twenty-two existing agencies. détente

Term (from the French for “loosening”) given to the easing of conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Nixon administration by focusing on issues of common concern, such as arms control and trade. Dixiecrats A group of southern Democrats who defected from their party during the 1948 convention when it passed a liberal civil rights plank, suggesting the difficulty the Democratic Party would have in keeping both white southerners and African Americans in its ranks. domino theory Theory of containment articulated by President Eisenhower in the context of Vietnam. Using the metaphor of dominoes, he warned that the fall of one government to communism would lead neighboring countries to fall as well. Double V campaign World War II campaign in America to attack racism at home and abroad. Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) Federal antipoverty program initiated in 1975 and expanded significantly by President Clinton in 1993. The program assisted the working poor by giving tax breaks to low-income, full-time workers, or a subsidy to those who owed no taxes. Eighteenth Amendment (prohibition) Constitutional amendment banning the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcohol. Congress passed the amendment in December 1917, and it went into effect in January 1920. Ellis Island Immigration facility opened in 1892 in New York harbor that processed new immigrants coming into New York City. In the late nineteenth century, some 75 percent of European immigrants to America came through New York. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Federal agency created by President Nixon in 1970 to enforce environmental laws, conduct environmental research, and reduce health and environmental risks from pollutants. Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) Constitutional amendment passed by Congress in 1972 requiring equal treatment of men and women under federal and state law. Facing fierce opposition from the New Right and the Republican Party, the ERA was defeated as time ran out for state ratification in 1982. Fair Deal President Truman’s domestic agenda, little of it enacted, for extending the New Deal through universal health care, federally protected civil rights, public assistance for housing, and federal aid to education. Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) Law passed in 1993 and signed by President Bill Clinton that mandated unpaid leave for childbirth, adoption, and family medical emergencies for workers in large companies. family economy

Economic contributions of multiple members of a household that were necessary to the survival of the family. From the late nineteenth century into the twentieth, many working-class families depended on the wages of all family members, regardless of sex or age. Farmers’ Alliance Movement to form local organizations to advance farmers’ collective interests that gained wide popularity in the 1880s. Over time, farmers’ groups consolidated into the Northwestern Farmers’ Alliance and the Southern Farmers’ Alliance. In 1892, the Farmers’ Alliance gave birth to the People’s Party. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Federal agency that guaranteed the government would reimburse bank depositors if their banks failed. Fifteenth Amendment Constitutional amendment passed in February 1869 prohibiting states from depriving any citizen of the right to vote because of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” It extended black suffrage nationwide. finance capitalism Investment sponsored by banks and bankers that typified the American business scene at the end of the nineteenth century. After the panic of 1893, bankers stepped in and reorganized major industries to stabilize them, leaving power concentrated in the hands of a few influential capitalists. fireside chats Series of informal radio addresses Franklin Roosevelt made to the nation in which he explained New Deal initiatives. first transcontinental railroad Railroad completed in 1869 that was the first to span the North American continent. Built in large part by Chinese laborers in the West, this railroad, followed soon by others, opened access to new areas in the West, fueling land speculation and actively recruiting settlers. Five-Power Naval Treaty of 1922 Treaty that committed Britain, France, Japan, Italy, and the United States to a reduction of naval forces, producing the world’s greatest success in disarmament up to that time. Fourteen Points Woodrow Wilson’s plan, proposed in 1918, to create a new democratic world order with lasting peace. Wilson’s plan affirmed basic liberal ideals, supported the right to self-determination, and called for the creation of a League of Nations. Wilson compromised on his plan at the 1919 Paris peace conference, and the U.S. Senate refused to ratify the resulting treaty. Fourteenth Amendment Constitutional amendment passed in 1866 that made all native-born or naturalized persons U.S. citizens and prohibited states from abridging the rights of national citizens. The amendment hoped to provide a guarantee of equality before the law for black citizens. free silver

Term used in the late nineteenth century by those who advocated minting silver dollars in addition to supporting the gold standard and the paper currency backed by gold. Poor farmers from the West and South hoped this would result in inflation, effectively providing them with debt relief. Western silver barons wanted the government to buy silver and mint silver dollars, thereby raising the price of silver. Freedmen’s Bureau Government organization created in March 1865 to distribute food and clothing to destitute Southerners and to ease the transition of slaves to free persons. Ghost Dance Religion founded in 1889 by Paiute shaman Wovoka. It combined elements of Christianity and traditional Indian religion and served as a nonviolent form of resistance for Indians in the late nineteenth century. The Ghost Dance frightened whites and was violently suppressed. GI Bill of Rights Legislation passed in 1944 authorizing the government to provide World War II veterans with funds for education, housing, and health care, as well as loans to start businesses and buy homes. Gilded Age A period of enormous economic growth and ostentatious displays of wealth during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Industrialization dramatically changed U.S. society and created a newly dominant group of rich entrepreneurs and an impoverished working class. global migration Movement of populations across large distances such as oceans and continents. In the late nineteenth century, large-scale immigration from southern and eastern Europe into the United States contributed to the growth of cities and changes in American demographics. good neighbor policy Foreign policy announced by Roosevelt in 1933 that promised the United States would not interfere in the internal or external affairs of another country. gospel of wealth The idea that the financially successful should use their wisdom, experience, and wealth to help the poor. Andrew Carnegie promoted this view in an 1889 essay in which he maintained that the wealthy should serve as stewards of society as a whole. Great Railroad Strike A violent multicity strike that began in 1877 with West Virginia railroad brakemen who protested against sharp wage reductions and quickly spread to include roughly 600,000 workers. President Rutherford B. Hayes used federal troops to break the strike. Following the strike’s failure, union membership surged. Great Recession A financial crisis that struck in late 2007 and led to the worst U.S. depression since the 1930s. The crisis was rooted in financial deregulation and predatory lending practices. Housing values and then banking and lending collapsed, prompting the federal government to inject cash into the economy and enact a massive bailout of financial institutions.

Haymarket bombing May 4, 1886, conflict in which both workers and policemen were killed or wounded during a labor demonstration in Chicago. The violence began when someone threw a bomb into the ranks of police at the gathering. The incident created a backlash against labor activism. Hernandez v. Texas 1954 Supreme Court decision ruling that the systematic exclusion of Mexican Americans from juries violated the constitutional guarantee of equal protection. Holocaust German genocide of Europe’s Jews, along with others the Nazis deemed “undesirable.” Homestead Act of 1862 An act that promised 160 acres in the trans-Mississippi West free to any citizen or prospective citizen who settled on the land for five years. The act spurred American settlement of the West. Altogether, nearly one-tenth of the United States was granted to settlers. Homestead lockout 1892 lockout of workers at the Homestead, Pennsylvania, steel mill after Andrew Carnegie refused to renew the union contract and workers prepared to strike. Union supporters attacked the Pinkerton National Detective Agency guards hired to protect the mill, but the National Guard soon broke the strike. House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) Congressional committee prominent during the early years of the Cold War that investigated Americans for disloyalty to the government or associations with Communists. Housing Act of 1949 Law authorizing the construction of 810,000 units of government housing. This landmark effort marked the first significant commitment of the federal government to meet the housing needs of the poor. Hurricane Katrina Hurricane that devastated the coasts of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi in 2005, including the city of New Orleans. The storm displaced more than one million residents of the Gulf Coast region, exposing the vulnerability of poor and black residents and severe weaknesses in the U.S. response to natural disasters. Indian Relocation Program A federal initiative beginning in 1948 to relocate Indians on reservations to cities, and providing housing assistance, job training, and medical care. More than one hundred thousand Native Americans would take part in the program, although a good number returned to reservation life and others struggled with urban poverty. Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) Umbrella union and radical political group founded in 1905 that was dedicated to organizing unskilled workers to oppose capitalism. Nicknamed the Wobblies, the IWW advocated direct action

by workers, including sabotage and general strikes, in hopes of triggering a widespread workers’ uprising. intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) agreement Nuclear disarmament agreement reached between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1987, signifying a major thaw in the Cold War. The treaty eliminated all short- and medium-range missiles from Europe and provided for on-site inspection for the first time. internment camps Makeshift prison camps to which Americans of Japanese descent were sent as a result of Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, issued in February 1942. Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) Federal regulatory agency designed to oversee the railroad industry. Congress created it through the 1887 Interstate Commerce Act after the Supreme Court decision in Wabash v. Illinois (1886) effectively denied states the right to regulate railroads. The ICC proved weak and did not immediately pose a threat to the industry. Interstate Highway and Defense System Act of 1956 Law authorizing the construction of a national highway system. Promoted as essential to national defense and a spur to economic growth, the Highway Act accelerated the movement of people and goods and changed the nature of American communities. Iran-Contra scandal Reagan administration scandal brought to light in 1986 that involved the sale of arms to Iran in exchange for its efforts to secure the release of hostages held in Lebanon and the secret redirection of the proceeds of those sales to the Nicaraguan Contras. Iran hostage crisis Crisis that began in 1979 after the deposed shah of Iran was allowed into the United States following the Iranian revolution. Iranians broke into the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took sixty-six Americans hostage, a crisis that contributed to Carter’s reelection defeat. Iraq War A preemptive war launched by George W. Bush’s administration in 2003 in Iraq, despite the absence of UN approval. Coalition forces won an easy victory, but chaos marked the long U.S. occupation that followed. iron curtain Metaphor coined by Winston Churchill in 1946 to describe the line dividing Soviet-controlled countries in Eastern Europe from democratic nations in Western Europe. Jim Crow System of racial segregation in the South lasting from after the Civil War into the twentieth century. Jim Crow laws segregated African Americans in public facilities such as trains and streetcars, curtailed their voting rights, and denied other basic civil rights. Johnson-Reed Act

1924 law that severely restricted immigration to the United States to no more than 161,000 a year, with quotas for each European nation. The racist restrictions were designed to staunch the flow of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe and from Asia. Knights of Labor The first mass organization of America’s working class. Founded in 1869, the Knights of Labor attempted to bridge the boundaries of ethnicity, gender, ideology, race, and occupation to build a “universal brotherhood” of all workers. Korean War Conflict between North Korean forces supported by China and the Soviet Union and South Korean and U.S.-led United Nations forces over the country’s partition. The war, lasting from 1950 to 1953, was the first instance of the United States sending troops into battle to implement containment. Ku Klux Klan Secret society that first thwarted black freedom after the Civil War but was reborn in 1915 to fight against perceived threats posed by blacks, immigrants, radicals, feminists, Catholics, and Jews. The new Klan spread well beyond the South in the 1920s. League of Nations International organization proposed in Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points that was designed to secure enduring peace and collective security through peaceful means. The U.S. Senate refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, and the United States never became a member of the league. Lend-Lease Act Legislation in 1941 that enabled Britain to obtain arms from the United States without cash but with the promise to reimburse the United States when the war ended. Lusitania British passenger liner torpedoed by a German U-boat on May 7, 1915. The attack killed 1,198 passengers, including 128 Americans. The incident challenged American neutrality during World War I and moved the United States a step closer to entering the war. Manhattan Project Top-secret project authorized by Franklin Roosevelt in 1942 to develop an atomic bomb. Marshall Plan Aid program begun in 1948 to help European economies recover from World War II. By 1953, the United States had provided $13 billion to sixteen Western European nations, boosting its own economy in the process. Medicare and Medicaid Social programs enacted as part of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. Medicare provided the elderly with universal compulsory medical insurance financed primarily through Social Security taxes. Medicaid authorized federal grants to supplement state-paid medical care for poor people of all ages. Military Reconstruction Act Congressional act of March 1867 that initiated military rule of the South. Congressional reconstruction divided the ten unreconstructed Confederate states into five military districts, each

under the direction of a Union general. It also established the procedure by which unreconstructed states could reenter the Union. military-industrial complex A term President Eisenhower used to refer to the influence of the military establishment and defense contractors on U.S. government and policy. Monroe Doctrine President James Monroe’s 1823 declaration that the Western Hemisphere was closed to further colonization or interference by European powers. In exchange, Monroe pledged that the United States would not become involved in European struggles. The United States strengthened the doctrine during the late nineteenth century. Montgomery bus boycott Yearlong boycott of Montgomery’s segregated bus system in 1955–1956 by the city’s African American population. The boycott brought Martin Luther King Jr. to national prominence and ended in victory when the Supreme Court declared segregated transportation unconstitutional. muckraking Early-twentieth-century style of journalism that exposed the corruption of big business and government. Theodore Roosevelt coined the term after a character in Pilgrim’s Progress who was too busy raking muck to notice higher things. mutually assured destruction (MAD) Term for the standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union based on the assumption that a nuclear first strike by either nation would result in massive retaliation and mutual destruction for both. My Lai massacre U.S. soldiers’ massacre of an entire village of four hundred Vietnamese civilians in 1968. Covered up by the military, revelations about the massacre came to light during the court-martial of Lieutenant William Calley in 1970. National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) Organization formed in 1890 that united the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association. The NAWSA pursued state-level campaigns to gain the vote for women. With successes in Idaho, Colorado, and Utah, woman suffrage had become more accepted by the 1890s. National Energy Act of 1978 Legislation passed during the Carter administration that penalized manufacturers of gas-guzzling automobiles and provided additional incentives for energy conservation and development of alternative fuels, such as wind and solar power. National Organization for Women (NOW) Women’s civil rights organization formed in 1966. Initially, NOW focused on eliminating gender discrimination in public institutions and the workplace. National Recovery Administration (NRA)

Federal agency established in June 1933 to promote industrial recovery by the adoption of codes that defined set prices, minimized competition, and allowed workers to organize in unions. neutrality acts Legislation passed between 1935 and 1937 that sought to avoid entanglement in foreign wars while protecting trade. New Christian Right Politically active religious conservatives who reshaped the Republican Party in the 1980s through organizations like the Moral Majority. Religious conservatives criticized feminism, opposed abortion and homosexuality, and promoted “family values.” New Deal coalition Political coalition that supported Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and the Democratic Party. The New Freedom Woodrow Wilson’s 1912 campaign slogan, which reflected his belief in limited government and states’ rights. Wilson promised to use antitrust legislation to eliminate big corporations and to improve opportunities for small businesses and farmers. The New Nationalism Theodore Roosevelt’s 1912 campaign slogan, which reflected his commitment to federal planning and regulation. Roosevelt wanted to use the federal government to act as a “steward of the people” to regulate giant corporations. New Negro Term referring to African Americans who, through the arts, challenged American racial hierarchy. The New Negro emerged in New York City in the 1920s, in what became known as the Harlem Renaissance, which produced dazzling literary, musical, and artistic talent. new woman Alternative image of womanhood that came into the American mainstream in the 1920s. The mass media frequently portrayed young, college-educated women who drank, smoked, and wore skimpy dresses. New women also challenged American convictions about separate spheres for women and men and the sexual double standard. Nineteenth Amendment (woman suffrage) Constitutional amendment granting women the vote. Congress passed the amendment in 1919, and it was ratified in August 1920. Like proponents of prohibition, the advocates of woman suffrage triumphed by linking their cause to the war. No Child Left Behind Act 2002 legislation championed by President George W. Bush that expanded the role of the federal government in public education. The law required every school to meet annual testing standards, penalized failing schools, and allowed parents to transfer their children out of such schools. North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) 1993 treaty that eliminated all tariffs and trade barriers among the United States, Canada, and Mexico. NAFTA was supported by President Clinton and would feature prominently in debates over

the benefits and costs of globalization. North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Military alliance formed in 1949 among the United States, Canada, and Western European nations to counter any possible Soviet threat. It represented an unprecedented commitment by the United States to go to war if any of its allies were attacked. NSC 68 Top-secret government report of 1950 warning that national survival required a massive military buildup. The Korean War led to nearly all of the expansion called for in the report, so that by 1952 defense spending consumed nearly 70 percent of the federal budget. nuclear freeze Global movement that sought to halt the revived nuclear arms race of the 1980s. Mass protests in Europe and the United States put pressure on the United States and Soviet Union to begin talks on disarmament toward the end of the decade. Obergefell v. Hodges Five-to-four ruling by the Supreme Court in 2015 declaring that same-sex couples had a constitutional right to marry and making gay marriage legal in all fifty states. The ruling indicated a major shift in American attitudes toward homosexuality and gay rights, which had been evolving since the 1970s. Occupy Wall Street Grassroots protest movement that began in 2011 in New York City and quickly spread across the nation. Its activists championed economic justice for “the 99 percent” over the “1 percent,” targeting inequalities of wealth, the economic insecurity of America’s workers, and the disproportionate influence of wealthy individuals and corporations on economic and political affairs. Open Door policy Policy successfully insisted upon by Secretary of State John Hay in 1899–1900 recommending that the major powers of the United States, Britain, Japan, Germany, France, and Russia all have access to trade with China and that Chinese sovereignty be maintained. Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act Sweeping 2010 health care reform bill that established nearly universal health insurance by providing subsidies and compelling larger businesses to offer coverage to employees. Championed by President Barack Obama, the act also imposed new regulations on insurance companies and contained provisions to limit health care costs. Pentagon Papers Secret government documents published in 1971 related to an internal study of the Vietnam War. The documents revealed official pessimism about the war despite public pronouncements about its progress. People’s Party (Populist Party) Political party formed in St. Louis in 1892 by the Farmers’ Alliance to advance the goals of the Populist movement. Populists sought economic democracy, promoting land, electoral, banking, and

monetary reform. Republican victory in the presidential election of 1896 effectively destroyed the People’s Party. Persian Gulf War 1991 war between Iraq and a U.S.-led international coalition, sparked by the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. A forty-day bombing campaign against Iraq, followed by coalition troops storming into Kuwait, brought a quick coalition victory. Plessy v. Ferguson 1896 Supreme Court ruling that upheld the legality of racial segregation. According to the ruling, blacks could be segregated in separate schools, restrooms, and other facilities as long as the facilities were “equal” to those provided for whites. plutocracy A society ruled by the rich. progressivism A reform movement that often advocated government activism to mitigate the problems created by urban industrialism. Progressivism reached its peak in 1912 with the creation of the Progressive Party. The term progressivism has come to mean any general effort advocating for social justice programs. prohibition The ban on the manufacture and sale of alcohol that went into effect in January 1920 with the Eighteenth Amendment. Prohibition proved almost impossible to enforce. By the end of the 1920s, most Americans wished it to end, and it was finally repealed in 1933. Pullman boycott Nationwide railroad workers’ boycott of trains carrying Pullman cars in 1894 after Pullman workers, suffering radically reduced wages, joined the American Railway Union (ARU) and union leaders were fired in response. The boycott ended after the U.S. Army fired on strikers and ARU leader Eugene Debs was jailed. Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) Federal agency established by Herbert Hoover in 1932 to help American industry by lending government funds to endangered banks and corporations, which Hoover hoped would benefit people at the bottom through trickle-down economics. In practice, this strategy provided little help to the poor. Red Cloud’s War A conflict touched off when gold discoveries in Montana led settlers to invade Lakota lands. Chief Red Cloud, along with Crazy Horse, fought the incursion and was successful in forcing the army to abandon its forts on the Bozeman Trail and sign the second Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868 reserving the Black Hills for the Lakota. Red scare The widespread fear of internal subversion and Communist revolution that swept the United States in 1919 and resulted in suppression of dissent. Wartime repression of free speech, labor unrest, postwar

recession, the difficult peacetime readjustment, and the Soviet establishment of the Comintern all contributed to the scare. reform Darwinism Sociological theory developed in the 1880s that argued humans could speed up evolution by altering their environment. A challenge to the laissez-faire approach of social Darwinism, reform Darwinism insisted that the liberal state should play an active role in solving social problems. reservations Land assigned by the federal government to American Indians in the 1860s to reduce tensions between Indians and western settlers. With meager government rations, Indians faced a life of poverty and starvation. Roe v. Wade 1973 Supreme Court ruling that the Constitution protects the right to abortion and prevents states from prohibiting it in the early stages of pregnancy. The decision galvanized social conservatives and made abortion a controversial policy issue for decades to come. Roosevelt Corollary Theodore Roosevelt’s 1904 follow-up to the Monroe Doctrine in which he declared that the United States had the right to intervene in Latin America to stop “brutal wrongdoing” and protect American interests. The corollary warned European powers to keep out of the Western Hemisphere. Rust Belt Term referencing the deindustrialization of the former manufacturing core of the United States, stretching from New York to Illinois. The region lost steel and automobile plants as well as population as a result of labor outsourcing and foreign competition beginning in the 1970s. scalawag A derogatory term that Southerners applied to southern white Republicans, who were seen as traitors to the South. Most were yeoman farmers. Schenck v. United States 1919 Supreme Court decision that upheld the conviction of socialist Charles Schenck for urging resistance to the draft during wartime. It established a “clear and present danger” test for restricting free speech. Scopes trial 1925 trial of John Scopes, a biology teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, for violating his state’s ban on teaching evolution. The trial created a nationwide media frenzy and came to be seen as a showdown between urban and rural values. Scottsboro Boys Nine African American youths who were arrested for the alleged rape of two white women in Scottsboro, Alabama, in 1931. After an all-white jury sentenced the young men to death, the Communist Party took action that saved them from the electric chair. Selective Service Act

Law enacted in 1940 requiring all men who would be eligible for a military draft to register in preparation for the possibility of a future conflict. Servicemen’s Readjustment Act Popularly known as the GI Bill, the act provided tuition benefits, unemployment benefits, loan assistance, and medical care to World War II veterans in an attempt to ease the reconversion of the wartime economy. settlement houses Settlements established in poor neighborhoods beginning in the 1880s. Reformers like Jane Addams and Lillian Wald believed that only by living among the poor could they help bridge the growing class divide. College-educated women formed the backbone of the settlement house movement. sharecropping Labor system that emerged in the South during Reconstruction. Under this system, planters divided their plantations into small farms that freedmen rented, paying with a share of each year’s crop. Sharecropping gave blacks some freedom, but they remained dependent on white landlords and country merchants. Sherman Antitrust Act 1890 act that outlawed pools and trusts, ruling that businesses could no longer enter into agreements to restrict competition. Government inaction, combined with the Supreme Court’s narrow reading of the act in the United States v. E. C. Knight Company decision, undermined the law’s effectiveness. “silent majority” Richard Nixon’s name for those whom he claimed had been neglected by the liberal establishment in the 1960s in favor of radical protesters and minorities. Nixon appealed to this group in an effort to attract white northern workers and other traditional Democrats to the Republican Party. social Darwinism A social theory popularized in the late nineteenth century by Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner. Proponents believed that only relentless competition could produce social progress and that wealth was a sign of “fitness” and poverty a sign of “unfitness” for survival. social gospel A vision of Christianity that saw its mission as not simply to reform individuals but to reform society. Emerging in the early twentieth century, it offered a powerful corrective to social Darwinism and the gospel of wealth, which fostered the belief that riches signaled divine favor. Social Security New Deal program created in August 1935 that was designed to provide a modest income for elderly people as well as modest unemployment insurance. Socialist Party Political party formed in 1900 that advocated cooperation over competition and promoted the breakdown of capitalism. Its members, who were largely middle-class and native-born, saw both the Republican and the Democratic parties as hopelessly beholden to capitalism. Spanish-American War

1898 war between Spain and the United States that began as an effort to free Cuba from Spain’s colonial rule. This popular war left the United States an imperial power in control of Cuba and colonies in Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. spoils system System in which politicians doled out government positions to their loyal supporters. This patronage system led to widespread corruption during the Gilded Age. Sputnik The first man-made satellite to circle the earth, launched by the Soviets in 1957. It created fears that the Soviets were ahead of the United States not only in missile development and space exploration but also in science and education. Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) A 1972 agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union limiting antiballistic missiles (ABMs) to two each. The treaty prevented either nation from building an ABM system defense so secure against a nuclear attack that it would risk a first strike. Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) A new civil rights organization established by young activists in 1960 in response to the sit-in movement. SNCC rejected the top-down leadership of organizations like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, although it embraced Martin Luther King Jr.’s principles of civil disobedience and nonviolence. Sun Belt Name applied to the Southwest and South, which grew rapidly after World War II as a center of defense industries and non-unionized labor. supply-side economics Economic theory that claims tax cuts for businesses and individuals, especially the wealthy, encourage investment and production (supply) and stimulate consumption (demand) because individuals can keep more of their earnings. Despite promises to the contrary, supply-side economics during the Reagan administration created a massive federal budget deficit. sweatshop A small room used for clothing piecework beginning in the late nineteenth century. As mechanization transformed the garment industry with the introduction of foot-pedaled sewing machines and mechanical cloth-cutting knives, independent tailors were replaced with sweatshop workers hired by contractors to sew pieces into clothing. Taft-Hartley Act Law passed by the Republican-controlled Congress in 1947 that amended the Wagner Act and placed restrictions on organized labor that made it more difficult for unions to organize workers. Tea Party movement Political movement of mostly white, middle-class, and older voters that was funded by billionaire conservatives and fostered by right-wing media. Sparked by opposition to financial bailouts and the

Affordable Care Act under Obama, its followers protested what they saw as an overreaching government. Teapot Dome Nickname for the scandal in which Interior Secretary Albert Fall accepted $400,000 in bribes for leasing oil reserves on public land in Teapot Dome, Wyoming. It was part of a larger pattern of corruption that marred Warren G. Harding’s presidency. Tet Offensive Major campaign of attacks launched throughout South Vietnam in early 1968 by the North Vietnamese and southern insurgents. A turning point in the war, it exposed the credibility gap between official statements and the war’s reality, shaking Americans’ confidence in the government. Triple Alliance Early-twentieth-century alliance among Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy, which was formed as part of a complex network of military and diplomatic agreements intended to prevent war in Europe by balancing power. Triple Entente Early-twentieth-century alliance among Great Britain, France, and Russia. The Triple Entente stood opposed to the Triple Alliance. Truman Doctrine President Truman’s commitment to “support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.” First applied to Greece and Turkey in 1947, it became the justification for U.S. intervention into many countries during the Cold War. trust A system in which corporations give shares of their stock to trustees who hold the stocks “in trust” for their stockholders, thereby coordinating the industry to ensure profits to the participating corporations and to curb competition. “typewriters” Women who were hired by businesses in the decades after the Civil War to keep records and conduct correspondence, often using equipment such as typewriters. Secretarial work constituted one of the very few areas where middle-class women could use their literacy for wages. underconsumption When factories and farms produce more than consumers can buy, causing factories to lay off workers and farmers to lose money. USA Patriot Act 2001 law that gave the government new powers to monitor suspected terrorists and their associates, including the ability to access American citizens’ personal information. Critics charged that it represented an unwarranted abridgment of civil rights. Versailles treaty Treaty signed on June 28, 1919, that ended World War I. The agreement redrew the map of the world and assigned Germany sole responsibility for the war, saddling it with a debt of $33 billion in war

damages. Many Germans felt betrayed by the treaty. Voting Rights Act of 1965 Law passed during Lyndon Johnson’s administration that empowered the federal government to intervene to ensure minorities access to the voting booth. As a result of the act, black voting and officeholding in the South shot up, initiating a major transformation in southern politics. Wagner Act 1935 law that guaranteed industrial workers the right to organize into unions. War on Poverty President Lyndon Johnson’s efforts, organized through the Office of Economic Opportunity, to ameliorate poverty through education and training as well as by including the poor in decision making. War Powers Act A 1973 law requiring that the president secure congressional approval for any substantial long-term deployment of troops abroad. The legislation was an attempt by Congress to reassert its constitutional authority over war-making in the aftermath of Vietnam. Warren Court The Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren (1953–1969), which expanded the Constitution’s promise of equality and civil rights. It issued landmark decisions in the areas of civil rights, criminal rights, privacy, reproductive freedom, and separation of church and state. Watergate Term referring to the 1972 break-in at Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C., by men working for President Nixon’s reelection, along with Nixon’s efforts to cover it up. The scandal led to the only presidential resignation in American history. welfare capitalism Popular programs for workers sponsored by employers in the 1920s. Some businesses improved safety and sanitation inside factories. They also instituted paid vacations and pension plans. This encouraged loyalty to companies and discouraged independent labor unions. Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) All-women organization founded in 1874 to advocate total abstinence from alcohol. The WCTU provided important political training for women, which many used in the suffrage movement. Works Progress Administration (WPA) Federal New Deal program established in 1935 that provided government-funded public works jobs to millions of unemployed Americans during the Great Depression. World Trade Organization (WTO) International economic body established in 1994 through the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade to enforce substantial tariff and import quota reductions. Many corporations welcomed these trade barrier reductions, but critics linked them to job loss and the weakening of unions. World’s Columbian Exposition

World’s fair held in Chicago in 1893 that attracted millions of visitors. The elaborately designed pavilions of the “White City” included exhibits of technological innovation and of cultural exoticism. They embodied an urban ideal that contrasted with the realities of Chicago life. Wounded Knee 1890 massacre of Sioux Indians by the Seventh Cavalry at Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota. Sent to suppress the Ghost Dance, the soldiers opened fire on the Sioux as they attempted to surrender. More than two hundred Sioux men, women, and children were killed. yellow journalism Term first given to sensationalistic newspaper reporting and cartoon images rendered in yellow. A circulation war between William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal and Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World provoked the tactics of yellow journalism that fueled popular support for the Spanish- American War in 1898. Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) Organization of conservative college students formed in 1960 in opposition to international communism and government interference in the economy. YAF was a key force behind far-right candidate Barry Goldwater securing the Republican presidential nomination in 1964.

Index A Note about the Index: Names of individuals appear in boldface.

Letters in parentheses following pages refer to:

(f) figures, including charts and graphs

(i) illustrations, including photographs and artifacts

(m) maps

(t) tables

Defined terms have boldface pages.

AAA. See Agricultural Adjustment Act Abortion

feminism and, 779 Nixon administration and, 782 Reagan administration and, 825 Supreme Court and, 824(i)

Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 677 Abstract expressionism, 748 Abu Ghraib prison, 856 Acheson, Dean

on communism, 708 on Korean War, 716 on racism, 734 on war-ravaged Europe, 708

ACLU. See American Civil Liberties Union Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome

anti-AIDS program in Africa for, 856 homosexuality and, 826

ACT UP, 826 Addams, Jane

election of 1912 and, 573 labor movement and, 558 social work of, 555–556 woman suffrage and, 561 World War I and, 599

Advertising, 1920s consumer culture and, 620 AEF. See American Expeditionary Force

Aerospace industry, 741 AFDC. See Aid to Families with Dependent Children Affirmative action

Johnson, L. B., administration and, 767 Reagan administration and, 824–825 Nixon administration and, 781–782

Afghanistan 9/11 attacks and, 851 Carter administration and, 812 Clinton administration and, 843 Obama administration and, 867 Reagan administration and, 827–829 Soviet withdrawal from, 831

AFL. See American Federation of Labor Africa

anti-AIDS program in, 856 German colonies in, after World War I, 602 World War II and, 689, 696(m)

African American suffrage, Voting Rights Act and, 767 African Americans

anti-lynching laws and, 669 busing for school desegregation and, 804–805 in cities vs. suburbs, 740–741 civil rights of. See Civil rights in Clinton administration, 837 in Congress, 413, 426, 427(f) as cowboys, 461–462 discrimination against. See Racial and ethnic discrimination

Double V campaign and, 692 election of Obama and, 864–865 as emancipated slaves. See Freedmen GI Bill and, 730–731 higher education for, in 1950s, 743 in Knights of Labor, 514 Ku Klux Klan and, in 1920s, 630 lack of New Deal help for, 662–663 as married women in workforce, in late 19th century, 510 mechanization of farm labor and, 739 median income of, in 1999, 841 migration to Northern cities after Civil War, 505 migration to North of, after World War I, 608–610, 609(i) migration to North of, during World War II, 692 migration to West of, in 1950s, 741 in military during Vietnam War, 793–794 in military during World War I, 593 in military during World War II, 685(i), 685–686 music of, in 1950s, 748 New Negro and, 624–625 racism against. See Racial and ethnic discrimination Social Security in 1930s and, 661 in Southern Farmers’ Alliance, 530 voting rights of. See African American suffrage in West, in late 19th century, 457

African American suffrage Fifteenth Amendment and, 424 Lincoln and, 415

during Reconstruction, 420–422 African Methodist Episcopal Church, 417 Agent Orange, 802, 791, 794 Agnew, Spiro T., 806 Agribusiness. See Agriculture Agricultural Adjustment Act

challenges of, 655–656 first, 653 second, 667

Agricultural Marketing Act, 634 Agricultural migrant workers. See Migrant farmworkers Agriculture

commercial, in West in late 19th century, 462–464 income, 1920 to 1940, 636(f) land fever in West and, 459–465 New Deal programs for, 653 technological advances in, from 1940 to 1960, 739 throughout world, in late 19th century, 498(m), 499

Aguinaldo, Emilio, 549 Aid to Families with Dependent Children, 760, 839 AIDS. See Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, 826 AIM. See American Indian Movement Air-conditioning, 741 Air pollution

Clean Air Act of 1970, 776 Clean Air Act of 1990, 834

Air traffic controller strike, 821

Alabama James Rapier and, 412–413 Montgomery. See Montgomery, Alabama new state constitution of, 418 Selma. See Selma, Alabama

Alcatraz Island, Native Americans and, 772 Ali, Muhammad, 795 Alien Land Law, 579 Alito, Samuel A., 857 Allen, Doris, 802 Allende, Salvador, 798 Alliance for Progress, 789 Alliance Independent, 531(i) Allied powers

Paris peace conference and, 601–602 production of weapons for World War II by, 687(f) in World War I, 588–595, 589(m). See also World War I

Altgeld, John Peter, 536 Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, 515, 532–534 Amalgamated Clothing Workers, 660 Amazon.com, 861 Amendments to Constitution. See Constitution of United States; specific amendments American Bell (telephone company), 476 American Civil Liberties Union, 608 American Communist Party, 657 American Equal Rights Association, 421 American Expeditionary Force, 584, 592–595

American Federation of Labor creation of, 515 Great Depression and, 638 New Deal and, 660 shipyard worker strike and, 606 steelworker strike and, 606 women in, 558 World War I and, 597

American GI Forum, 734, 773 American Independent Party, 796, 797(m) American Indian Movement, 772 American Liberty League, 655, 661 American Medical Association, 624, 661, 733 American National Exhibition, in Moscow, 727 American Psychiatric Association, on homosexuality, 775 American Railway Union, 535–536 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, 856 Americans with Disabilities Act, 834 American Sugar Refining Company, 490 American Telephone and Telegraph, 476(i), 476–477 American Tobacco Company, 481 American Woman Suffrage Association, 538 Amusement parks, in late 19th century, 518 Anarchists

Homestead lockout and, 533 labor radicalism and, 515

Anderson, John B., 819 Angola, Reagan administration and, 829

Annan, Kofi, 851 Anthony, Susan B.

as an activist, 421(i) American Equal Rights Association and, 421 Fifteenth Amendment and, 424 National Woman Suffrage Association and, 483 woman suffrage and, 538–539

Anthracite coal strike, 564 Anticommunism. See Communism and Communist Party Anti-German sentiments and actions, World War I and, 599–600 Antigovernment sentiment, 837 Anti-lynching legislation, New Deal and, 669 Anti-Saloon League, 558 Anti-Semitism

of Hitler, 676 Holocaust and, 693(i), 694 toward Jewish immigrants, 504 Ku Klux Klan and, in 1920s, 630

Antitrust laws Roosevelt, T., administration and, 563–564 Sherman Antitrust Act, 490, 563–564, 821 Standard Oil Company and, 475 Wilson administration and, 576

Antiwar movement against Vietnam War, 774 Johnson, L. B., administration and, 794–797 Nixon administration and, 799

ANWR. See Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Apache Indians, resistance to reservations by, 450

Apartheid, end of, 832 Apollo program, 789 Appeasement of Hitler, 679 Apprenticeship laws, in South, 419 Arab countries. See also specific countries

immigrants from, arrest of, after 9/11 attacks, 852 Israel and, 798–799

Arab League, 854(m) Arab Spring, 868, 871 Arapaho Indians

Ghost Dance and, 452 Treaty of Medicine Lodge and, 444

Arbenz, Jacobo, 720 Architects, rebuilding of Chicago by, 519 Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, 810, 874 Arizona, as territory, government of, 464 Arkansas

Farmers’ Alliance in, 530 Little Rock, school desegregation in, 750

Armenia, immigration from, in late 19th century, 502, 502(f) Army (U.S.). See Military entries; specific wars Army of the Republic of Vietnam. See also Vietnam War

casualties inflicted by, 792 insurgency and, 790 Tet Offensive and, 795–796 insurgency and, 790

Arthur, Chester A., 485 Artists

of 1920s, as expatriates, 627 Harlem Renaissance and, 625

ARU. See American Railway Union ARVN. See Army of the Republic of Vietnam Aryan racial supremacy, Nazi Germany and, 676 Asia. See also specific countries

German colonies in, after World War I, 602 Roosevelt, T., administration and, 569–570 Taft administration and, 572

Asian Americans. See also Asian immigrants in Clinton administration, 837 Japanese American internment and, 684 lack of New Deal help for, 663

Asian immigrants. See also Asian Americans in 21st century, 848–849 discrimination against, 505, 579 Johnson-Reed Act and, 629 in late 19th century, 458, 501 McCarran-Walter Act and, 733

Assembly-line production, during 1920s, 619, 619(i) Assimilation of Native Americans

after World War II, 737–738 through Indian schools, in late 19th century, 447–448

Astor, Caroline, 507 Aswan Dam, 721 Atlanta, Georgia, race riot in 1906 in, 580 Atlanta Compromise, 579 Atlanta Constitution, on South after Reconstruction, 480–481

Atlantic Charter, 681 Atlantic Ocean, World War II battles in, 689 Atomic bomb

Soviet Union development of, 709 use of, in World War II, 680, 699

AT&T, 476(i), 476–477 Auschwitz, Poland, Holocaust and, 694 Austria, World War II and, 678, 678(m) Austria-Hungary

boundaries of, after World War I, 602, 603(m) immigration from, in late 19th century, 501(f) World War I and, 588

Automobile industry Henry Ford and, 614–615 in 1920s, 618(m), 618–619 federal bailout of, 865 New Deal and, 660

AWSA. See American Woman Suffrage Association Axis powers. See also Germany; Italy; Japan

aggression of, through 1941, 678(m) areas controlled by, in late 1942, 696(m) production of weapons by, 687(f) unconditional surrender expected of, 689

B-17 Flying Fortress bombers, 673–674, 695 B-29 Super Fortress bombers, 674 Babbitt (Lewis), 627 Baby boom generation, 745 Back to Africa movement, 625 Baer, George, 564 Baker, Ella, 764 Baker, Josephine, 751(i) Baker v. Carr, 762–763 Balch, Emily Greene, 599 Baldwin, Roger, 608 “Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd” (Guthrie), 638 Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, Great Railroad Strike and, 512–514 Banks, Dennis, 772 Banks and banking

closing of, during Great Depression, 636, 651(f) Morgan and, 478 New Deal reform of, 650 separation of commercial from investment banks and, 650 Wilson administration and, 575–576

Bannock Shoshoni Indians, 455 Baptists and Baptist Church, 417 Barbed wire fencing, end of open range from, 461 Barboncito (Navajo leader), 443 Barry, Leonora, 514 Baruch, Bernard, 596 Baseball

in 1920s, 626 in late 19th century, 518

Bataan, Philippines, battle of, 688, 698(m) Bataan Death March, 688 Batista, Fulgencio, 721 Battles. See specific locations of battles Bay of Pigs, 789 Beals, Melba Patillo, 750 Beat generation, 748 Begin, Menachem, 810 Belgium, immigration from, in late 19th century, 501(f) Bell, Alexander Graham, 476(i), 476–477 Belleau Wood, France, battle of, 594, 594(m) Bends, Brooklyn Bridge and, 497 Bentley, Elizabeth, 713 Berger, Victor, 607 Berkman, Alexander, 533 Berlin, Germany

airlift, 710(i) capture of, 697 division of, 709, 710(i) wall dividing. See Berlin Wall

Berlin Wall building of, 789 fall of, 832

Berry, Chuck, 748 Bessemer, Henry, 473 Bethune, Mary McLeod, 663

Bible, in public schools, 764 Big-city bosses, 520–521 Bimetallism, 491 bin Laden, Osama, 834, 843, 851, 867 Birds of passage, 504 Birmingham, Alabama, iron and steel industry in, 481 Birth control movement

in 1920s, 624 Margaret Sanger and, 577–578

Birther movement, 865 Black Awareness Research Institute, 774 Black codes, 418–419 Black Elk (Oglala holy man), 447 Black Hands, 457 Black Hills, South Dakota, Indian wars and, 446–447 Black Kettle (Cheyenne leader), 444 Black Lives Matter, 870–871 Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, 769 Black power movement, 769–771 Blacks

as African Americans. See African Americans as emancipated slaves. See Freedmen voting rights of. See African American suffrage

Black Star Line, 625 Black Thursday/Black Tuesday, 634 Blaine, James G.

election of 1884 and, 486, 487(m), 489 Monroe Doctrine and, 546

political corruption and, 485 Blainiacs, 486 Blitzkrieg, 679 Bloody Sunday, 766 Blue-collar jobs, in 1950s, 740 Boarding schools, for Indian children, 447–448 Bolshevik regime and bolshevism. See also Communism and Communist Party

Red scare and, 607 withdrawal of Russia from World War I and, 592

Bombings in Vietnam War, 792, 799 in World War II, 695–697

Bond, Julian, 806 Bondholders, railroads and, 472 Bonfield, John (“Blackjack”), 516 Bonus Marchers, 638–639 Bootblacks, 510 Border wall, Trump administration and, 875 Bosnia, war in Yugoslavia and, 843 Bosque Redondo Reservation, 443 Bossism, 520–521 Boston, Massachusetts

busing for school desegregation in, 804–805, 805 immigrant population of, in 1900, 503 police strike in, 606

Boston Public Library, 520 Bourke-White, Margaret, 743

Bow, Clara, 626 Boxer Protocol, 545 Boxer uprising in China, 545–546 Boxing, in 1920s, 626 Boycotts

of Montgomery buses, 750–752 of Pullman railroad cars, 535–536

Boyer, LaNada, 772 Bozeman Trail, 446 Bracero program, 742 Brains Trust, 649 Brandeis, Louis, 576 Bray, Rosemary, 762 Brazil, planters and, 428 Breaker boys, 564 Briand, Aristide, 618 Briggs, Laura, 705 Brinksmanship, 719 Britain. See also Great Britain

campaign in Egypt during World War II, 689 Egyptian seizure of Suez Canal and, 721 immigrants from, in late 19th century, 501 immigrants from, Johnson-Reed Act and, 629 immigrants from, in late 19th century, 501(f), 502(f) military expenditures, 2005, 853(f) World War II and, 679–681. See also World War II

Britain, battle of, 680 British Petroleum oil spill, 865

Brooklyn, New York, Margaret Sanger and, 578 Brooklyn Bridge, 496–497, 519 Brooks, Gwendolyn, 733 Brown, Michael, 870 Brown, Oliver, 749 Brown power, 773 Browne, George (“Brownie”), 584–585 Brownsville, New York, Margaret Sanger and, 578 Brown v. Board of Education, 734, 749, 756, 762 Brtish Guiana, 546 Brunauer, Esther, 713 Bryan, William Jennings

election of 1896 and, 541–543, 543(m) election of 1908 and, 570 on expansionism, 551 Scopes trial and, 631 as secretary of state, 586 on sinking of Lusitania, 590

Bryce, James, 521 Buchanan, Patrick J., 781, 851(m) Buckley, William F., 780 Buckwheats, 499 Buffalo, extinction of, 444 Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West, 440 Buffalo soldiers, 457 Buffalo Telegraph, on Grover Cleveland, 486 Bulgaria, creation of Communist government in, 706 Bulge, battle of, 696, 696(m)

Bunche, Ralph J., 733 Bureau of Corporations, 564 Bureau of Indian Affairs, 445, 772 Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 415–416 Burger, Warren E., 805 Burger Court, 805 Burleson, Albert, 600 Burnham, Daniel, 522, 523 Bus boycott, in Montgomery, 750–752 Bush, George H. W.

domestic policies of, 834–836 election of 1988 and, 832 election of 1992 and, 836(m), 836 end of Cold War and, 832–834 Iran-Contra scandal, 829 Persian Gulf War and, 833–834 as vice president, 819 war in Central America and, 832–833

Bush, George W. domestic policies of, 856–859 election of 2000 and, 850, 851(m) election of 2006 and, 855 foreign policies of, 850–856 immigration and, 861 Iraq War and, 852–856 presidency of, 879(t) terrorism and, 851–852

Bush v. Gore, 850

Businesses. See also specific businesses consolidation of, in late 19th century, 477–479 as corporations, growth in, 477–479 resistance to New Deal by leaders of, 655

Busing for school desegregation, 804–805 Butler, Nicholas Murray, 600 Byrd, Harry F., 757(m)

California Chicano movement in, 772–774 Hispanics in, in late 19th century, 456–457, 457 migrant farmworkers in 1930s in, 643–644, 657 progressivism and, 562 Proposition 187, 861 tax revolt in, 808 wildfires in, 874

Californios, discrimination against, 457 Calley, William, 800 Cambodia

bombing and invasion of, 799 Communist government in, 801

Cambridge Analytica, 873 Camp David accords, 810 Cannon, Joseph, 566, 568(m) Cantigny, France, battle of, 594, 594(m) CAP. See Community Action Program Capitalism

finance, in late 19th century, 477–478 New Deal and, 649 welfare, 620

Capitalist class, consolidation of, 521–522 Capone, Alphonse (“Big Al”), 622 Caribbean Americans. See Latinos Caribbean area

immigrants from, in 21st century. See also Latinos

Taft administration and, 572 Reagan administration and, 828(m) U.S. involvement in, 1895-1941, 587(m)

Car industry. See Automobile industry Carlisle Indian School, 448 Carmichael, Stokely, 769 Carnegie, Andrew

“The Gospel of Wealth,” 557 Homestead lockout and, 532–534 life of, 473–474 on Morgan, 575 Morgan and, 478 on New South, 481 social Darwinism and, 479 William Jones and, 511 workforce of, 499

Carnegie Steel, 473–474, 478 Carpetbaggers, 425 Carson, Rachel, 776 Carter, James Earl, Jr. (“Jimmy”)

Cold War and, 812–813 election of 1976 and, 807 energy and environmental reform by, 809–810 human rights abroad and, 810 liberalism and, 808–809 presidency of, 808–813, 816(t)

Carter Doctrine, 812 Castro, Fidel, 721, 789

Casualties of Iraq War, 856 of Korean War, 718 of Vietnam War, 793(i), 794, 799, 802(t) of World War I, 595, 595(f) of World War II, 696, 699

Catholics and Catholicism election of 1884 and, 486 election of 1928 and, 631–632 as immigrants in 1920s, 629 Ku Klux Klan against, 630 nuclear disarmament and, 827 politics and, in late 19th century, 480

Catt, Carrie Chapman, 598 Cattell, James McKeen, 599–600 Cattle ranching, in Texas, barbed wire fencing and, 461 CCC. See Civilian Conservation Corps Central America

Bush, G. H. W., administration and, 832–833 Monroe Doctrine and, 546 Reagan administration and, 828(m)

Central Intelligence Agency creation of, 710 Cuba and, 721 Guatemala and, 721 illegal activities of, 807 Iran and, 721

Central American–Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement, 860

Centralia, Washington, Red scare in, 607 Central Intelligence Agency

Bay of Pigs and, 789 in Chile, 798 Iran-Contra scandal, 829

Central Pacific, World War II and, 698, 698(m) Central Pacific Railroad, 468–469 Central Powers, in World War I, 588–595, 589(m). See also World War I A Century of Dishonor (Jackson), 449 Chamberlain, Neville, 678 Chamber of Commerce, resistance of, 655, 661 Chambers, Whittaker, 713 Chaplin, Charlie, 626 Charlottesville, Virginia, white nationalist rally in, 874 Chase, Salmon P., 423 Château-Thierry, France, battle of, 594, 594(m) Chavez, Cesar, 772–773, 773(i) Cheney, Richard B., 850, 851(m) Chester, Daniel, 523(i) Cheyenne Indians

fight for Black Hills and, 446, 447 Ghost Dance and, 452 massacre of, in Colorado Territory, 444

Chiang Kai-shek. See Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek) Chicago, Illinois

Great Fire in, rebuilding after, 519 Hull House in, 555 immigrant population of, in 1900, 503

prohibition and, 622 South Side of, emergence of, 610 violence at 1968 Democratic National Convention in, 796 World’s Columbian Exposition in. See World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago

Chicago Tribune on election of 1948, 731(i), 732 on Pullman strike, 536 on slavery in Mississippi, 419

Chicano movement, 772–774 Child labor

in coal mines, 564 Keating Owen Act and, 576 in late 19th century, 510 New Deal reform of, 669

Children’s Bureau, 571 Child support legislation, 825 Chile

Carter administration and, 810 Nixon administration and, 798

China. See also People’s Republic of China Boxer uprising in, 545–546 civil war in, 712 immigrants from. See Chinese immigrants military expenditures, 2005, 853(f) Nike and, 860 Open Door policy and, 546 Roosevelt, T., administration and, 569–570

Tiananmen Square crackdown, 832 Chinese Americans, in military during World War II, 685 Chinese Exclusion Act, 457, 505, 579 Chinese immigrants

discrimination against, in late 19th century, 505 discrimination against, in West, 457 discrimination against, progressivism and, 579 Johnson-Reed Act and, 629 mining in West and, 455 in California, 457

Chivington, John M., 444 A Choice Not an Echo (Schlafly), 818 Christian Coalition, 838 Christianity. See also specific denominations

Bibles and prayer in public schools and, 764 New Christian Right and, 820–821 politics and, in late 19th century, 480 social gospel and, 557–558

Christian missionaries, in China, Boxer uprising and, 545–546 Christian Right

homosexuality and, 826 Reagan administration and, 820–821

Chrysler, federal bailout of, 865 Churches. See Christianity; Religion; specific denominations Churchill, Winston

attack against Nazis in Africa and, 689 attack on Italy and, 690 on iron curtain, 706

refusal to surrender by, 679, 680 Roosevelt, F., and, 681 second front of World War II and, 695 Yalta Conference and, 697

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, in West, in late 19th century, 458 CIA. See Central Intelligence Agency Cigarettes, 481 Cisler, Lucinda, 779 Cities, rise of, 497–508

discrimination among immigrant groups and, 504–506 global migration and, 499–504 social geography and, 506–508

Citizens and citizenship Asians and, 458, 663, 733 Native Americans and, 449, 630 Fourteenth Amendment and, 420–421, 432

Citizens United v. FEC, 857 City industrialism. See Urban industrialism Civil Defense Administration, nuclear arms race and, 722 Civil disobedience and disorder. See also Nonviolence

against blacks, in postwar South, 422 Great Railroad Strike and, 513–514 Haymarket bombing and, 515–517 for higher minimum wage, 869 Homestead lockout and, 533 McCormick reaper works strike and, 515–516 race riots and. See Race riots

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and, 764–765 Civilian Conservation Corps, 651–652 Civil liberties

attacks on, World War I and, 596, 607–608 government surveillance programs and, 868

Civil Rights Commission, 824 Civil rights

after World War II, 733–734 Black Lives Matter, 870–871 McCarthyism and, 714 of Mexican Americans, in 1950s, 743 movement in 1950s for, 749–752 movement in 1960s for, 764–771 Pauli Murray and, 755–756 in South during Reconstruction, 426, 427

Civil Rights Act of 1866, 420 Civil Rights Act of 1875, 431 Civil Rights Act of 1957, 750 Civil Rights Act of 1960, 750 Civil Rights Act of 1964

compared to New Deal programs, 761 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and, 782 Johnson on, 780 passage of, 759 strengthening of, 781–782

Civil Rights Act of 1968, 767 Civil Rights Restoration Act, 824–825 Civil Service Commission, 486, 775

Civil service employees, McCarthyism and, 713 Civil service reform, 485 Civil Works Administration, 651 Clayton Antitrust Act, 576 Clean Air Act of 1970, 776 Clean Air Act of 1990, 834 Clean Water Act, 776 Clean Power Plan, 867 Clemenceau, Georges, 593, 601, 604(i) Clemens, Samuel Langhorne. See Twain, Mark Clergy. See Christianity; Religion; specific denominations Clerical work, for women in late 19th century, 511–512 Cleveland, Ohio

change in, during late 19th century, 506 progressivism and, 561–562

Cleveland, Grover annexation of Hawai’i and, 545 antitrust laws and, 490 election of 1884 and, 486, 487(m) election of 1892 and, 541(m) federal regulation of railroads and, 490 free silver and, 490–492 on immigration, 506 Monroe Doctrine and, 546–547 panic and depression of 1873 and, 492 Pullman strike and, 536 tariffs and, 488–489

Climate change, 867

Clinton, Hillary election of 2008 and, 864 election of 2016 and, 872–873, 873(m) as First Lady, 836, 838 health care reform and, 837

Clinton, William Jefferson (“Bill”) conservatives and, 837–839 domestic policies of, 836–837 election of 1992 and, 836(m), 836 election of 1996 and, 839 foreign policies of, 842–843 globalization and, 840–843 impeachment and, 839–840

Clodfelter, Mike, 793 Closed shops, 617 Coal miners and mining

New Deal and, 660 strike of 1902 and, 564 strike of 1931 and, 639 strike of, during World War II, 686

Cockran, Bourke, 551 Cody, William (“Buffalo Bill”), Wild West show of, 440 Coin’s Financial School, 542 Cold War, 703–724

beginnings of, 704–711 Carter administration and, 812–813 end of, 832–834 Fair Deal and, 731–733

Johnson, L. B., administration and, 791–792 Kennedy administration and, 789–791 Korean War and, 714–718 Powell and, 831 Reagan administration and, 826–832, 828(m), 830(m)

Colfax, Louisiana, massacre in, 433–434 Colfax, Schuyler, 430 Collective security, 710 Colleges and universities. See also Higher education

student activism at, in 1960s, 774–775 student protests at, in 1960s, 796

Collier, John, 663 Colombia, Panama Canal and, 567, 570(m) Colorado. See also Colorado Territory

Cripple Creek, miners’ strike at, 534 Colorado Territory

government of, 464 Sand Creek, Cheyenne massacre at, 444 western movement into, 460

Colored Farmers’ Alliance, 530 Columbia University, New York City, student protests at, 796 Comanche Indians

decline of, 444 resistance to reservations by, 449 Treaty of Medicine Lodge and, 444

Comanchería, 445 Coming of Age in Mississippi (Moody), 765(i) Comintern, 607

Commercial agriculture. See Agriculture Commercial banks. See Banks and banking Commission on the Status of Women, 756 Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, 722 Committee on Fair Employment Practices, 692 Committee on Public Information, 599 Commodity Credit Corporation, 653 Common laborers, in late 19th century, 508–510 Commune living, 775 Communication

telegraph, invention of, 473 telephone, invention of, 476–477

Communism and Communist Party Chinese civil war and, 712 counterinsurgency forces and, 789 in Eastern Europe, collapse of, 831–832 election of 1932 and, 647(m) election of 1936 and, 665 fear of. See Red scare Great Depression and, 639 in Greece and Turkey, prevention of, 708 Johnson, L. B., administration and, 791–792 Kennedy administration and, 789–790 in Latin America, threat of, 720–721 McCarthyism and, 712–714 in Middle East, threat of, 721–722 New Deal and, 657 Nixon administration and, 797–799

People’s Republic of China and, 712 Reagan administration and, 827–829 spread of, after Vietnam War, 801 spread of, liberation movements and, 711 Truman administration and, 714 in Vietnam, threat of, 719–720. See also Vietnam War after World War I, 607

Community Action Program, 760 Compromise of 1877, 435 Comstock, Anthony, 578 Comstock, Henry, 455 Comstock Lode, 452–456 Concentration camps, World War II and, 694 Condren, Don, 730 Coney Island, 518, 523 Confiscation Act of 1861, 415 Confiscation Act of 1862, 415 Conger, Sarah, 545 Congress. See also House of Representatives; Senate

civil rights and, Reagan administration and, 824–825 diversity in, 2019, 875(i) during Reconstruction, blacks vs. whites in, 426, 427(f) Reconstruction plan of, 414

Congress of Industrial Organizations, 660–661 Congress of Racial Equality

creation of, 692 Freedom Rides and, 765–766 Montgomery bus boycott and, 750

Conkling, Roscoe, 485 Consciousness-raising groups, 778 Conscription. See Military draft Conservation

Civilian Conservation Corps and, 651–652 of energy, 809–810 Roosevelt, T., administration and, 566–567, 568(m) Taft administration and, 571

Conservatives and conservatism in 1960s and 1970s, 780–782 from 1980 to 2000, 846–847(t) Bush, G. W., administration and, 856–859 Clinton administration and, 837–839 growth of, in 1970s, 802–807 New Deal and, 667 Reagan administration and, 818–823 Schlafly (Phyllis) and, 817–818 Social Security and, 661

Constitution of United States Eighteenth Amendment and, 597, 622 Nineteenth Amendment and, 598, 623 Seventeenth Amendment and, 572 Sixteenth Amendment and, 571–572 Twenty-Sixth Amendment and, 782, 793 Fifteenth Amendment and, 424 Fourteenth Amendment and, 420–422 Thirteenth Amendment and, 418

Consumer goods

consumer culture of 1920s and, 620–621 increase in, during 1950s, 727–728 production of, 1921-1929, 621(f)

Consumerism. See Consumption Consumer prices, 1865-1910, 529(f) Consumption

during 1950s, 744–745 New Deal and, 649 television and, 746–747 after World War II, 729

during World War II, 691–692 Containment

implementation of, 706 Korean War and, 714–718 nuclear arms race and, 719 policy of, 706 six components of, 709 in Vietnam, 719–720

Contraception. See Birth control movement Contract with America, 837 Contras, Iran-Contra scandal and, 829 Coolidge, Calvin

on Boston police strike, 606 on business, 617 election of 1924 and, 617 presidency of, 617 on stocks, 634

Coral Sea, battle of, 688, 698(m)

CORE. See Congress of Racial Equality Corporate liberalism, Roosevelt, T., administration and, 566 Corporations, growth in, 477–479 Corregidor Island, Philippines, battle of, 698(m) Costa Rica, 546 Cotton, sharecroppers and, 429 Cotton belt, New Deal and, 653 Cotton Club, 625 Coughlin, Charles, 657 Council of Economic Advisors, 729 Court-packing plan, 665–666 Cowboys

African American, 461–462 Mexican, as migrant workers, 462

Cox, James M., 610, 611(m), 645 Coxey, Jacob S., 539–540 Coxey’s army, 539–540, 540(i) Craft unions, in late 19th century, 515 Crash of 1929, 634 Crazy Horse (Sioux chief), 446–447 Credit

during 1920s, 633–634 during 1950s, 745

Creel, George, 599 Crime, grassroots movements against, 781 Criminal justice system, Warren Court and, 763 Cripple Creek miners’ strike of 1894, 534 Croatia, war in Yugoslavia and, 843

Crocker, Charles, 458, 468–469 Crogman, William, 580 Croly, Jane Cunningham, 483 Cronkite, Walter, 794 Crook, George, 447, 450 Crop liens, 429 Cross-class alliance, 558–560 Crowd actions. See Civil disobedience and disorder Crow Dog, Mary, 772 Crow Indians, 449–450 Crusade for Justice (Wells), 483 Cuba

Eisenhower administration and, 721 good neighbor policy and, 676 Kennedy administration and, 789 Obama administration and, 868 Spanish-American War and, 547–548, 549(m) U.S. acquisition of, 548–549, 550(m)

Cuban missile crisis, 790 Cuban revolution, 721 Cullen, Countee, 625 Cult of domesticity, 517, 537 Cultural ambassadors, during Cold War, 710 Culture

consumer, of 1920s, 620–621 politics and, in late 19th century, 480–484

Culture wars, 838 Currency, silver and paper, in late 19th century, 491

Cushman, Belle, 512 Custer, George Armstrong, 444, 447 “Custer’s Last Stand”, 447 CWA. See Civil Works Administration Cyberattacks, 873 Czechoslovakia

Communist government in, 709 creation of, 602, 603(m) World War II and, 678–679

Czolgosz, Leon, 562

Dakota Sioux Indians, 1862 war with, 445 Dakota Territory, government of, 464 Dams, building of, in 1950s, 741 Dance halls, 518 Darrow, Clarence, 631 Darwin, Charles, 479, 631 Davis, Henry Winter, 414 Davis, James J., 508 Davis, John W., 617 Dawes, Charles, 618 Dawes, Henry, 449 Dawes Allotment Act, 449, 663 Dawes Plan, 618 The Day After, 827 D Day, 695–696, 696(m) Deadwood Dick, 461 Debs, Eugene V.

American Railroad Union and, 535–536 election of 1912 and, 574, 574(m) election of 1920 and, 611(m) Espionage Act and, 600 Industrial Workers of the World and, 577 Socialist Party and, 577

Defender, on lynching of African Americans, 505 Defense of Marriage Act, 839 Defense spending. See Military buildup Deindustrialization, 861–863

Democratic Leadership Council, 836 Democrats and Democratic Party. See also Elections; individual presidents

African American suffrage and, 482 electoral shift, 1928-1932, 648(m) loyalty to, in late 19th century, 480 National Convention of 1968 and, violence at, 796 Roosevelt, F., and, 645–646 silver currency and, 491 in South, after Reconstruction, 432–434, 433(i) in South, in late 19th century, 480 William Tweed and, 520–521 World War I and, 600

Dempsey, Jack, 626 Denby, Charles, 546 Denmark, immigration from, in late 19th century, 501(f) Department of Commerce and Labor, 564 Department of Energy, 809 Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, 736 Department of Homeland Security, 852 Department of Treasury, prohibition and, 622 Department of Homeland Security, 858 Department stores, 512 Depression, Great, 635–640, 668(f). See also New Deal Depression of 1873

Greenback Labor Party and, 491 railroad speculation and, 472 unemployment and, 508

Depression of 1893

Cleveland administration and, 492 Cripple Creek miners’ strike and, 534 finance capitalism and, 477 politics during, 539–543 Pullman strike and, 534–536 unemployment and, 508 World’s Columbian Exposition and, 522–523

Deregulation of industries, Reagan administration and, 821, 822 Desegregation of schools. See School desegregation Détente, 797–798 Detroit, Michigan

automobile industry in, in 1920s, 618–619 prohibition and, 622 race riots in 1940s in, 692 race riots in 1960s in, 769, 770(m)

Developing nations, Kennedy administration and, 789 Dewey, Thomas E., 549(m)

election of 1944 and, 694 election of 1948 and, 732, 732(m)

Díaz, Porfirio, 610 Diem, Ngo Dinh, 720 Dien Bien Phy, battle of, 720 Dioxin in Agent Orange, 802 Disabled persons, Americans with Disabilities Act and, 834 Discrimination

against African Americans, in New South, 481–482 based on gender, 777, 782. See also Women entries against homosexuals. See Homosexuals and homosexuality

racial and ethnic. See Racial and ethnic discrimination reverse, 824–825

Diseases AIDS and. See Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome Indians in West and, 441

Division of Negro Affairs, 663 Dixiecrats, 732(m), 732 Dobson, James, 820 Doctrine of containment. See Containment Dole, Robert, 839 dollar diplomacy, Taft administration and, 572 DOMA. See Defense of Marriage Act Domestic allotment plan, 653 Domesticity

in 1950s, 746 cult of, 517, 537

Domestic violence, 779 Domestic workers

Fair Labor Standards Act and, 669 lack of New Deal help for, 661 in late 19th century, 511(f), 517–518 Social Security in 1930s and, 661

Dominican Republic Johnson, L. B., administration and, 791 Taft administration and, 572 U.S. involvement in, 1895-1941, 586, 587(m)

Dominis, Lydia Kamakaeha, 545 Domino theory of Eisenhower, 720

Donnelly, Ignatius, 527, 541 Double V campaign, 692 Doughboys, 584, 592–595 Douglas, Aaron, 625 Douglas, Helen Gahagan

election of 1950 and, 717 life of, 703–704

Douglas, Melvyn, 703 Douglass, Frederick, on woman suffrage, 421 Downs Frederick, Jr.

on American attitude toward Vietnam veterans, 801 on difficulties of Vietnam War, 792, 794 Vietnam War experience of, 787–788

Draft. See Military draft DREAM Act, 849, 867, 870 Drift and Mastery (Lippman), 561 Droughts, on Great Plains, 461 Du Bois, W. E. B.

eulogy for Ida B. Wells and, 483 federal anti-lynching law and, 624 Niagara movement and, 580

Duck and cover drills, 723(i) Dugouts, 459–460 Dukakis, Michael, 835 Dulles, John Foster

on brinksmanship, 719 on containment, 718 liberation rhetoric of, 719

Dust Bowl, migrant farmworkers from, 656–657 Dutch East Indies, World War II and, 688, 698(m) Dynamic Sociology (Ward), 561

Earned Income Tax Credit, 836–837 Earth Day, 776 East Berlin

creation of, 709 and West Berlin, wall dividing. See Berlin Wall

Eastern Europe, collapse of communism in, 831–832, 830(m) East Germany

Berlin Wall and. See Berlin Wall creation of, 706, 707(m) reunification of West and, 832

Eastman Kodak, 860, 863 East St. Louis, Illinois, race riot in, 610 Economic downturns

in 1970s, 803–804 after World War II, 729–731 Great Recession, 856, 858–859

Economic growth Clinton administration and, 837, 840–841 Marshall Plan and, 708 Reagan administration and, 822–823 in South during Reconstruction, 426–427 during World War II, 686

Economic inequality in 1920s, 633 Clinton administration and, 841 family income, 1969 to 1998, 841(f) Great Recession and, 865

Henry George on, 487, 488(i) Huey Long and, 658 New Dealers and, 649 Occupy Wall Street and, 869 Roosevelt, F., on, 662 social Darwinism and, 479

Economic Opportunity Act, 759, 760 Economic Recovery Tax Act, 821 Economy

new vs. old, in 21st century, 861–863 peacetime, 729–731

Edison, Thomas Alva, 476, 477 Edison General Electric, 477 Education

Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and, 736 desegregation and. See School desegregation Education Amendment Acts and, 779 Elementary and Secondary Education Act and, 760–761 of females, Education Amendments Act and, 779 of freedmen, 417 higher. See Colleges and universities; Higher education of Indian children, 447–448 National Defense Education Act and, 722 in South during Reconstruction, 426–427

Education Amendments Act, 779, 824 EEOC. See Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Efficiency, progressivism and, 561 Egypt

Arab Spring and, 868 Camp David accords and, 810 Eisenhower administration and, 721 El-Alamein, World War II and, 689, 696(m) Six-Day War and, 799

Eighteenth Amendment in 1920s, 622 passage of, 597 repeal of, 623

Eight-hour workday for federal workers and miners, 571 labor strikes and, 606 National War Labor Policies Board and, 597 shortening from twelve, 515

Einstein, Albert, 709 Eisenhower, Dwight D.

civil rights issues and, 749–750 domestic policies of, 735–738 election of 1952 and, 717 election of 1956 and, 737 foreign policies of, 718–723 as general, World War II and, 689, 695 Korean War and, 718 loyalty review boards and, 714 on using television to campaign, 747

Eisenhower Doctrine, 722 EITC. See Earned Income Tax Credit El-Alamein, Egypt, battle of, 689, 696(m)

Elderly Medicare drug benefits for, 857 Medicare for, 761 Social Security for, 661–662

Elections of 1865, 419 of 1866, 422 of 1868, 413, 430, 430(m) of 1872, 431 of 1874, 413, 432 of 1876, 434–435, 435(m) of 1880, 485 of 1884, 486, 487(m) of 1888, 489 of 1890, 489 of 1892, 541, 541(m) of 1896, 541–543, 543(m) of 1900, 561–562, 563 of 1904, 564–565 of 1908, 570 of 1910, 571 of 1912, 572–575, 574(m), 576 of 1914, 576 of 1916, 576, 590–591 of 1918, 600 of 1920, 610–611, 611(m), 645 of 1924, 617 of 1928, 631–632, 632(m)

of 1932, 646(i), 646–647, 647(m) of 1934, 658 of 1936, 665 of 1938, 669 of 1940, 680 of 1944, 693–694 of 1948, 717, 731(i), 732, 732(m) of 1950, 717 of 1952, 717 of 1956, 737 of 1958, 737 of 1960, 757, 757(m) of 1964, 760, 780, 792 of 1968, 781–782, 796–797, 797(m) of 1972, 805 of 1976, 807 of 1980, 819 of 1984, 822 of 1988, 832 of 1992, 836(m) of 1994, 837 of 1996, 839 of 2000, 850, 851(m) of 2006, 855, 856 of 2008, 864, 864(i), 871 of 2012, 866 of 2016, 871–873, 872(i), 873(m) of 2018, 875(i)

television ads and, 747 Electricity

Tennessee Valley Authority and, 652 Westinghouse and, 477

Electric streetcar, 506 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, 760–761 Elkins Act, 564, 565 Ellis Island, 505 El Salvador

Carter administration and, 810 Reagan administration and, 829

Embargo, against Japanese during World War II, 682 Emergency Banking Act, 650 Employment. See also Labor; Unemployment; specific industries and jobs

of African Americans, after World War I, 608 after World War I, 606 after World War II, 729–731 of Chinese immigrants, 455, 458 Civil Rights Act of 1964 and, 767 industrialization and, 508–512 of Mexican Americans, after World War I, 610 as migrant workers. See Migrant farmworkers migration to urban areas for, 499–504 New Deal and. See New Deal of skilled vs. unskilled workers, 504–506 of women. See Women in workforce

Employment Act of 1946, 729 Endangered Species Act, 776

Energy Carter administration and, 809–810 crisis of 1973 and, 804 crisis of 1979 and, 809–810

England. See Britain Enola Gay, 674 Entertainment

in 1920s, 625–626 during Great Depression, 637–638

Environmentalism British Petroleum oil spill, 865 Bush, G. W., administration and, 857 Carter administration and, 809–810 movement of, in 1970s, 776 Obama administration and, 867 Reagan administration and, 821–822

Environmental Protection Agency, 776, 782, 822, 867 EPA. See Environmental Protection Agency Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 773, 782 Equal Pay Act, 777 Equal Rights Amendment

in 1920s, 623 failure of, 825 opposition to, 779 National Organization for Women and, 777

ERA. See Equal Rights Amendment Espionage

creation of Central Intelligence Agency and, 710

fear of, during World War II, 683–684 Soviet, fear of internal communism and, 713

Espionage Act, 600 Ethiopia, Italian invasion of, 677 Ethnic discrimination. See Racial and ethnic discrimination Ethnicity, politics and, in late 19th century, 480 Ethnic neighborhoods, in late 19th century, 506 Eugenics, Margaret Sanger and, 624 Europe. See also specific countries

boundaries within, after World War I, 601–602, 603(m) division of, after World War II, 707(m) immigration from, in late 19th century, 501–503, 501(f) Roosevelt, T., administration and, 570 World War II battles in, 689–690, 696(m)

Evangelical Protestantism, New Christian Right and, 820 Evangelism, in 1950s, 746 Evans, Hiram Wesley, 630 “Eve of Destruction” (song), 775 Everett, Wesley, 607 Evers, Medgar, 733, 766 Executive Order 8802, 692 Executive Order 9066, 684 Executive Order 9835, 713 Exodusters, 462 Expansionism, in 1890s, 543–551 Expatriates, in 1920s, 627 Expertise, progressivism and, 561 Exports

1870 to 1910, 544(f) expansion of, in 1890s, 544–545

Exposition Music Hall, 527

Facebook, 871, 873 Factories and factory work, women workers and, during World War II, 690– 691 Fair Deal, 731–733 Fair Labor Standards Act, 669 Fair trade, Clinton administration and, 842 Fair Labor Standards Act, 517 Fake news, 873 Fall, Albert, 616–617 Falwell, Jerry, 820 Families

economy of, in late 19th century, 510 of former slaves, reuniting, 416(i), 417

Family and Medical Leave Act, 836 Family Research Council, 820 Family economy, 510 Family income, 1969 to 1998, 841(f) Farm Board, 634–635 Farm Credit Act, 653 Farmer, James, 766 Farmers’ Alliance, 529–531 Farmers’ cooperatives, 530 Farmers’ Alliance, 530, 531(i) Farms and farming. See also Agriculture; Yeoman

foreclosures, 529 foreclosures, 1932 to 1942, 651(f) foreclosures in 1930s and, 653

income, 1865 to 1910, 529(f) increase in number of, in late 19th century, 462 low income of, in 1920s, 633 migrant workers for. See Migrant farmworkers militancy of, during Great Depression, 638 New Deal and, 653 tenancy of, in West in late 19th century, 462

Farm Security Administration, 667 Fascism, Spanish civil war and, 677 Faubus, Orval, 750 Faulkner, William, 627 FBI. See Federal Bureau of Investigation FCA. See Farm Credit Act FDIC. See Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Federal budget

Bush, G. H. W., administration and, 835 Carter administration and, 808 Reagan administration and, 822

Federal Bureau of Investigation civil rights movement and, 766 illegal activities of, 807

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, 650 Federal Election Campaign Act, 807 Federal Emergency Relief Administration, 651 Federal Republic of Germany. See West Germany Federal Reserve Act of 1913, 575 Federal Reserve Board, 575 Federal Trade Commission, 576

Federal budget Bush, G. W., administration and, 857 Clinton administration and, 836–837

Federal Emergency Relief Administration, 858 Federal Trade Commission, 617 Female education, Education Amendments Act and, 779 The Feminine Mystique (Friedan), 746 Feminism

in 1960s, 776–779 countermovement, 778–779 Equal Rights Amendment and. See Equal Rights Amendment Fifteenth Amendment and, 424 Nineteenth Amendment and, 623 Reagan administration and, 825–826

Fence cutters, 461 Fencing, end of open range from, 461 FERA. See Federal Emergency Relief Administration Ferguson, Missouri, killing of Michael Brown in, 870 Ferraro, Geraldine A., 822 Ferris wheel, 522 Fetterman, William, 446 Fifteenth Amendment, 424 Finance capitalism, in late 19th century, 476–479 Financial reform, of New Deal, 650 Financial Services Modernization Act, 839 Finland, immigration from, in late 19th century, 501(f) Fire

Great Fire in Chicago and, 519

at Triangle Shirtwaist Company, 560 Fireside chats, by Franklin Roosevelt, 650 First World War. See World War I Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 624, 627, 633 Five Civilized Tribes of the South, 441 Five-Power Naval Treaty of 1922, 617–618 Flappers, 624 Floyd, Pretty Boy, 638 Flu, Spanish, 607 Folk music, in 1960s, 775 Food Administration, for World War I, 596 Food stamps, 667, 760 Food supply. See Hunger Football, in 1920s, 626 Ford, Gerald R.

election of 1976 and, 807 presidency of, 806–807 as vice president, 806

Ford, Henry choice of Detroit by, 618–619 on employees as customers, 620 Great Depression and, 638 life of, 614–615

Ford Motor Company, 614, 638 Foreign affairs

anticommunism and, 711–714 Bush, G. W., administration and, 850–856 Carter administration and, 810

Clinton administration and, 842–843 Eisenhower administration and, 718–723 House Foreign Affairs Committee and, 704 Kennedy administration and, 789–791 Nixon administration and, 797–802 Obama administration and, 867–868 Roosevelt, F., administration and, 675–677 Roosevelt, T., administration and, 567–570 Taft administration and, 572 Truman administration and, 705–707, 718–723 Trump administration and, 876 Wilson administration and, 586–591

Forest reserves, 567 Forrestal, James V., 705 Fort Laramie

first Treaty of, 441 second Treaty of, 446

Fort Sill, reservation at, 445 Fort Snelling, Great Sioux Uprising and, 445 42nd Street, 638 Foster, William Z., 647(m) Four-Minute Men, 599 Fourteen Points, 601 Fourteenth Amendment, 420–422, 426 France

Dawes Plan and, 618 D Day in, 695–696 Egyptian seizure of Suez Canal and, 721

Five-Power Naval Treaty of 1922 and, 617 immigration from, in late 19th century, 501(f) military expenditures, 2005, 853(f) Normandy, D Day in, 696(m) Paris. See Paris Vietnam and, 719 World War I and, 584–585, 588–595, 594(m) World War II and, 679

Franco, Francisco, 677 Franz Ferdinand, archduke, assassination of, 588 Freedmen. See also African Americans

black codes and, 418–419 as citizens, 420–422 Civil Rights Act of 1866 and, 420 education of, 417, 426–427 land ownership and, 415–416, 428 plantation work and, 428 quest for autonomy of, 415–416 Republican, violence against, 433–434 as Republicans in South, 425 as sharecroppers, 428–429, 429(m) voting rights of. See African American suffrage

Freedmen’s Bureau, 415–416 Freedmen’s Bureau bill, 420 Freedom Rides, 765–766 Freedom schools, for Chicano children, 773–774 Free labor, transition to, in South, 415–416 Free silver

election of 1896 and, 541 fight for, 490–492

Free speech, restriction of, by Supreme Court, 608 Free Speech Movement, 774 Free trade, Clinton administration and, 841–842 Frémont, John C., as governor of Arizona Territory, 464 Frick, Henry Clay, 532–533 Friedan, Betty

The Feminine Mystique and, 746 National Organization for Women and, 756, 777

Frowne, Sadie, 509–510 FSA. See Farm Security Administration FTC. See Federal Trade Commission Fuel, finding on plains, 460 Fuel Administration, for World War I, 596 Fundamentalists and fundamentalism

New Christian Right and, 820 Scopes trial and, 631

Gabler, Mel and Norma, 780 Al-Gaddafi, Muammar, 868 Galbraith, John Kenneth, 747 García, Héctor Peréz, 734 Garfield, James A.

assassination of, 485 election of 1880 and, 485 Fourteenth Amendment and, 422 on Grant, 430

Garland, Hamlin, 522 Garland, Merrick, 867 Garment industry, in late 19th century, 508–510, 509(i) Garvey, Marcus, 624–625 Gary, Martin, 433 Gasoline, energy crisis of 1979 and, 809–810 Gates, Bill, 823 Gates, Merrill, 448 Gay liberation, 775 Gay marriage, 839, 866 Gay rights movement. See also Homosexuals and homosexuality

in 21st century, 839 in 1960s, 775–776 in 1980s, 826 gay marriage and, 839, 866 Obama administration and, 866

Gender. See also Women entries discrimination based on, 777, 782

politics and, in late 19th century, 481–483 roles of, in 1950s, 746

General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, 841 General Electric, 477 General Federation of Women’s Clubs, 483 General Managers Association, 535–536 General Motors

United Auto Workers and, 660 federal bailout of, 865

Geneva accords, 720 Gentlemen’s Agreement, 570 George, Henry, 487, 488(i) Georgia

Atlanta, race riot in 1906 in, 580 new state constitution of, 418

German Americans, prejudice against, World War I and, 599–600 German immigrants

from 1870 to 1910, 502(f) in late 19th century, 501(f)

Germany Berlin. See Berlin Berlin Wall and. See Berlin Wall boundaries of, after World War I, 602, 603(m) Dawes Plan and, 618 division of, after World War II, 706, 707(m) immigrants from, in late 19th century, 501 immigrants from, temperance movement and, 558 military expenditures, 2005, 853(f)

Paris peace conference and, 601–602 reunification of, 832 World War I and, 588–595, 594(m). See also World War I World War II and. See Germany in World War II; World War II

Germany in World War II aggression of, leading to war, 676–677, 678(m) Allied attacks against, 689–690 bombing raids of, 695–697 Holocaust and, 693(i), 694 onset of war and, 677–681 surrender of, 697

Geronimo (Apache shaman), 450–451 Ghost Dance religion, 451–452, 451(i) Gibbon, John, 447 GI Bill of Rights

economic effects of, 730 education and, 743 passage of, 693

Gideon v. Wainwright, 763 GI Forum, 734, 773 Gilbert Islands, World War II and, 698, 698(m) Gilded Age (1865–1900), 468–493

consolidation of businesses in, 477–479 definition of, 469 economic issues and party realignment in, 488–492 politics and culture in, 480–484 presidential politics in, 484–486 railroads and rise of new industries in, 470–477

urban industrialism in. See Urban industrialism West in. See West, in late 19th century

The Gilded Age (Twain and Warner), 465 Ginsberg, Allen, 748 Ginsburg, Ruth Bader, 756, 779, 837 Glasnost, 831 Glass-Steagall Banking Act, 650 Glenn, John H., 789 Globalization

Clinton administration and, 840–843 economic pain of, 869–870 economic strengths and weaknesses, 859–863 labor and production, 859–860

Global migration to urban areas, 499–504 Glover, Cathleen, 838–839 GMA. See General Managers Association God’s Trombones (Johnson), 625 Gold Diggers of 1933, 638 Goldman, Emma, 607 Goldmark, Josephine, 560 Gold standard

election of 1896 and, 541, 542 in late 19th century, 491, 492 Nixon administration and, 804

Goldwater, Barry M. conservatism and, 780 election of 1964 and, 760, 780 Reagan and, 819

Schlafly (Phyllis) and, 817, 818 Gompers, Samuel, 515, 606 Gonzales, Rodolfo (“Corky”), 773 González, Emma, 871 Good neighbor policy, 675–676 Google.com, 861 Gorbachev, Mikhail

resignation of, 832 Ronald Reagan and, 831

Gore, Albert, Jr., 836, 850, 851(m) Gorsuch, Neil, 875 Gospel of wealth, 478, 557 “The Gospel of Wealth” (Carnegie), 478 Gould, Jason (“Jay”), 470–472 Government

big-city bosses and, 520–521 of city and state, progressivism and, 561–562

Grady, Henry, 480 Graham, Billy, 746 Grange, 490, 530 Grange, Harold (“Red”), 626 Grant, Ulysses S.

election of 1868 and, 430, 430(m) election of 1872 and, 431 peace policy with Indians and, 445 presidency of, 430–431, 484–485

Great American Desert, 460 Great Britain. See also Britain

Five-Power Naval Treaty of 1922 and, 617 immigrants from, in late 19th century, 501, 501(f) nuclear test ban treaty and, 789 Paris peace conference and, 601–602 World War I and, 588–595, 594(m)

Great Depression, 635–640, 668(f). See also New Deal Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, 681 Great Fire in Chicago, 519 The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald), 633 Great Railroad Strike, 512–514, 513(m), 513 Great Recession, 856, 858–859 Great Sioux Uprising, 445 Great Society, 759–762, 781 Great Uprising, 513(m) Great War. See World War I Greece, prevention of communism in, 708 Greeley, Horace

election of 1872 and, 431 on urban living, 497

Green, William, 638 Greenback Labor Party, 491, 530 Green Berets, Kennedy administration and, 789 Greenfield Village, 615 Green Party, 851(m) Greensboro, North Carolina, civil rights activism in, 764 Grenada, Reagan administration and, 827 Grinnell, Julius S., 516 Griswold v. Connecticut, 763

Gross national product, from 1945 to 1970, 744, 745(f) Guadalcanal, battle of, 697, 698(m) Guam

U.S. acquisition of, 548–549, 550(m) World War II and, 688, 698(m)

Guantánamo detention base, 852, 856 Guatemala, 546

Eisenhower administration and, 720–721 good neighbor policy and, 676

Guerrilla warfare, in Vietnam War, 790, 793(i) Guiteau, Charles Julius, 485 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, 792, 799 Gulf War, 833–834 Gun control, militia movement in 1990s and, 837 Gun Belt, 741 Guthrie, Woody, 638, 664 Gutierez, Marivel, 860

Haiti Clinton administration and, 842 good neighbor policy and, 676 U.S. involvement in, from 1895 to 1941, 586, 587(m)

Half Breeds, 485 Halvorsen, Gail S., 710(i) Hamer, Fannie Lou, 766 Hampton Institute, 448 Hancock, Winfield Scott, 485 Hanna, Mark

election of 1896 and, 542 Roosevelt, T., and, 548, 562

Harding, Warren Gamaliel election of 1920 and, 610–611, 611(m) presidency of, 616–617

Harlan County coal strike, 639 Harlem, New York

in 1920s, 625 emergence of, 610

Harlem Renaissance, 625 Harper’s Weekly, 433(i) Harrington, Michael, 758 Harris, Frank, 496–497 Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, nuclear energy and, 809 Harrison, Benjamin

election of 1892 and, 541(m) Ghost Dance and, 452

presidency of, 489 Harrison, Carter, 516 Harvard Law Review, Barack Obama and, 864 Hate crimes, 852 Hawai’i

annexation of, 548 attempt to annex, 545 Pearl Harbor, Japanese attack on, 683

Hawley-Smoot tariff, 635 Hay, John, 547 Hayes, Rutherford B.

Great Railroad Strike and, 513, 514 presidency of, 485

Hayes, Rutherford B., election of 1876 and, 435, 435(m) Haymarket bombing, 515–517, 516 Haywood, William Dudley (“Big Bill”), 577 Head Start, 759 Health care

Carter administration and, 808 Johnson, L. B., administration and, 761 Obama administration and, 866 Trump administration and, 875

Hearst, William Randolph, 547 Helsinki accords, 798 Hemingway, Ernest, 627 Hendricks, Thomas A., 431 Henry Street settlement, 557 Hepburn Act of 1906, 565

Herbicides, used in Vietnam War, 791 Hernandez, Aileen, 778 Hernandez v. Texas, 743 Hezbollah, 827, 829 Higher education. See also Colleges and universities

in 1950s, 743–744 GI Bill of Rights, 743 for World War II veterans, 730

Higher Education Act, 761 Highway system, creation of, 736, 736(m) Hill, Anita, 835–836 Hillman, Sidney, 660 Hippies, 775 Hiroshima, Japan, atomic bomb and, 674, 699 Hispanic Americans. See Latinos Hispanic-American Alliance, 664(i) “History of the Standard Oil Company” (Tarbell), 475–476 Hitler, Adolf. See also World War II

anti-Semitism of, 676 attack on Poland by, 679 attack on Soviet Union by, 681 death of, 697 League of Nations and, 675 onset of World War II and, 678–679

Hoboes, Great Depression and, 636 Ho Chi Minh, 719–720, 790 Ho Chi Minh Trail, 790 Holding companies, Standard Oil Company as, 475–476

Hollywood, California in 1920s, 626 McCarthyism and, 713

Hollywood Ten, 713 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 608 Holocaust, 693(i), 694. See also World War II Home-front security, during World War II, 683–684 Homeless children, in late 19th century, 510 Homestead Act of 1862, 458 Homestead lockout, 533–534 Homesteading, in Midwest and West, 459–464 Homosexuals and homosexuality

gay marriage and, 839, 866 GI Bill of Rights and, 730 McCarthyism and, 713 in military, Clinton administration and, 837 in military, during World War II, 686 in military, Obama administration and, 866 movement in 21st century for, 838–839 movement in 1960s for, 775–776 movement in 1980s for, 826

Honduras, 546 Hoover, Herbert

Bonus Marchers and, 638–639 crash of 1929 and, 634 economics and, 632–634 election of 1928 and, 631–632, 632(m) election of 1932 and, 646, 647, 647(m)

Great Depression and, 634–635 individualism and, 634–635 on New Deal, 666 on prohibition, 623 as secretary of commerce, 616, 617 World War I and, 596

Hoover, J. Edgar, Emma Goldman and, 607 Hoovervilles, 637 Hopkins, Mark, 468–469 Horizontal integration, 475 House Foreign Affairs Committee, 704 Household servants. See Domestic workers House of Representatives. See also Congress

black congressmen in, 413 House Un-American Activities Committee, 713 Housing

Civil Rights Act of 1968 and, 767 segregation in, 624 in suburbs, in 1950s, 740–741

Housing Act of 1949, 732 Howard University, Washington, D.C., 774 How the Other Half Lives (Riis), 506–507 HUAC. See House Un-American Activities Committee Huerta, Dolores, 772–773, 773(i) Huerta, Victoriano, 586 Hughes, Charles Evans, 590, 617 Hughes, Langston, 625 Hull, Charles, 555

Hull House, 555–556 Human rights, in foreign countries, Carter administration and, 810 Humphrey, Hubert H., election of 1968 and, 796, 797, 797(m) Hundred Days of New Deal, 648 Hungary. See also Austria-Hungary

1956 revolt in, 719 creation of, 602, 603(m) immigration from, in late 19th century, 502, 502(f)

Hunger. See also Poverty and poor people during Great Depression, 636–637 New Deal and, 650–653 during World War II, 692

Huntington, Collis P., 468–469 Hurricane Katrina, 857–858, 858(i) Hurston, Zora Neale, 625 Hussein, Saddam

capture of, 855 Clinton administration and, 843 invasion of Kuwait by, 833–834 Iraq War and, 853

Hydroelectric power Roosevelt, T., administration and, 567 Taft administration and, 571 Tennessee Valley Authority and, 652(m), 652–653

Hydrogen bomb, development of, 709

ICBMs. See Intercontinental ballistic missiles ICC. See Interstate Commerce Commission Idaho Territory, government of, 464, 465 If Christ Came to Chicago (Stead), 557 Illegal immigrants, in 21st century, 848–849 Illinois

Chicago. See Chicago deindustrialization and, 861 Pullman, Pullman strike and, 534–536

Immigrants and immigration. See also specific countries; specific ethnic groups

in 21st century, 848–849, 860–861 in 1920s, 628–630 after 9/11 attacks, 851–852 border wall, 875 from Europe, 1870 to 1890, 501(f) from Europe, 1870 to 1910, 502(f) Ku Klux Klan against, in 1920s, 630 in late 19th century, 499–504, 500(m), 501(f) Obama administration and, 867 racial composition, 860–861 Trump administration and, 874 undocumented, 848–849 undocumented, rights for, 870 as workers on Brooklyn Bridge, 496–497

Immigration and Nationality Act, 761, 860 Impeachment

Andrew Johnson and, 423 Bill Clinton and, 839–840 Richard Nixon and, 806

Imperialism, debate over, 548–551 Imperial presidency, 806 Imports, 1870 to 1910, 544(f) Income, national, during Great Depression, 636, 636(f) Income, per capita, from 1945 to 1970, 744, 745(f) Independent

on Great Railroad Strike, 514 on middle class, 510 on working in textile mills, 509

Independent Party, 757(m) India

military expenditures, 2005, 853(f) nuclear weapons and, 832

Indiana deindustrialization, 861 Muncie, 1920s consumer culture of, 620

Indian Citizenship Act, 630 Indian Claims Commission, 737 Indian Relocation Program, 738 Indian Reorganization Act, 663 Indian Rights Association, 449 Indians. See Native Americans; specific tribes and persons Indonesia, Nike and, 860 Industrial core of world, in late 19th century, 498(m), 499 Industrialism, in West in late 19th century, 462–463

Industrial production, technological advances in, from 1945 to 1960, 739– 740 Industrial workers

labor wars in 1890s and, 532–534 in Southern Farmers’ Alliance, 530 women as, during World War II, 690–691

Industrial Workers of the World creation of, 577 shipyard worker strike and, 606 violence during Red scare and, 607

Industries, New Deal reform of, 654–655 INF agreement. See Intermediate-range nuclear forces agreement Infection. See Diseases Inflation

in 1970s, 803 Carter administration and, 808 after World War I, 606 after World War II, 729

Influenza, Spanish, 607 In His Steps (Sheldon), 557 Installment buying, 620–621, 633–634. See also Credit Intercontinental ballistic missiles, 722, 790 Intermediate-range nuclear forces agreement, 831 International commerce, Clinton administration and, 841 International Criminal Court, 853 International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union, 558–560 International relations. See Foreign affairs Internet, economy and, 861–863

Internment camps, for Japanese Americans, 684 Interracial marriage, Supreme Court and, 763 Interstate Commerce Act, 490 Interstate Commerce Commission, 490, 565 Interstate Highway and Defense System Act of 1956, 736(m), 736 Investment banks, separated from commercial banks, 650 IRA. See Indian Reorganization Act Iran

Bush, G. H. W., administration and, 833 Carter administration and, 810, 812–813 Eisenhower administration and, 721 Reagan administration and, 829 revolution in, energy crisis and, 809

Iran-Contra scandal, 829 Iran hostage crisis, 812(i), 813 Iran nuclear agreement, 868, 876 Iraq

Bush, G. H. W., administration and, 833–834 Clinton administration and, 843 Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and, 868 Obama administration and, 867 preemptive action against, 853–855 Reagan administration and, 829 violence between ethnic groups in, 855–856

Iraq War, 854–855, 854(m), 856 Irish immigrants

from 1870 to 1910, 502(f) discrimination against, 504

in late 19th century, 501, 501(f) in late 19th century, women as, 502 mining in West and, 455 temperance movement and, 558

Iron curtain, Winston Churchill on, 706 Iron Horse. See Transcontinental railroads Iron industry, in New South, 481 Iron puddlers, 508 ISIS. See Islamic State in Iraq and Syria Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, 868 Isolationism, during World War II, 675 Israel

attack on Egypt by, 721 Camp David accords and, 810 Clinton administration and, 843 Nixon administration and, 798–799 Persian Gulf War and, 834 Six-Day War and, 799 state of, creation of, 712 terrorism and, 827

Israeli-Palestinian conflict, 843 Italian immigrants

from 1870 to 1910, 502(f) discrimination against, 504 in late 19th century, 501(f), 502 temperance movement and, 558

Italy aggression of, through 1941, 678(m)

Allied attack on, 690 expansion of, prior to World War II, 677 Five-Power Naval Treaty of 1922 and, 617 immigrants from. See Italian immigrants military expenditures, 2005, 853(f) World War I and, 588 World War I and, boundaries after, 602, 603(m)

Iwo Jima, battle of, 698, 698(m) IWW. See Industrial Workers of the World

Jackson, Helen Hunt, 449 Jackson, Jesse, 835 Jackson, Mississippi, Freedom Rides and, 766 Jackson State College (Mississippi), student protests at, 799 Japan

aggression of, through 1941, 682(m) atomic bomb and, 699 attack on United States by, 681–683 battles in Pacific theater with, 688–689 defeat of, in World War II, 697–699, 698(m) economic aid to, after World War II, 712 expansion of, prior to World War II, 676 Five-Power Naval Treaty of 1922 and, 617 immigrants from. See Japanese immigrants military expenditures, 2005, 853(f) Nike and, 859 Paris peace conference and, 602 Roosevelt, T., administration and, 570 surrender of, 699 World War I and, 588 after World War I, 676

Japanese Americans internment of, 684, 684(m) lack of New Deal help for, 663

Japanese immigrants discrimination against, in late 19th century, 505 discrimination against, progressivism and, 579

Johnson-Reed Act and, 629 McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 and, 733 in West, in late 19th century, 456

Jazz, in Harlem, 625 Jewish immigrants

in 1920s, 629 discrimination against, 504 Ku Klux Klan against, in 1920s, 630 in late 19th century, 502 during World War II, 694

Jews and Judaism Hitler’s views on, 676 Holocaust and, 693(i), 694 migration of, to Palestine, 712 politics and, in late 19th century, 480

Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek) Communist overthrow of, 712 as leader of China, 697 Manchurian invasion and, 676

Jim Crow laws in New South, 481 progressivism and, 579 during Reconstruction, 427

Job Corps, 759 Jobs, Steven, 823 John Birch Society, 780 Johns, Barbara, 749 Johnson, Andrew

black codes and, 418–419 black rights and, 419–420 election of 1866 and, 422 expansion of federal authority and, 419–420 Fourteenth Amendment and, 421–422 impeachment and, 423 military rule in South and, 422–423 reconciliation program of, 417–420

Johnson, Dorothy, 691(i) Johnson, Hiram

anti-Asian prejudice and, 579 election of 1912 and, 573 progressivism and, 562

Johnson, James Weldon, 625 Johnson, Lyndon B.

antiwar movement and, 794–795 on Civil Rights Act of 1964, 780 civil rights and, 767, 773 election of 1960 and, 757, 757(m) election of 1964 and, 760, 792 fulfillment of Kennedy promises by, 759–760 Great Society and, 759–762 Kennedy assassination and, 759 presidency of, 815(t) Vietnam War and, 791–792, 795–796

Johnson, Thomas Loftin, 561–562 Johnson-Reed Act, 629 Jones, Beverly, 835

Jones, William (“Billy”), 510–511 Jordan

Clinton administration and, 843 Six-Day War and, 799

Joseph, Chief, 450 J. P. Morgan and Company, 575 The Jungle (Sinclair), 565–566 Jury selection, Civil Rights Act of 1968 and, 767

Kagan, Elena, 865 Kamikaze, in World War II, 698 Kansas

Nicodemus, as black settlement, 457 western movement into, 460

Kavanaugh, Brett, 875 Kearney, Denis, 458 Keating-Owen child labor law, 576 Kelley, Florence, 560 Kellogg, Frank, 618 Kellogg-Briand pact, 618 Kennan, George F., 706, 709 Kennedy, Jacqueline, 758(i) Kennedy, John F.

assassination of, 759 civil rights and, 767 Cuban missile crisis and, 790 domestic policies of, 757–759 election of 1960 and, 757, 757(m), 758(i) foreign policies of, 789–791 on using television to campaign, 747 Vietnam War and, 790–791

Kennedy, Joseph P., 650 Kennedy, Robert F.

assassination of, 796 Freedom Rides and, 766

Kent State University, Ohio, student protests at, 799

Kenya, U.S. Embassy in, Clinton administration and, 843 Kerouac, Jack, 748 Kerry, John, 855 Keynes, John Maynard, 637, 667 Keynesian economics, 667 Khomeini, Ruholla, Ayatollah, 813 Khrushchev, Nikita

Cuban missile crisis and, 790 kitchen debate with Nixon and, 727–728 nuclear arms race and, 722 on wars of national liberation, 789

Kim Il-sung, 715 Kim Jong Un, 876 King Martin Luther, Jr.

assassination of, 767, 771, 796 black power movement and, 771 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and, 766 Montgomery bus boycott and, 751–752 on Vietnam War, 794

Kinsey, Alfred, 748 Kiowa Indians

resistance to reservations by, 449 Treaty of Medicine Lodge and, 444

Kissinger, Henry A. Soviet Union and China and, 798 Vietnam War and, 799, 800

Knights of Labor, 517, 514–515 Korean War

desegregation of military and, 734 purpose and strategies of, 715(m), 715–718 Truman and, 733 U.S. troops and, 716(i)

Korematsu decision, 684 Kosovo, 843 Ku Klux Klan

in 1920s, 630 in Alabama, 413 formation of, 413, 425

Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, 431 Kuwait, Bush, G. H. W., administration and, 833–834 Kyoto Protocol, 857

Labor. See also Employment as farmers. See Farms and farming freedmen’s desire for land and, 415, 417 globalization and, 859–860 industrial wages, 1912-1920, 597(f) mechanization of. See Mechanization as sharecroppers. See Sharecroppers as tenant farmers. See Tenant farmers

Labor strikes. See Strikes Labor wars, in 1890s, 532–534 Labor code, in South during Reconstruction, 415 Labor unions

antitrust laws and, 490 Comstock Lode and, 456 decline in membership, 863 in late 19th century, 512–517 McCarthyism and, 714 membership in, during World War II, 686 New Deal and, 659–661 prosperity of 1950s and, 739–740 Reagan administration and, 821, 823 resistance to New Deal by leaders of, 655 Taft-Hartley Act and, 732 welfare capitalism and, 620 after World War II, 729

La Follette, Robert M. election of 1924 and, 617

progressivism and, 562 on Woodrow Wilson, 596

Laissez-faire, 479 Lakewood development, in California, 743 Lakota Sioux Indians

protests in 1960s on reservations of, 772 disease and, 441

Land allotment, for Indians, 449 Land grants, for railroads, 470 Landlords, sharecroppers and, 428 Landon, Alfred (“Alf”), 665 Landownership, desire for, in Midwest and West, 459–465 Land speculation, 460 Lange, Dorothea, 644 Lansing, Robert, 590, 602 Laos, Communist government in, 801 Las Manos Negras, 457 Latin America

Eisenhower administration and, 720–721 good neighbor policy and, 676 immigrants from, in 21st century. See Latinos Johnson, L. B., administration and, 791–792 Reagan administration and, 828(m) Roosevelt, T., administration and, 569 U.S. involvement in, from 1895 to 1941, 586–588, 587(m)

Latinos civil rights movement of, in 1960s, 772–774 in Clinton administration, 837

lack of New Deal help for, 663, 664(i) median income of, in 1999, 841 as percentage of population, 860 in West, in late 19th century, 457

Law and order grassroots movements and, 781 Nixon administration and, 804

Lazarus, Emma, 505 League of Nations

German and Japanese withdrawal from, 675 Wilson administration and, 601–604

League of United Latin-American Citizens 1960s and, 772 creation of, 610 school desegregation and, 734

League of Women Voters, 623 Leak, William Adam, 685(i) Lebanon, Reagan administration and, 827 Lehman Brothers, 859 Leisure, for poor and working classes, in late 19th century, 518 Lemlich, Clara, 559 Lend-Lease Act, 681 Lesbian rights movement. See also Homosexuals and Homosexuality

in 21st century, 838–839 in 1960s, 775–776 in 1980s, 826 gay marriage and, 839 Obama administration and, 866

Levi Strauss, 860 Levitt, William J., 740 Levittown, Long Island, New York, 740 Lewelling, Lorenzo, 541 Lewis, John, 766 Lewis, John L., 660 Lewis, Sinclair, 627 Leyte Gulf, battle of, 698 Liberalism

Carter administration and, 808–809 Johnson, L. B., administration and, 759–760 Reagan administration and, 823–826

Liberal Party, 431 Liberation movements, after World War II, 711 Liberation rhetoric, John Dulles and, 719 Libraries, in late 19th century, 520 Libya, 868 Lien merchants, 429 “Lift Every Voice and Sing” (Johnson), 625 Lili’uokalani, queen of Hawai’i, 545 Lin, Maya, 802 Lincoln, Abraham, on Reconstruction in South, 414–415 Lindbergh, Charles, 626 Lippmann, Walter, 561 Literacy, freedmen and, 417 Little Big Horn, battle of, 447 Little Crow (Dakota Sioux chief), 445 Little Rock, Arkansas, school desegregation in, 750

Little Rock Nine, 750 Live-in domestic workers. See Domestic workers Lloyd, Henry Demarest, 485 Lloyd George, David, 604(i) Locke, Alain, 625 Lodge, Henry Cabot, 506, 605, 617 The Lonely Crowd (Riesman), 747 Long, Huey, 658 Long Walk, of Cherokee Indians, 443 Los Alamos, New Mexico, atomic bomb and, 699 Louisiana

Colfax, massacre in, 433–434 Farmers’ Alliance in, 530

Love, Nat, 461 Love Canal, Niagara Falls, New York, 809–810 Loving v. Virginia, 763 Loyalty review boards, McCarthyism and, 713 Lozen (female Apache warrior), 450 Luftwaffe (German air force), 680, 695. See also Germany in World War II LULAC. See League of United Latin-American Citizens Lusitania (ship), 590 Lux, Charles, 463 Lynching

federal anti-lynching law and, 624 New Deal legislation and, 669 Wells (Ida B.) and, 482–483

MacArthur, Douglas Korean War and, 716–717 World War II and, 688–689

MacKenzie, Kathleen, 852 Macy’s, 512 MAD. See Mutually assured destruction Mahan, Alfred Thayer, 545 Maine (ship), sinking of, 548 Main Street (Lewis), 627 Malcolm X, 769 Management jobs, in late 19th century, 510–511 Manchuria, Japanese invasion of, 676 Mandates, after World War I, 602 Mandela, Nelson, 832 Manhattan Project, 699 Manifest destiny, Native Americans and, 441 Mansfield, Mike, 761 Manufacturing

automation and, 863 deindustrialization, 861–863 global competition, 823 income, 1920-1940, 636(f)

Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung), 712, 798 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, 766 March for Our Lives, 871 Marne River, battle at, 594(m), 595 Marriage. See also Women entries

effect of Great Depression on, 637 interracial, Supreme Court and, 763 mixed cultures and, 860

Married women. See also Women entries in workforce, in late 19th century, 510 in workforce, percentage of, in 1990, 823 World War II war effort and, 691

Marshall, George C. communism and, 713 Marshall Plan and, 708

Marshall, Thurgood Brown v. Board of Education and, 749, 756 school desegregation and, 734

Marshall Islands, World War II and, 698, 698(m) Marshall Field, 512 Marshall Plan, 708–709, 710 Martin, Trayvon, 870 Martin, Joseph W., Jr., 729 Masculinity, in 1950s, 748 Massachusetts

Boston. See Boston Mass production, during 1920s, 615, 619 Mass shootings, 871 Materialism, in 1920s, 620. See also Consumption Mathews, Mary McNair, 456 Mazo, Ike, 823 McCain, John, 864 McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, 733

McCarthy, Eugene, 796 McCarthy, Joseph R., on communism, 713, 714 McCarthyism, 712–714 McClure’s Magazine, on Standard Oil Company, 476 McCormick, Cyrus, Jr., 516 McCormick reaper works strike, 515–516 McDonald’s, strikes for higher minimum wage, 869 McDonough, Clarence, 805 McGovern, George S., 805 McKay, Claude, 625 McKinley, William

assassination of, 562 Cuba and, 549 election of 1896 and, 541–543, 543(m) Spanish-American War and, 548 tariffs and, 489

McNamara, Robert, 795 Meat Inspection Act, 566 Mechanization

in factories, 508–510 of farm machinery during New Deal, 739 of farm machinery in late 19th century, 462–463

Medicaid, creation of, 761 Medicare, creation of, 761 Medicine Lodge, treaty of, 444 Mellon, Andrew, 616, 617 Mencken, H. L., 631 Mendez v. Westminster, 734

Meritor v. Vinson, 825–826 Mescalero Apache Agency, 448 Methodists and Methodist Church

politics and, in late 19th century, 480 black churches of, 417

#MeToo movement, 871 Meuse-Argonne region, battle of, 585 Meuse River, battle at, 594(m), 595 Mexican Americans. See also Latinos; Mexican immigrants

during 1950s, 741–743 attitude toward Mexican immigrants during World War I and, 610 civil rights of, after World War II, 734 Great Depression and, 637 in military during World War II, 685

Mexican immigrants. See also Mexican Americans in 1920s, 630 during and after World War I, 610

Mexico Taft administration and, 572 U.S. involvement in, 1895-1941, 586–588, 587(m) World War I and, 591

MIA. See Montgomery Improvement Association Michigan, deindustrialization and, 861 Middle Way, 735–737 Middle East. See also individual countries

from 1948 to 1989, 811(m) from 1989 to 2018, 854(m) Carter administration and, 810

Eisenhower administration and, 721–722 Middletown (Lynd and Lynd), 620 Midway, battle of, 688–689, 698(m) Midwest. See also specific states

homesteading in, 459–464 Migrant farmworkers

in 1930s, 643–644, 656–657 Fair Labor Standards Act and, 669 lack of New Deal help for, 661, 664(i) Social Security and, 661 in West, in late 19th century, 462

Migrant Mother (Lange), 644 Miles, Dora, 691(i) Miles, Nelson, 450–451 Militancy, working-class, during Great Depression, 638–640 Military

desegregation of, 734 Pullman Strike and, 536 women in. See Women in military

Military buildup in 21st century, 843 in 1950s, 741 Carter administration and, 812–813 during Cold War, 709 international comparison, 2005, 853(f) Kennedy administration and, 790 Reagan administration and, 826–829

Military draft

abandonment of, 801 for World War I, 592 for World War II, 684–685

Military-industrial complex, 723 Military Reconstruction Act, 422–423 Military supplies and equipment during wartime, production of, by United States, for World War II, 687(f) Militia movement, Clinton administration and, 837 Miller, Henry, 463 Miller & Lux, 463–464 Millionaires. See Wealth and wealthy people Milosevic, Slobodan, 842–843 Miners. See Mines and mining; specific ores Mines and mining

for coal. See Coal miners and mining for silver. See Silver mines and mining in West, 452–458, 453(m) technology in, 456

Miniconjou Sioux, 452 Minimum wage

in 21st century, 869 laws for, in 1920s, 617 New Deal setting of, 669

Minow, Newton, 747 Miranda v. Arizona, 763 Miss America beauty pageant, women’s liberation and, 778 Mississippi

black codes of, 418–419

new state constitution of, 418 racism against African Americans in, 579

Mississippi Freedom Summer Project, 766 Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, 766 Mitchell, George, 772 Mob rule. See Civil disobedience and disorder Model T, 615 Modern Republicanism, Eisenhower and, 736 Mondale, Walter F., 807, 822 Money, silver and paper, in late 19th century, 491 Monopolies, Rockefeller and, 475–476 Monroe Doctrine

Cleveland administration and, 546–547 Roosevelt, T., administration and, 567 Spanish-American War and, 547 Wilson administration and, 586

Montana Territory, government of, 464 Montgomery, Alabama

civil rights protests in, 750–752 Freedom Rides and, 766

Montgomery bus boycott, 751–752 Montgomery Improvement Association, 750–751 Moody, Anne, 765(i) Morality and moral reform, Christian Right and. See Christian Right Moral Majority, 820 Morgan, Anne, 559 Morgan, J. P.

finance capitalism and, 477

gold standard and, 492 panic of 1907 and, 566 Roosevelt, T., administration and, 563–564 Wilson administration and, 575

Mormons, in West, in late 19th century, 458 Morrow, E. Frederick, 750 Morse, Samuel F. B., 473 Mortgage loans, for farmers, from New Deal, 653 Mortgage crisis, 856, 858–859 Moss, Annie Lee, 714 Mossadegh, Mohammed, 721 Moudy, Ross, 456 Movies

in 1920s, 626 during Great Depression, 637–638

Ms.: The New Magazine for Women, feminism and, 778 Muckraking, 565 Mugwumps, 485, 486 Muir, John, 566 Muller v. Oregon, 560 Mumford, Lewis, 741 Muncie, Indiana, 1920s consumer culture of, 620 Munn v. Illinois, 490 Murray, Pauli, 755–756, 777, 779 Music

in 1950s, 748 in 1960s, 775

Muslims, arrest of, after 9/11 attacks, 852

Mussolini, Benito, 690 Mutually assured destruction, 719 My Lai, Vietnam, massacre at, 800

NAACP. See National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Nader, Ralph, 851(m) NAFTA. See North American Free Trade Agreement Nagasaki, Japan, atomic bomb and, 674, 699 Nanjing (Nanking), Japanese invasion of, 677 NASA. See National Aeronautics and Space Administration Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 721–722 National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 722 National American Woman Suffrage Association, 538–539, 598 National Arts and Humanities Act of 1965, 761 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

Brown v. Board of Education and, 749 bus segregation and, 750 creation of, 581 Double V campaign and, 692 federal anti-lynching law and, 624 membership of, after World War II, 733 Truman and, 734 Wells (Ida B.) and, 482(i)

National Association of Evangelicals, 820(i) National Association of Manufacturers, 655, 661 National banks, Wilson administration and, 575 National Conference of Catholic Bishops, on nuclear disarmament, 827 National Consumers League, 560 National defense. See Military entries National Defense Education Act, 722 National Energy Act of 1978, 809

National Farmers’ Holiday Association, 638 National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, 775 National government. See Government National Guard

Boston police strike and, 606 civil rights march from Selma, Alabama, and, 766 Homestead lockout and, 533, 534 Kent State University and, 799 school desegregation and, 750

National health insurance. See Health care National highway system, creation of, 736, 736(m) National Housing Act, 667, 761 National Industrial Recovery Act, 654 National Labor Relations Act, 660 National Liberation Front, 792 National Miners Union, 639 National Organization for Women

compared to radical feminists, 778 creation of, 756, 777

National parks, Roosevelt, T., administration and, 568(m) National Recovery Administration, 654, 655 National Recovery Administration codes, 654 National Security Act of 1947, 709 National Security Agency, 852, 868 National Security Council, 709, 718, 829 National Union for Social Justice, 657 National Union Party, 422 National War Labor Policies Board, 596–597

National Welfare Rights Organization, 760 National Woman’s Party

creation of, 579 equal rights and, 623

National Woman Suffrage Association, 483, 538 Native Americans. See also Assimilation of Native Americans; specific tribes and persons

Comstock Lode and, 455 effect of dams on, 741 effect of diseases on. See Diseases Eisenhower administration and, 737–738 lack of New Deal help for, 663 loss of buffalo and, 444 loss of lands, 1850-1890, 442(m) in military during World War II, 685 Nixon administration and, 782 protests of, in 1960s, 771–772 resistance to reservations by, 449–452 schools for children of, 447–448 war with, in West, in late 19th century, 445 in West, reservations and, 441–444 western movement of settlers and, 440

Nativism, temperance movement and, 558 NATO. See North Atlantic Treaty Organization Natural resources, Civilian Conservation Corps and, 651–652 Navajo Indians, 443 Navy (U.S.)

Five-Power Naval Treaty of 1922 and, 617–618

Spanish-American War and, 548 NAWSA. See National American Woman Suffrage Association Nazi Germany. See Germany Nazi Party, anti-Semitism of, 676 Nazi-Soviet treaty of nonaggression, 679 NCL. See National Consumers League Nebraska, western movement into, 460 Nelson, Knute, 551 Netherlands, immigration from, in late 19th century, 501(f) Neutrality, American, in World War I, 588–591 Neutrality Acts of 1935 and 1937, 676–677, 679–680 Nevada, statehood of, 464. See also Nevada Territory Nevada Territory

black settlements in, 457 Comstock Lode in, 452–456 government of, 464 Virginia City, mining community of, 453(m), 455, 456

#NeverAgain movement, 871 Newark, New Jersey, race riots in, 769, 770(m) New Christian Right, Reagan administration and, 820(i), 820–821 New Deal, 643–670

challenges to, 655–658 election of Roosevelt, F., and, 645–647 final reforms of, 664–669 launching of, 648–655 welfare state and, 658–664

New Deal coalition, 647, 648(m) New Dealers, 649. See also New Deal

New Era, 614–640 business growth and consumer culture of, 616–621 crash of 1929 in, 632–635 life during Great Depression and, 635–640 Roaring Twenties of, 621–627 rural resistance to change in, 627–632

New Freedom, 574, 576 New Guinea, World War II and, 698, 698(m) New Hampshire, Seabrook, nuclear energy and, 809 New immigration, 501–502 New Jersey, Newark, race riots in, 769, 770(m) New Left, 774, 777–778 New Look, 719 New Mexico. See also New Mexico Territory

Los Alamos, atomic bomb and, 699 New Mexico Territory

Bosque Redondo Reservation in, 443 government of, 464 Hispanics in, in late 19th century, 457

New Nationalism, 574 “New Negroes”, emergence of, in 1920s, 624–625 New Orleans, Louisiana, Hurricane Katrina and, 857–858, 858(i) New Right, 819–821 Newsboys, in late 19th century, 510 New South, in late 19th century, 480–481 Newton, Huey P., 769 New woman, in 1920s, 623–624 New world order, 832, 842–843

New York (State) Margaret Sanger and, 577–578 New York City. See New York City

New York City capitalist class in, 521–522 creation of Central Park in, 519 gay activism in 1960s in, 775 immigrant population of, in 1900, 500(m), 503 immigration through, 505 terrorist attacks on World Trade Center in, 850–851 William Tweed and, 520–521

New York Journal, on Spanish-American War, 547 New York Stock Exchange, railroad growth and, 472 New York Times

on corruption of senators, 565 on Great Railroad Strike, 514 on Indian policy, 449 Pentagon Papers and, 800 on property rights, 423

New York World on Spanish-American War, 547 on Vanderbilts, 507

Nez Percé war, 450 Ngo Dinh Diem, 790, 791 Niagara movement, 580–581 Nicaragua

Carter administration and, 810 good neighbor policy and, 676

Reagan administration and, 829 Taft administration and, 572 U.S. involvement in, from 1895 to 1941, 586, 587(m)

Nicholas II, czar of Russia, 592 Nichols, H. D., 523(i) Nicodemus, Kansas, as black settlement, 457 Night riders, 433 Nike, outsourcing of jobs by, 842, 859–860 Nimitz, Chester W., 688 9/11 attacks, 850–851 Nineteenth Amendment, 623, 599 NIRA. See National Industrial Recovery Act Nixon, E. D., 750–751 Nixon, Isaac, 733 Nixon, Richard M.

détente and, 797–798 election of 1952 and, 717 election of 1960 and, 757, 757(m) election of 1968 and, 781–782, 796–797, 797(m) election of 1972 and, 805 environmentalism and, 776 foreign policies of, 797–802 impeachment and, 806 kitchen debate with Khrushchev and, 727–728 peace accords and, 806 presidency of, 815–816(t) resignation of, 806 school desegregation and, 804–805

Vietnam War and, 799–800 Watergate and, 806

Nobel Peace Prize for Roosevelt, T., 570 for Wilson, 605 for Obama, 867

Noble, Elaine, 775 Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor, 514–515 No Child Left Behind Act, 857 Nonprofit organizations, Social Security and, 661 Nonviolence

King Jr. and, 771 Malcolm X and, 769 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and, 765

Noriega, Manuel, 833 Normandy, France, D Day in, 696(m) North, migration of African Americans to, after World War I, 608–610, 609(i) North Africa, World War II and, 689, 696(m) North American Free Trade Agreement, 841, 860 North Atlantic Treaty Organization

creation of, 707(m), 710 expansion of, 832 growth of, in 1990s, 832 war in Yugoslavia and, 843

North Carolina, Greensboro, civil rights activism in, 764 Northern Alliance, 851 Northern Securities Company, 563–564

North Korea Communism in, in 1980s, 832 Korean War and, 714–718, 715(m) Trump administration and, 876

North Vietnam creation of, 720 Vietnam War and. See Vietnam War

Northwestern Farmers’ Alliance, 530 Norway, immigration from, in late 19th century, 501(f) NOW. See National Organization for Women NRA. See National Recovery Administration NSC. See National Security Council NSC 68, 718 Nuclear arms race

from 1950s to 1980s, 709 Eisenhower administration and, 719, 722–723, 723(i) Johnson, L. B., administration and, 791 Reagan administration and, 827, 831 Soviet espionage and, 713 Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty and, 798 Strategic Arms Reduction Talks and, 832

Nuclear energy Carter administration and, 809 Eisenhower administration and, 737 environmental movement against, 809–810

Nuclear freeze, 827 Nuclear test ban treaty, 790, 832 NWSA. See National Woman Suffrage Association

Nye, Gerald, 676

Oahu, Pearl Harbor, Japanese attack on, 683 OAS. See Organization of American States Obama, Barack Hussein

domestic policies of, 863–868, 865–867 economic crisis and, 865 election of 2008 and, 864, 864(i), 871 election of 2012 and, 866 foreign policies of, 867–868 Great Recession and, 856 Guantánamo detention base and, 867 health care and, 866 presidency of, 879–880(t) war on terror and, 867–868

Obergefell v. Hodges, 866 Occupational Safety and Health Act, 776 Occupy Wall Street, 869, 871 O’Connor, Sandra Day, 825 O’Dell, Jack, 714 O’Donnell, Hugh, 533–534 Office work, for women in late 19th century, 511–512 Ohio

Cleveland. See Cleveland, Ohio deindustrialization, 861

Oil 1973 crisis of, 804, 803(i) energy crisis of 1979 and, 809–810, 811(m) refineries for, Rockefeller and, 475–476

Okies, 657 Okinawa, battle of, 698, 698(m) Oklahoma City, bombing of federal building in, 837 Oklahoma Tenant Farmers’ Union, 653 Oklahoma Territory, western movement into, 461 Old Age Revolving Pension, 658 Old immigration, 501–502 Olesdater, Beret, 460(i) Olmsted, Frederick Law, 519, 522 Olney, Richard B., 536 On the Origin of Species (Darwin), 479 Open Door policy

in late 19th century, 546, 547 Roosevelt, T., administration and, 569–570

Open range, in Texas, end of, 461 Operation Wetback, 743 Oppenheimer, J. Robert, 699 The Organization Man (Whyte Jr.), 747 Organization of American States, 791, 833 Organized crime, prohibition and, 622 Organized Trades and Labor Unions, 515 Orpen, William, 604(i) Orphans, in late 19th century, 510 OSHA. See Occupational Safety and Health Act O’Sullivan, Mary Kenney, 558 Oswald, Lee Harvey, 759 The Other America (Harrington), 758 Outing system, 448

Outsourcing, 859–860 Owens, Florence, 643–644

P-51 Mustang fighters, 695 Pacific Ocean, World War II battles in, 688–689, 698(m) Pacific Railroad Act, 468 PACs. See Political action committees Pago Pago, Open Door policy and, 546 Pahlavi, Mohammad Reza, 721 Paiute Indians, 451, 455 Pakistan

Carter administration and, 812 nuclear weapons and, 832

Palestine Clinton administration and, 843 Jewish migration to, after World War II, 712 terrorism and, 827

Palestine Liberation Organization, 827, 843 Palin, Sarah, 864 Palmer, A. Mitchell, 607 Palo Duro Canyon, battle of, 445 Panama

Bush, G. H. W., administration and, 832–833 Carter administration and, 810

Panama Canal, building of, 567, 570(m) Panama Canal treaty, 810 Panama Canal zone

riots in, 791 U.S. involvement in, from 1895 to 1941, 587(m)

Panic of 1873, 512

Panic of 1907, 566 Paper currency, in late 19th century, 491 Parham, Adam, 685(i) Paris, France

liberation of, 696, 696(m) peace conference at, after World War I, 601–604

Paris climate agreement, 876 Parker, Alton B., 564 Parkland, Florida, school shooting in, 871 Parks

Civilian Conservation Corps and, 651 national, Roosevelt, T., administration and, 568(m) urban, creation of, 519

Parks, Rosa, 750 Parsons, Albert, 514, 515, 516 Parsons, Lucy, 516 Party system, loyalty to, in late 19th century, 480 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, 866, 875 Patriotism, World War I and, 599–600 Patrons of Husbandry, 490 Patton, George, 686, 689 Paul, Alice, 578–579, 598 Pawnee Indians, 452 Payne-Aldrich bill, 571 PCSW. See President’s Commission on the Status of Women Peace accords, Vietnam War and, 800–801 Peace movement, Vietnam War and. See Antiwar movement against Vietnam War

Peace Corps, 758, 789 Peacetime draft, during Cold War, 709 Peacetime economy, reconverting to, 729–731 Pearl Harbor, Hawai’i, Japanese attack on, 683 Pendleton Civil Service Act, 486 Pennsylvania

anthracite coal strike in, 564 deindustrialization, 861 Harrisburg, nuclear energy and, 809 Homestead lockout and, 532–534 Philadelphia, immigrant population of, in 1900, 503

Pennsylvania Railroad, 472, 473, 474 Penny sales, 638 Pensions, for veterans during Great Depression, 638 Pentagon, terrorist attacks on, 850–851 Pentagon Papers, 800 People’s Party

beginning of, 528 election of 1896 and, 541–543 platform of, 531–532 rise of, 541

People’s Republic of China Carter administration and, 812 communism in, in 1980s, 832 creation of, 712 Korean War and, 716 Nixon administration and, 798

People’s Republic of North Korea. See North Korea

Per capita income, from 1945 to 1970, 744, 745(f) Perot, H. Ross, 839

election of 1992 and, 836(m) Pershing, John (“Black Jack”)

Mexico and, 588 World War I and, 592, 593–594

Persian Gulf War, 833–834, 854(m) Peterson, Esther, 777 Petroleum industry, Rockefeller and, 475–476 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, immigrant population of, in 1900, 503 Philanthropy, Carnegie and, 479 Philippines

human rights in, Carter administration and, 810 Spanish-American War and, 548, 549(m), 547 U.S. acquisition of, 548–549, 550(m) World War II and, 688, 698, 698(m)

Phillips, Wendell, 414, 424 The Phyllis Schlafly Report, 818, 820 Pinchot, Gifford

on conservation, 566, 567 on Taft, 571

Pine Ridge Reservation, 446, 452 Pinkerton National Detective Agency, 532–533, 516 Pinochet, Augusto, 798 Pittsburgh Courier, on Double V campaign, 692 Plains Indians

buffalo and, 444 treaty of 1851 with, 441

Planters Andrew Johnson on, 418 new labor system and, 415

Platt Amendment, 549 Playboy magazine, start of, 748 Plenty Coups (Crow chief), 449 Plessy v. Ferguson, 579, 749 Plutocracy, 507–508 Poison gas, World War I and, 585 Poland

Auschwitz, Holocaust and, 694 boundaries of, after World War I, 602, 603(m) creation of Communist government in, 706 immigrants from, discrimination against, 504 immigrants from, in late 19th century, 502, 502(f) World War II and, 679

Polaris submarines, 722 Police

race riots in 1960s and, 769, 770(m) strike in 1919 of, 606

Police shootings, 870 Polio vaccine, 736, 735(i) Political action committees, 806 Political corruption, during late 19th century, 484–485 Politics

culture and, in late 19th century, 480–484 polarization, in 1990s, 834–840 race and gender and, in late 19th century, 481–483

Pollock, Jackson, 748 Polygamy, Mormons and, 458 Poor people. See Poverty and poor people Population, growth of, in 1950s, 746 Populism, in 21st century, 874–875 Populist Party. See People’s Party Port Huron Statement, 774 Portugal, immigration from, in late 19th century, 501(f) Post-traumatic stress disorder, in Vietnam veterans, 802 Postwar culture and politics, 727–752

civil rights movement, 749–752 economic growth, 744–748 Eisenhower administration and, 735–738 prosperity of 1950s and, 738–744 Truman administration and, 728–734

Poverty and poor people in 1920s, 633–634 from 1960 to 1974, 763(f) in 2015, 862(m) Clinton administration and, 839 Fair Labor Standards Act and, 669 Great Society and, 762 Henry George on, 488(i) Johnson, L. B., administration and, 759–760 Kennedy administration and, 758 National Housing Act and, 667 New Deal programs for, 650–653 New York City immigrants and, 506–507

Reagan administration and, 823 Roosevelt, F., administration and, 647 in rural areas, 739 social Darwinism and, 479

Powderly, Terence V., 506, 515, 528 Powell, Colin

on the Cold War, 831 on end of Cold War, 832

Prager, Robert, 600 Prayer, in public schools, 764 PRC. See People’s Republic of China Preemption, Bush, G. W., administration and, 853–855 Presbyterians and Presbyterianism, politics and, in late 19th century, 480 President’s Commission on the Status of Women, 777 President’s Committee on Civil Rights, 734 Presley, Elvis, 748 Private welfare state, 740 Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction, 414 Production

global comparison of, 1938, 668(f) globalization and, 859–860 New Deal and, 649 for World War II, 686, 687(f)

Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, 821 Progress and Poverty (George), 487, 488(i) Progressive Party

creation of, 573 election of 1948 and, 732, 732(m)

woman suffrage and, 598 Progressivism, 555–581. See also specific tribes and persons

in 21st century, 869–870 grassroots beginnings of, 557–561 limits of, 577–581 Roosevelt, T., administration and, 562–572 Taft administration and, 570–572 theory and practice of, 561–562 Wilson administration and, 572–576 during World War I, 596–597

Prohibition in 1920s, 622–623 end of, 623 progressivism and, 558 World War I and, 597

Prohibition Party, 484 Promontory Point, Utah, transcontinental railroads and, 472 Propaganda, from United States, during Cold War, 711 Property taxes, grassroots protests against, 808 Proposition 187, 861 Prostitution, social purity movement and, 557 Protective legislation, progressivism and, 560 Protestants and Protestantism, politics and, in late 19th century, 480 Provisional Revolutionary Government, 800 The Public Enemy, 638 Public health nursing, progressivism and, 557 Public libraries, in late 19th century, 520 Public Opinion, on immigrants, 506

Public schools. See also Education Bibles and prayer in, 764 desegregation of. See School desegregation Education Amendments Act and, 779 for Indian children, 447–448 in late 19th century, 520 No Child Left Behind Act and, 857 segregation of Mexican Americans in, 734 in South during Reconstruction, 426

Public works projects depression of 1893 and, 539–540 Works Progress Administration and, 659

Puerto Rican Americans. See Latinos Puerto Rico

Trump administration and, 874 U.S. acquisition of, 548–549, 550(m) U.S. involvement in, from 1895 to 1941, 587(m)

Pulitzer, Joseph, 547 Pullman, George M., 535–536 Pullman boycott, 535–536 Pullman strike, 534–536 Pure Food and Drug Act, 566 Pushcart peddlers, 503(i), 504 Putin, Vladimir, 876

Al Qaeda, 843, 851, 853

Race riots. See also Civil disobedience and disorder in 1960s, 769, 770(m) in Atlanta in 1906, 580 after World War I, 609–610 during World War II, 692

Racial and ethnic discrimination against African Americans, after Civil War, 427, 505 against African Americans, after World War II, 730–731 against African Americans, in 1940s, 692 against African Americans, in New South, 481–482 against African Americans, progressivism and, 579 against Asian immigrants, 505, 579 against Californios, 457 against Chinese immigrants, 458, 505, 579 Fourteenth Amendment and, 422 against German Americans, World War I and, 599–600 against Irish immigrants, 504 among immigrant groups, in late 19th century, 540–546 against Italian immigrants, 504 against Japanese immigrants, 505, 579 against Jews. See Anti-Semitism Jim Crow laws and. See Jim Crow laws against Mexican Americans, 734 New Deal reforms for. See New Deal against non-Caucasians, in suburbs in 1950s, 740 against Polish immigrants, 504 school desegregation and. See School desegregation

segregation and. See Segregation social segregation as, in late 19th century, 506–508

Radar detectors, World War II and, 689, 680 Radical feminists, 778 Radicals within Republican Party, Reconstruction and, 422–423 Radio

in 1920s, 626 Franklin Roosevelt’s fireside chats on, 650

Railroad Administration, for World War I, 596 Railroads

buffalo and, 444 expansion of, 1870 to 1890, 471(m) federal regulation of, 490 high freight rates for farmers from, 529–530 land grants for, sale of, 460 Morgan and, 478 Pullman strike and, 534–536 rise of new industries and, 470–477 segregation and, 579 in the South, in late 19th century, 481 in West, in late 19th century, 454(m)

Railroad workers, Great Railroad Strike and, 512–514, 513(m) Rainbow Coalition, 835 Ranching, cattle, in Texas, barbed wire fencing and, 461 Randolph, A. Philip, 692, 766 Rape of Nanking, 677 Rapier, James T., 412–413 Rapier, John, 412

La Raza Unida, 774 Reading and writing, freedmen and, 417 Readjusters, 482 Reagan, Ronald

as California governor, 780 conservatism and, 818–823 election of 1980 and, 819 election of 1984 and, 822 flourishing economy and, 822–823 free enterprise and, 821–822 New Christian Right and, 820(i), 820–821 on Panama Canal, 810 Schlafly (Phyllis) and, 818

Recession of 1937 to 1938, 667 Recession of 1957, 737 Recession of 1982, 822 Recession of 2007 to 2009, 856, 858–859 Reconstruction, 412–436

during Civil War, 414–417 collapse of, 430–435, 434(m) by Congress, 420–424 by presidents, 417–420 struggle in South during, 424–429

Reconstruction Finance Corporation, 635 Reconstruction Acts of 1867, 423 Red Army, World War II and, 694–695, 696, 697. See also Soviet Union Red-baiting, 712–714 Redbook, 746

Red Cloud (Sioux chief), 446–447 Redeemers, 432 Red power, 771 Red scare

McCarthyism and, 712–714 World War I and, 606–608

Red Stockings, 518 Reform Darwinism, 561 Reform Party, 851(m) Reformers, progressivism and. See Progressivism Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 805 Religion. See also specific religions or denominations

in 1950s, 746 discrimination and, in late 19th century, 504 freedmen and, 417 politics and, in late 19th century, 480 social gospel and, 557–558 social purity movement and, 557

Religious organizations, Social Security and, 661 Relocation of Native Americans, beginning in 1948, 738 Remington, Frederic, 547 Republic (Chester), 523(i) Republicans and Republican Party. See also Elections; specific presidents

African Americans as, violence against, 433–434 black codes and, 419–420 Eisenhower’s modern Republicanism and, 736 electoral shift, 1928 to 1932, 648(m) end of Reconstruction and, 431, 434(m)

Fair Deal and, 732–733 Ku Klux Klan and, 425 loyalty to, in late 19th century, 480 Reagan administration and, 819–820 during Reconstruction, 426–427 resistance to New Deal by, 655, 669 Roosevelt, T., administration and, 566 Schlafly (Phyllis) and, 817–818 in South, after Reconstruction, 433(i) in South, assault on, 432–434 in South, during Reconstruction, 425–426 in South, in late 20th century, 804 Taft administration and, 571 tariff reform and, 488–489 transcontinental railroad and, 473 Versailles treaty and, 604–605 woman suffrage and, 598 World War I and, 600

Republic Steel, 661 Reservations

Indian resistance to, 449–452 land allotment on, 449 in West in late 19th century, 442(m), 441–444

Reserve Officers Training Corps, 794 Reservoirs, building of, in 1950s, 741 Resignation, of Richard Nixon, 806 Retirement equity legislation, 825 Reuther, Walter, 740

Reverse discrimination, 824–825 RFC. See Reconstruction Finance Corporation Rhee, Syngman, 715 Rhineland, German invasion of, 677 Rhodesia, Carter administration and, 810 Riesman, David, 747 Right-to-life activism, 779 Right-wing populism, 874–875 Riis, Jacob, on poverty, 506–507, 510 Roaring Twenties, 621–627 Roberts, John, 857 Robertson, Pat, 838 Robinson, Cleveland, 824 Robinson, Jackie, 733, 750 Robinson, Jo Ann, 750–751 Rock and roll music, 748, 775 Rockefeller, John D.

exports and, 545 Standard Oil Company and, 475–476

Rockefeller, John D., Jr., 478–479 Rockne, Knute, 626 Roebling, Emily Warren, John, and Washington, 497 Roe v. Wade, 779, 825 Romania, boundaries of, after World War I, 602, 603(m) Rommel, Erwin, 689 Romney, Mitt, 866 Roosevelt, Eleanor

marriage of, 645

Mary McLeod Bethune and, 663 New Deal and, 649 Pauli Murray and, 756 President’s Commission on the Status of Women and, 777 women in Civilian Conservation Corps and, 651

Roosevelt, Franklin Delano attack against Nazis in Africa and, 689 attack on Italy and, 690 death of, 697 early life of, 645–646 election of 1920 and, 610, 611(m) election of 1932 and, 646(i), 646–647, 647(m) election of 1936 and, 665 election of 1940 and, 680 election of 1944 and, 693–694 isolationism during World War II and, 675 New Deal of. See New Deal World War II and. See World War II Yalta Conference and, 697

Roosevelt, Theodore assassination of McKinley and, 562 conservation and, 566–567 election of 1904 and, 564–565 election of 1912 and, 572–575, 574(m) foreign policies of, 567–570 Geronimo and, 451 progressivism and, 581 as reformer, 565–566

Roosevelt, F., and, 645 Spanish-American War and, 548 Square Deal and, 563–565 Taft and, 571–572 Washington (Booker T.) and, 580(i) on World War I peace movement, 590

Roosevelt Corollary, 569 Root-Takahira agreement, 570 Rosebud, Battle of, 447 Rosenberg, Ethel and Julius, 713 Rosie the Riveter, 691, 691(i) Rough Riders, 548 Roughing It (Twain), 465 Royal Air Force, in World War II, 679 Rural areas

Great Depression and, 637 loss of population in, 1920-1930, 628(m) migration to urban areas from, 499–504 population of, decrease in, from 1870 to 1900, 463(f) resistance to change in, in 1920s, 627–632

Rural Electrification Administration, 653 Russell, Harold, 705 Russia. See also Soviet Union

boundaries of, after World War I, 603(m) election of 2016, interference in, 873, 876 immigrants from, in late 19th century, 502 immigrants from, Johnson-Reed Act and, 629 immigrants from, in late 19th century, 501(f), 502(f)

military expenditures, 2005, 853(f) World War I and, 588, 592

Russian bolshevism. See Bolshevik regime and bolshevism Russo-Japanese War, 570 Rust Belt, 863, 869–870, 873 Ruth, George Herman (“Babe”), 626 Rwanda, civil war in, 842

Sacco, Nicola, 629(i), 630 Sacco, Rosina, 629(i) Sadat, Anwar, 810 Saigon, Vietnam

capture of, 800–801 government of, 790 Tet Offensive and, 795 Vietnam War and, 790

Saint-Mihiel, battle of, 585 Salesclerks, in late 19th century, 512 Salk, Jonas, 735(i) SALT. See Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty Salter, John, Jr., 765(i) Saltonstall, Nora, 598 Samoan Islands, Open Door policy and, 546 San Carlos Reservation, 450 Sand Creek, Colorado Territory, Cheyenne massacre at, 444 Sanders, Bernie, 872 Sandinistas, 810, 829 Sandoz, Jules, 452 San Francisco, California, Chinese population of, in 1870, 505 Sanger, Margaret, 577–578, 624 San Juan Hill, battle of, 548 Santee Indians, 445 Santee Uprising, 445 Satellites, first successful, 722 Saturday Evening Post

on German Americans, 600 new woman and, 623

Saudi Arabia Gulf War and, 833–834 military expenditures, 2005, 853(f)

Savings and loan crisis, 822 Scalawags, 425 Scandinavia, immigration from, in late 19th century, 501, 501(f), 502(f) Schenck, Charles, 608 Schenck v. United States, 608 Schlafly, Fred, 818 Schlafly, Phyllis

conservatism and, 817–818 Equal Rights Amendment and, 825 Reagan administration and, 819

Schneiderman, Rose, 560 School desegregation

Brown v. Board of Education and, 749 Nixon administration and, 781, 804–805 in South, in 1970s, 804

Schools, public. See Public schools School shootings, 871 Schreiber, Marie, 729 Schurz, Carl, 413 SCLC. See Southern Christian Leadership Conference Scopes, John, 631 Scopes trial, 631 Scott, Tom, 473

Scottsboro Boys, 639(i), 639 SDS. See Students for a Democratic Society Seabrook, New Hampshire, nuclear energy and, 809 Seale, Bobby, 769 SEALs, Kennedy administration and, 789 Seattle, Washington, shipyard worker strike in, 606 Seattle, Washington

minimum wage in, 869 unrest at World Trade Organization meeting, 842

Second World War. See World War II Second wave feminism, 777 Secretarial work, in late 19th century, 511–512 Sectionalism, New South and, 480–481 Securities and Exchange Commission, 650 Sedition Acts, Wilson administration and, 600 Segregation. See also Racial and ethnic discrimination

in New South, 481–482 progressivism and, 579–580 in schools, ending. See School desegregation in South during Reconstruction, 426–427

Seitz, Charles, 860 Selective Service Act

for World War I, 592 for World War II, 684–685

Self-determination Cold War and, 711 Wilson administration and, 602

Selma, Alabama, Bloody Sunday in, 766

Senate. See also Congress influence of businesses on senators and, 484–485 Seventeenth Amendment and, 572

Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 605 September 11 attacks, 850–851 Serbia

war in Yugoslavia and, 843 World War I and, 588

Service industries in 1950s, 740 in 1980s, 823

Servicemen’s Readjustment Act. See GI Bill of Rights Settlement houses, 555–556, 557 Sevaro (Ute chief), 443(i) Seventeenth Amendment, 572 Sewall, Arthur M., 542 Sex discrimination against women, 777, 782. See also Women entries Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (Kinsey), 748 Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (Kinsey), 748 Sexual harassment, 825–826, 871 Sexuality and sexual behavior

in 1950s, 748 in 1960s, 775 homosexuality and. See Homosexuals and homosexuality

Sexual misconduct accusations Bill Clinton and, 839–840 Clarence Thomas and, 835–836 Trump and, 873

Seymour, Horatio, 430, 430(m) Shafter, William, 548 “The Shame of the Cities” (Steffens), 521 Sharecroppers

Agricultural Adjustment Act and, 653, 656, 656(i) Reconstruction and, 428–429, 429(m) in West in late 19th century, 462

Share Our Wealth campaign of Huey Long, 658 Sheldon, Charles M., 557 Sheppard-Towner Act, 623 Sherman, William Tecumseh, land set aside for freedmen by, 415 Sherman Antitrust Act

passage of, 490 Reagan administration and, 821 Roosevelt, T., administration and, 563–564

Sherman Silver Purchase Act, 491 Shiite Islamic fundamentalists, Carter administration and, 813 Shipping Board, for World War I, 596 Shipyard worker strike, 606 Shoshoni Indians

alliance with army and, 449–450 Comstock Lode and, 455 Ghost Dance and, 452

Sierra Club environmentalism and, 776 John Muir and, 566

“The Significance of the Frontier in American History” (Turner), 439

The Signing of Peace in the Hall of Mirrors, Versailles, 28th June 1919 (Orpen), 604(i) Silent majority, 804 Silent Spring (Carson), 776 Silver currency, 491 Silver mines and mining

in Comstock Lode, 452–456 Cripple Creek miners’ strike and, 534

Silver Purchase Act, 491 Sinatra, Frank, 713 Sinclair, Upton, 565–566, 657 Sinophobia, 505 Sioux Indians

buffalo and, 444 Dakota, 1862 war with, 445 fight for Black Hills and, 445–447 Ghost Dance and, 451(i), 452 Lakota Sioux Indians. See Lakota Sioux Indians massacre at Wounded Knee and, 452 resistance to reservations by, 449

Sitting Bull (Sioux leader) Black Hills and, 447 death of, 452 on extinction of buffalo, 444

Six-Day War, 799 Sixteenth Amendment, 571–572 Skilled workers

immigrants as, 504

in late 19th century, 508 Skyscrapers, in Chicago, 519 Slaughterhouse cases, 432 Slaves, emancipated. See Freedmen Slum, as new word, 499 Smith, Alfred E., 631–632, 632(m) Smoking, in late 19th century, 481 SNCC. See Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Snowden, Edward, 868 Social Darwinism

development of theory of, 478 discrimination against immigrants and, 504–505

Social Democratic Party in America, 577 Social gospel, 557–558 Social inequality. See Discrimination; Racial and ethnic discrimination Social purity movement, 557 Social reform, social Darwinism and, 479 Social Security, 661–662 Social Security Act, 661 Social segregation, in late 19th century, 506 Social Darwinism, social gospel and, 557 Socialist Labor Party, 577 Socialists and Socialist Party

creation of, 577 election of 1912 and, 574, 574(m) election of 1920 and, 611(m) election of 1928 and, 632(m) election of 1932 and, 647(m)

election of 1936 and, 665 Eugene Debs and, 536 labor radicalism and, 515 New Deal and, 657 sharecropping and, 639

Social media activism and, 871 election of 2016 and, 873

Social purity movement, 558 Social reform, social Darwinism and, 479 Social segregation, in late 19th century, 506–507 Sodbusters, 459, 460(i) Sod huts, 459–460, 460(i) Solomon Islands, World War II and, 698, 698(m) Soltani, Adam, 852 Somalia, Clinton administration and, 842 Somme, battle of, 592 Sorosis Club, 483 Sotomayor, Sonia, 865 The Souls of Black Folk (Du Bois), 580 South. See also specific states

conservatism and, 780 growth in, during 1950s, 741–743, 742(m) migration of African Americans to North from, after World War I, 608–610, 609(i) struggle in, during Reconstruction, 424–429

South Africa Carter administration and, 810

election of Mandela in, 832 Reagan administration and, 829

South Dakota Black Hills, Indian wars and, 445–447 Wounded Knee, Native American protests at, 772

South Carolina black codes of, 419 new state constitution of, 418

Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 752 Southern Farmers’ Alliance, 530 Southern Farm Tenants Union, 656 Southern Pacific Railroad, 562 Southern strategy, Nixon and, 804 South Korea

Carter administration and, 810 Korean War and, 714–718, 715(m) Nike and, 859–860

South Pacific, World War II and, 697–698, 698(m) South Side of Chicago, Illinois, emergence of, 610 South Vietnam

Communist government in, 801 creation of, 720 Vietnam War and. See Vietcong; Vietnam War

Southwest growth in, during 1950s, 741–743, 742(m) Mexican immigrants in, World War I and, 610

Soviet Union. See also Russia attack on Poland by, 679

battling German troops in, 689, 694–695 Carter administration and, 812–813 Cold War and. See Cold War détente and, 798 dissolution of, 832 Helsinki accords and, 798 Marshall Plan and, 708 Nazi attack on, 681 nuclear test ban treaty and, 790 Reagan administration and, 831–832 recognition of, by Roosevelt, F., 675 spread of communism and. See Communism and Communist Party wartime suffering in, 692 relations with, after World War II, 705–707

Space exploration American and Soviet race for, 722 Kennedy administration and, 789

Spain, civil war in, 677 Spanish-American War, 547–548, 549(m) Spanish immigrants, in late 19th century, 501(f) Spanish influenza, 607 Speakeasies, 622 Speculation, railroad stock and, 472 Speculation, Crash of 1929 and, 634 Spencer, Herbert, 479 Spies, August, 515, 516 Spies and Spying. See Espionage Spock, Benjamin, 746

Spoils system, 479, 431, 485 Sports, in 1920s, 626 Sputnik, 722 Square Deal, 563–565 Stagflation

Carter administration and, 808 Nixon administration and, 803–804

Stalin, Joseph block of Berlin by, 709 postwar interests of, 705–706, 707(m) World War II and, 689 Yalta Conference and, 697

Stalingrad, Soviet Union, battle of, 694, 696(m) Stalwarts, 485 Standard Oil Company, 475–476 Standing Bear, Luther, 444, 448 Standing Rock Reservation, 452 Stanford, Leland, 468–469 Stanton, Edwin M., 423 Stanton, Elizabeth Cady

as an activist, 421(i) American Equal Rights Association and, 421 Fifteenth Amendment and, 424 National Woman Suffrage Association and, 483 woman suffrage and, 538–539

Starr, Kenneth, 839 Starvation

during Great Depression, 636–637

Native Americans and, 443, 444 States’ Rights Party, 732(m) Statue of Liberty, 505 Stead, William, 557 Steel and steel industry

building cities of, 519 Carnegie and, 473–474 Congress of Industrial Organizations and, 661 domestic production of, from 1870 to 1900, 474(f) Homestead lockout and, 532–534 Morgan and, 478 in New South, 481 steelworkers strike of 1919 and, 606

Steeplechase Park, 518 Steffens, Lincoln, 521, 562 Stein, Gertrude, 627 Steinbacher, Joseph, 697 Steinem, Gloria, 778 Stephens, Alexander, 419 Stephens, Harry and family, 416(i) Stephenson, David, 630 Stevens, John Paul, 850 Stevens, Thaddeus, 422, 423 Stevenson, Adlai E.

election of 1952 and, 717 election of 1956 and, 737

Stockholders, railroads and, 472 Stock market crash of 1929, 634

Stonewall Inn, New York City, riots at, 775 Stork Club, 751(i) Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, 798 Strategic Arms Reduction Talks, 832 Streetcars

automobile industry and, 619 Johnson (Thomas) and, 562

Street demonstrations. See Civil disobedience and disorder; Nonviolence Strikes

of air traffic controllers, 821 of Boston police, 606 of coal miners during World War II, 685 of coal miners in 1902, 564 of coal miners in 1931, 639 of garment workers in 1909, 559, 559(i) Great Railroad Strike and, 512–514, 513(m) for higher minimum wage, 869 increase in, after World War II, 729 of McCormick reaper workers, 515–516 of Pullman workers, 534–536 of shipyard workers, 606 of silver miners, 534 of steelworkers, 606

Student activism at colleges and universities. See Colleges and universities Student desegregation. See School desegregation Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, 764–765, 769 Students for a Democratic Society, 774, 794 Submarines

German, in World War I. See U-boats with nuclear missiles, 722

Subtreasury for farmers, 531 Suburban areas, growth in, during 1950s, 740–741 Subversion, fear of, during World War II, 683–684 Subways, building of, 519 Sudan, Clinton administration and, 843 Sudetenland, World War II and, 678 Suez Canal, seizure of, by Egypt, 721–722 Suffrage

for African Americans. See African American suffrage Fourteenth Amendment and, 420–422 for women. See Woman suffrage

Suicide pilots, in World War II, 698 Sumner, Charles

on Lincoln’s Reconstruction plan, 415 as Radical, Reconstruction and, 422 on woman suffrage, 421

Sumner, William Graham, 479 The Sun Also Rises (Hemingway), 627 Sun Belt, 780

rise of, 741–743, 742(m) Superfund, for cleanup of hazardous wastes, 810 Supply-side economics, Reagan administration and, 821 Supreme Court

abortion and, 779, 824(i) antitrust laws and, 490 Brown v. Board of Education and, 749

Bush, G. H. W., administration and, 835–836 Bush, G. W., administration and, 857 on bus segregation, 752 on campaign spending, 807 Clinton administration and, 837 on Communist Party, 714 court-packing plan and, 665–666 election of 2000 and, 850 on gay marriage, 866 on homosexual behavior, 826 on Japanese internment, 684 on Mexican Americans, 743 on National Recovery Administration, 655 Obama administration and, 865, 867 on Pentagon Papers, 800 protection of corporations by, 478 on railroad regulation, 490 Reagan administration and, 825 reconstruction and, 432 regulation of businesses in 1920s by, 617 restriction of free speech by, 608 on school desegregation, 781 on school desegregation busing, 805 on travel ban, 874 Trump administration and, 875 Warren (Earl) and, 762–764

Surveillance programs, government, 868 Survival of the fittest, 479

Sweatshops, in late 19th century, 509, 509(i) Sweden, immigration from, in late 19th century, 501(f) Switzerland, immigration from, in late 19th century, 501(f) Syria

Arab Spring and, 868 civil war in, 868 Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and, 868 Six-Day War and, 799

Systematized shop management, 561

Taft, Robert A., 717 Taft, William Howard

conservation and, 571 election of 1912 and, 572–575, 574(m) foreign policies of, 572 presidency of, 570–572 tariffs and, 571

Taft-Hartley Act, 732 Taliban, 9/11 attacks and, 851 Tammany Hall, 520–521 TANF. See Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Tanzania, U.S. Embassy in, Clinton administration and, 843 Tarbell, Ida M., on Standard Oil Company, 475–476 Tariffs

Great Depression and, 635 reform of, 488–489 Taft administration and, 571 Wilson administration and, 575–576

Taxes and taxation Bush, G. H. W., administration and, 835 Bush, G. W., administration and, 856–857 grassroots protests against, 808 in South, during Reconstruction, 433 tax cuts by Reagan administration andd, 821 Trump administration and, 873

Tax Reform Act of 1986, 821 Tea Party movement, 866

Teapot Dome, 617 Technocrats, 561 Technology companies, 861 Tehran Conference, 695 Tejanos

in late 19th century, 457 as migrant workers, 462

Telegraph and telegraph industry, invention of, 473 Telephone, invention of, 476(i), 476–477 Television, in 1950s, 746–747 Temperance movement

progressivism and, 558 Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and, 537–538 women’s support of, in late 19th century, 483–484

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, 839 Tenant farmers

Agricultural Adjustment Act and, 653, 656, 656(i) Farm Security Administration and, 667

Tennessee Baker v. Carr and, 762–763 Fourteenth Amendment and, 421 Scopes trial in, 631

Tennessee Valley Authority, 652, 652(m) Tennessee Coal and Iron Company, 566 Tenure of Office Act, 423 Termination of Indian trusts, 738 Territorial Enterprise, on Comstock Lode, 455 Territorial governments, 464–465

Terrorism in 21st century, 850–852 Reagan administration and, 827 on Wall Street in 1920, 607 war on, 867–868

Tet Offensive, 795–796 Texas

barbed wire fencing in, 461 Farmers’ Alliance in, 530 Hispanics in, in late 19th century, 457 Waco, religious cult in, 837

Textile industry, in New South, 481 Textile mill workers

lack of New Deal help for, 661 in late 19th century, 509 Willard (Frances) and, 537

Their Eyes Were Watching God (Hurston), 625 Theory of evolution, Scopes trial and, 631 Third world

Kennedy administration and, 789 in late 19th century, 498(m), 499 liberation movements and, 711

Thirteenth Amendment, 418 This Side of Paradise (Fitzgerald), 624, 627 Thomas, Clarence, 835–836 Thomas, Norman, 632(m), 639, 647(m) 369th Regiment, 593 Thurber, James, 627

Thurmond, J. Strom, 732(m) Thygeson, Sylvie, 511 Tiananmen Square crackdown, 832 Tianjin (Tientsin) treaty, 545 Tibbets, Paul, 673–674, 699 Tilden, Samuel J., 435, 435(m) Till, Emmett, 749 Tillman, Benjamin, 541 Tilyou, George, 518 Time magazine

on election of Obama, 864 on King Jr., 752 on Moddadegh, 721

Title IX, 782, 824 Title VII, women and, 777 Tobacco and tobacco industry, in late 19th century, 481 Tojo, Hideki, 682 Torture, 867 Total Information Awareness program, 852 Townsend, Francis, 658 Trade, expansion of, 544(f), 544–545 Trading with the Enemy Act, 600 Trail of Broken Treaties, 772 Trains. See Railroads Tramps, Great Depression and, 636 Transcontinental railroad. See also Railroads

building of, 468–469 first, 472

first, Chinese workers and, 458 first, homesteading and, 458 second, 472

Transgender people, 874–875 Trans-Pacific Partnership, 876 Transportation

automobiles and. See Automobile industry railroads as. See Railroads social segregation and, in late 19th century, 506

Travel ban, Trump and, 874 Treasury Department, prohibition and, 622 Treaty of Berlin, 546 Treaty of Fort Laramie

first, 441 second, 446

Treaty of Medicine Lodge, 444 Treaty of Paris (1898), 549 Trench warfare, 593(i) Triangle Shirtwaist Company, 558–560 Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire, 560 Trickle-down economics, Reagan administration and, 823 Tripartite Pact, 682 Triple Alliance, 588–595, 589(m) Triple Entente, 588–595, 589(m) Troubled Asset Relief Program, 859 Truman, Harry S.

atomic bomb and, 699 on civil rights, 734

Cold War and. See Cold War domestic policies of, 728–734 election of 1944 and, 693 election of 1948 and, 717, 731(i), 732, 732(m) election of 1952 and, 717 Fair Deal and, 731–733 foreign policies of, 705–709, 718–719 Helen Gahagan Douglas on, 704 hydrogen bomb and, 709 Jews in Palestine and, 712 Korean War and, 715–717 loyalty review boards and, 713 Soviet blockade of Berlin and, 709 Truman Doctrine and, 708

Truman Doctrine, 708 Trumbull, Lyman, 420 Trump, Donald

election of 2016 and, 872(i), 872–876, 873(m) foreign policies of, 876 health care and, 875 presidency of, 873–876, 880(t) right-wing populism and, 874–875

Trumpauer, Joan, 765(i) Trust, corporate

federal regulation of, 490 Rockefeller and, 474–476 Roosevelt, T., administration and, 563–564 Wilson administration and, 576

Tunisia, 868 Tunney, Gene, 626 Turkey

immigration from, in late 19th century, 502, 501(f), 502(f) prevention of communism in, 708

Turner, Frederick Jackson, 439–440, 465 Tuskegee Institute, 579 Twain, Mark

on baseball, 518 on Comstock Lode, 455 The Gilded Age, 465

Tweed, William Marcy (“Boss”), 520–521 Twelve-hour workday, shortening to eight, 515 Twenty-sixth Amendment, 782, 793 Twitter, 871 Two Moons, 447 Typewriters, women as, 511

UAW. See United Auto Workers U-boats, 590, 683, 689 UFW. See United Farm Workers UMW. See United Mine Workers UN. See United Nations Underconsumption

of farm crops in 1930s, 653 of industrial products in 1930s, 654 New Deal and, 649

Underwood tariff, 575–576 Unemployment

in 1970s, 803 Carter administration and, 808–809 in Great Depression, 635, 636, 666 New Deal and, 650–653, 654 Obama administration and, 866 Reagan administration and, 822 Works Progress Administration and, 659 during World War II, 686 after World War I, 606

UNIA. See Universal Negro Improvement Association Unilateralism, Bush, G. W., administration and, 852–856 Union Party, 657 Union Pacific Railroad, 468–469 Unions, labor. See Labor unions Union Signal, on textile mill workers, 537 United Auto Workers, 660

United Farm Workers, 773, 773(i) United Fruit Company, 546, 720 United Mine Workers

New Deal and, 660 strike of, during World War II, 686 strike of, in 1902, 564

United Nations creation of, 697 on invasion of Panama, 833 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and, 833–834 Korean War and, 715

United Race, 774 United States Constitution. See Constitution of United States United States v. Cruikshank, 432 United States v. E. C. Knight Company, 490 Universal Negro Improvement Association, 625 Universities. See Colleges and universities; Higher education University of California, Berkeley, student activism at, 774 University of Chicago, Illinois, student activism at, 774 Unterseebooten, 590 Urban areas

decline in, during 1950s, 741 increase of population in, 1920 to 1930, 628(m) population of, 1870 to 1900, 463(f) race riots in, in 1960s, 769, 770(m) relocation of Native Americans to, 738

Urban industrialism, 496–524 city government and, 519–523

home and family life and, 517–518 organization of workers and, 512–517 rise of city and, 497–508 workers and, 508–512

Urban League, 609(i) USA Patriot Act, 852 U.S. Army. See Military entries; specific wars and battles U.S. Border Patrol, expansion of, 861 U.S. embassies

in Beirut, attack on, 827 in Kenya, Clinton administration and, 843 in Tanzania, Clinton administration and, 843 in Teheran, capture of, 813

U.S. Navy. See Navy (U.S.) U.S. Steel, 575

Congress of Industrial Organizations and, 661 creation of, 478 Roosevelt, T., administration and, 566 Taft administration and, 572

U.S. Supreme Court. See Supreme Court USX, 478 Utah, statehood for, 458 Utah Territory

black settlements in, 457 government of, 464 Mormons in, 458

Ute Indians, 443(i)

Vagabonds, Great Depression and, 636 Valentino, Rudolph, 626 Vanderbilt, Alice, Alva, and William, 507 Vanderbilt, Cornelius (“Commodore”), 472, 507 Vanzetti, Bartolomeo, 629(i), 630 Vaqueros, as migrant workers, 462 Vargas, Jose Antonio, 848–849, 870 Vaux, Calvert, 519 Venezuela, 546 Versailles treaty, 603–604, 604(i) Vertical integration business organization, 474 Veterans

higher education for, in 1950s, 743 New Deal bonus for, 659 pensions for, during Great Depression, 638–639 Vietnam. See Vietnam veterans of World War II, higher education for, 730

Victory Gardens, 691 Victory Line, 690 Viet Cong. See also Vietnam War

herbicides and, 791 as South Vietnamese insurgents, 790 strategy against, 792

Vietminh, 719–720 Vietnam veterans

antiwar protests of, 799 struggles of, 801–802

Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., 802 Vietnam War

bombings in, 792 election of 1968 and, 797 Johnson, L. B., administration and, 761, 791–792, 795–796 Nixon administration and, 799–800 outcomes of, 801–802 veterans’ protests against, 800

Vietnamization, 796 Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., 802 Vietnam War

from 1964 to 1975, 791(m) difficulties of, 787–788 Kennedy administration and, 790–791 soldiers of, 793–794 U.S. involvement in, 788–794

Villa, Francisco (“Pancho”), 588 Violence against Women Act, 836 Virginia, white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, 874 Virginia City, Nevada, mining community of, 453(m), 455, 456 VISTA. See Volunteers in Service to America Voice of America, 710 Volunteers in Service to America, 760 Voter Education Project, 766 Voter registration

Mississippi Freedom Summer Project and, 766 Voter Education Project and, 766

Voting rights. See African American suffrage; Suffrage; Woman suffrage

Voting Rights Act of 1965 African American suffrage and, 767, 768(m) banning of literacy tests and, 761 extension of, under Nixon, 781–782 passage of, 767 Reagan administration and, 824

VRA. See Voting Rights Act of 1965

Wabash v. Illinois, 490 Waco, Texas, religious cult in, 837 Wade, Benjamin, 414 Wade-Davis bill, 414 Wagner, Robert, 660, 667 Wagner Act

passage of, 660 Taft-Hartley Act and, 732

Waite, David H., 534 Wake Island, World War II and, 688, 698(m) Wald, Lillian, 557 Wallace, George C., 796, 797, 797(m) Wallace, Henry A.

containment of Russia and, 706 election of 1948 and, 732, 732(m)

Wall Street New Deal reform of, 650 Roosevelt, T., administration and, 563–564

Wall Street crash of 1929, 634 Wall Street panic

of 1873, 472, 492 of 1893, 477, 488, 492

Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, 865 Walmart, strikes for higher minimum wage, 869 Wanamaker’s, 512 Ward, Lester Frank, 561 Ware, Isaac, 531(i)

War Industries Board, for World War I, 596, 600 Warner, Charles Dudley, 472 War on Poverty, Johnson, L. B., administration and, 759–760, 762 War on Terror, 852–856, 867–868 War Powers Act of 1973, 801 War Production Board, 686 War propaganda, World War I and, 599 Warren, Earl

Brown v. Board of Education and, 749 liberalism and, 762–764 Nixon administration and, 805

Warren Court, 762–764 Washington, Booker T., as preeminent black leader, 579–580, 580(i) Washington Disarmament Conference, 617–618 Washington Post

on expansionism, 551 Vargas and, 849

Washington (State) Centralia, Red scare in, 607 Seattle, shipyard worker strike in, 606 as territory, government of, 464

Water, finding on plains, 460 Watergate, 806 Water pollution, Clean Water Act and, 776 Watson, Tom, 530, 542 Watt, James, 821–822 Watts, Los Angeles, California, race riots in, 769, 770(m) WCTU. See Woman’s Christian Temperance Union

We (Lindbergh), 626 Wealth, gospel of, 557 Wealth and wealthy people

excesses of, in late 19th century, 507–508 inequality of. See Economic inequality social Darwinism and, 479

Weaver, James B., 541(m) Wehrmacht (German army), 695. See also Germany in World War II Welch, Jack, 841 Welfare capitalism, 620 Welfare state

New Deal and, 658–664 Clinton administration and, 838(i), 839 Reagan administration and, 822

Wells, Ida B., 482(i), 482–483 West, conservatism and, 780 West, in late 19th century, 439–465

conquest of Indians in, 440–447 forced assimilation of Indians and resistance to, 447–452 land fever in, 459–465 mining in, 452–458, 453(m) railroads in, 454(m)

West Bank, Clinton administration and, 843 West Berlin

creation of, 709 and East Berlin wall dividing. See Berlin Wall

Western Federation of Miners, 534 Western Relocation Authority Centers, 684(m)

Western Union, 473 West Germany

Berlin Wall and. See Berlin Wall creation of, 706, 707(m) reunification of East and, 832

Westinghouse, George W., 477 Westmoreland, William, 792 West Virginia, brakemen’s strike in, 512–514, 513(m) Weyler, Valeriano, 547 WFM. See Western Federation of Miners What Social Classes Owe to Each Other (Sumner), 479 Wheat, mechanization and, 462–463 White, as race, definition of, 504–505 White, William Allen, 548 White City, 522–523, 523(i) White-collar jobs

in 1950s, 740 in late 19th century, 510–512

White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, 856 White nationalist rally, in Charlottesville, Virginia, 874 White supremacy

Jackson on, 419 Ku Klux Klan and, 425 in South, during Reconstruction, 430, 432–434

Whyte, William H., Jr., 747 Wilderness and wildlife preservation, Roosevelt, T., administration and, 566–567, 568(m) Wilhelm II (kaiser of Germany), 588, 595

Willard, Frances, 484, 527–528, 537–538 Williamsburg Bridge, 519 Willkie, Wendell, 680 Wilson, Edith, 598 Wilson, Woodrow

antitrust law and, 576 banking system and, 575–576 election of 1912 and, 573(i), 574, 574(m) election of 1916 and, 590–591 foreign policies of, 586–591 Fourteen Points of, 601 as governor of New Jersey, 571 League of Nations and, 601–605 Paris peace conference and, 601–604 progressive reforms by, 576, 596–597 segregation and, 578 tariffs and, 575–576 Versailles treaty, 603–604, 604(i) war patriotism and, 599–600 woman suffrage and, 578, 598–599 World War I and, 585, 588–591

Winnemucca, Sarah, 445 Wisconsin, progressivism and, 562 Wives. See Married women Wobblies, 577 Wolfensohn, James D., 842 Woman Rebel, Margaret Sanger and, 578 Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, 558

creation of, 483 Willard (Frances) and, 527, 537–538

Woman’s Crusade, 484 Woman suffrage

in 1890s, 538(i), 538–539 Fifteenth Amendment and, 424 Nineteenth Amendment and, 599, 623 People’s Party and, 542 progressivism and, 561 during Reconstruction, 421 in Utah Territory, 458 Wilson administration and, 578–579 World War I and, 598–599, 599(m)

Women in Clinton administration, 837 in Congress, 703–704 cult of domesticity and, 517 higher education for, in 1950s, 743–744 as immigrants, in late 19th century, 504 in military. See Women in military new woman and, in 1920s, 623–624 on plains, 460, 460(i) political activism of, in 1860s, 483–484 political activism of, in 1890s, 537–539 Reagan administration and, 825–826 rights of. See Women’s rights settlement house movement and, 557 Social Security in 1930s and, 661

in Southern Farmers’ Alliance, 530 voting rights of. See Woman suffrage in workforce. See Women in workforce World War II war effort and, 690–691, 691(i)

Women in military GI Bill and, 730 in Vietnam War, 793 in World War I, 597–599 in World War II, 685

Women in workforce in 1920s, 624 in 1950s, 740 Civilian Conservation Corps and, 651 in Clinton administration, 837 consumerism and, in 1950s, 745 during Great Depression, 637 in Knights of Labor, 514 in late 19th century, 510 percentage of married women as, in 1990, 823 Reagan administration and, 825 in selected industries, 1940 to 1950, 730(f) in sweatshops, 509(i) as white-collar workers, in late 19th century, 511(f), 511–512 Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL) and, 558–561 during World War I, 597–599 after World War II, 729–730

Women’s Political Council, 750–751 Women’s rights

Civil Rights Act of 1964 and, 767 feminist movement in 1960s and, 776–779 liberation movement and, 778 to vote. See Woman suffrage

Women’s Trade Union League, 558–561 Women’s March, 873 Wood, Leonard, 450 Woodley, Arthur E., Jr., 794 Woodstock Music Festival, 775 Woolworth’s lunch counters, sit-ins at, 764, 765(i) Work. See Employment; Labor; Unemployment; specific industries and jobs Workforce, women in. See Women in workforce Working class, progressivism and, 558–561 Workingmen’s Party, 458 Works Progress Administration, 659 World Jewish Congress, 694 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago

description of, 522–523, 523(i) Turner (Frederick) and, 439–440

World Trade Center, terrorist attacks on, 850–851 World Trade Organization, 841 World War I, 584–611

American hardships and problems after, 605–611 battles of, 592–595 casualties of, 595, 595(f) peace treaty after, 601–605 progressive reform in America during, 596–600

Wilson’s foreign policies and, 588–591 World War II, 673–700

American mobilization for, 683–687 dilemmas before, 675–677 fighting against Axis powers in, 688–690 home front during, 690–694 onset of, 677–683 surrender and end of, 694–699

Worship. See Religion Wounded Knee, South Dakota

massacre at, 452 Native American protests at, 772

Wovoka, 451–452 WPC. See Women’s Political Council Writers, of 1920s, as expatriates, 627 WSP. See Women Strike for Peace WTO. See World Trade Organization WTUL. See Women’s Trade Union League Wyoming, statehood for, 465 Wyoming Territory, government of, 464

Ximenes, Vicente T., 773

YAF. See Young Americans for Freedom Yalta Conference, 697 Yamamoto, Isoroku, 688 Yankees, living in South during Reconstruction, 425 Yellow journalism, 547 Yellow Wolf (Nez Percé leader), 450 Yeoman

pressured to be Democrats, 433 as Republicans, 425

Yezierska, Anzia, 504 Young, Brigham, 458 Young Americans for Freedom, 780 Yugoslavia

civil war in, 842–843 creation of, 602, 603(m)

Zimmermann, Arthur, 591 Zitkala-Sa, 448

About the Authors James L. Roark (Ph.D., Stanford University) is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor Emeritus of American History at Emory University. He received his university’s Emory Williams Distinguished Teaching Award, and in 2001–2002 he was Pitt Professor of American Institutions at Cambridge University. He has written Masters without Slaves: Southern Planters in the Civil War and Reconstruction and coauthored Black Masters: A Free Family of Color in the Old South with Michael P. Johnson. He has also coedited No Chariot Let Down: Charleston’s Free People of Color on the Eve of the Civil War with Michael P. Johnson.

Michael P. Johnson (Ph.D., Stanford University) is Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University. His publications include Toward a Patriarchal Republic: The Secession of Georgia; Abraham Lincoln, Slavery, and the Civil War: Selected Speeches and Writings; and Reading the American Past: Selected Historical Documents, the documents reader for The American Promise. He has also coedited No Chariot Let Down: Charleston’s Free People of Color on the Eve of the Civil War with James L. Roark.

François Furstenberg (Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University) is Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University. From 2003–2014 he taught at the Université de Montréal. His publications include In the Name of the Father: Washington’s Legacy, Slavery, and the Making of a Nation; and When the United States Spoke French: Five Refugees who Shaped a Nation.

Patricia Cline Cohen (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley) is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she received the Distinguished Teaching Award in 2005– 2006. She has written A Calculating People: The Spread of Numeracy in Early America and The Murder of Helen Jewett: The Life and Death of a Prostitute in Nineteenth-Century New York, and she has coauthored The Flash Press: Sporting Male Weeklies in 1840s New York.

Sarah Stage (Ph.D., Yale University) has taught U.S. history at Williams College and the University of California, Riverside, and she was visiting professor at Beijing University and Szechuan University. Currently she is Professor of Women’s Studies at Arizona State University. Her books include Female Complaints: Lydia Pinkham and the Business of Women’s Medicine and Rethinking Home Economics: Women and the History of a Profession.

Susan M. Hartmann (Ph.D., University of Missouri) is Arts and Humanities Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at Ohio State University. In 1995 she won the university’s Exemplary Faculty Award in the College of Humanities. Her publications include Truman and the 80th Congress; The Home Front and Beyond: American Women in the 1940s; From Margin to Mainstream: American Women and Politics since 1960; and The Other Feminists: Activists in the Liberal Establishment.

Sarah E. Igo (Ph.D., Princeton University) is the Andrew Jackson Professor of American History and Director of American Studies at Vanderbilt University. Previously, she was an associate professor at the

University of Pennsylvania, where she won the Richard S. Dunn Award for Distinguished Teaching in 2003. She is the author of The Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of a Mass Public and The Known Citizen: A History of Privacy in Modern America.

Description The inside back cover of the book has text that reads as follows under the heading Succeed in your history course.

Taking your first college history course might seem like a challenge. These excerpts from the Bedford Tutorials in History will give you tools for succeeding in your history course.

Taking Effective Notes

Lectures and reading assignments present large amounts of information that can be overwhelming. Here are a few tips for taking effective notes.

(Bullet) Establish Shortcuts to Facilitate Taking Legible Notes

To speed up your note-taking and yet still have notes you can read, use abbreviations and symbols to indicate commonly used words and ideas. Text-messaging conventions are transferrable to note-taking—for example, use ‘w forward slash o’ for ‘without’ and ‘b forward slash c’ for ‘because.’ In your history class, you can use ‘c.’ for ‘century’ and establish other shortcuts for commonly used historical terminology.

(Bullet) Organize Your Notes and Be Selective

Every time you begin a new set of notes, include the date and subject at the top of the page. Focus on the big ideas and include the concrete examples and details needed to illustrate and support those ideas. Your goal is to create notes that are brief yet understandable.

Working with Primary Sources

A primary source is a document, object, or image created during the time period under study. Sometimes, historical documents can be difficult to understand because of their form or language. Here are questions you can ask when analyzing primary sources.

(Bullet) Who produced this document, when, and where? Identifying the author of a primary source is important because it helps expose the author’s point of view. We need to know something about how the author or artist viewed the world and how he or she came to produce the document or visual source.

(Bullet) Who was the intended audience of the document? There is often a close connection between a document and its intended audience. The historical importance of a

document is partly determined by who read it.

(Bullet) What are the main points of the document? While reading, start to make connections between the main points of the document and the specific choices the author made in style, organization, content, and emphasis.

(Bullet) What does this document reveal about the time and place in which it was written? Often there is no single right answer to this question because readers bring their own goals and purposes to their analyses and use the evidence found in the document to draw their own conclusions about the document’s historical meaning.

Text near the bottom margin of the inside back cover reads, (Continued on the inside back cover).

Description The back cover of the book has the Achieve Read and Practice logo at the top. The text below reads, Achieve Read and Practice with Learning Curve. Achieve Read and Practice is the marriage of our LearningCurve adaptive quizzing and our mobile, accessible e-book, in one easy-to-use and affordable product. The benefits of Read & Practice include:

(Bullet) It is easy to get started.

(Bullet) You can use it on your mobile devices.

(Bullet) You come to class having read the materials and are more prepared for discussion.

(Bullet) Your course performance improves.

Achieve Read and Practice. Learning Made Simple.

Text below reads, Learn more at macmillanlearning.com/readandpractice.

On the lower portion of the back cover is the Budget Books logo and the text beside reads, why choose Loose-leaf? Cost: Priced 35 percent less than a bound book. Ease: Bring only the chapter you need to class and take notes right on the pages! Organization: Integrate lecture notes and other course materials right into your binder.

Cover image: Steve Dunwell/ Getty Images

At the end are the Bedford/ Saint Martin’s Macmillan Learning logo and macmillanlearning.com above it.

About this Book

Cover Page
Inside Front Cover
About the Cover Image
Half Title Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Preface: Why This Book This Way?
Versions and Supplements
Brief Contents
Contents
Maps and Figures
United States Map
World Map

Chapter 16 Reconstruction, 1863–1877

An American Story
Why did Congress object to Lincoln’s wartime plan for reconstruction?

“To Bind Up the Nation’s Wounds”
Land and Labor
The African American Quest for Autonomy

How did the North respond to the passage of black codes in the southern states?

Johnson’s Program of Reconciliation
White Southern Resistance and Black Codes
Expansion of Federal Authority and Black Rights

How radical was congressional reconstruction?

The Fourteenth Amendment and Escalating Violence
Radical Reconstruction and Military Rule
Impeaching a President
The Fifteenth Amendment and Women’s Demands

What brought the elements of the South’s Republican coalition together?

Freedmen, Yankees, and Yeomen
Republican Rule
White Landlords, Black Sharecroppers

Why did Reconstruction collapse?

Grant’s Troubled Presidency
Northern Resolve Withers
White Supremacy Triumphs
An Election and a Compromise

Conclusion: Was Reconstruction “a revolution but half accomplished”?
Chapter Review

Explain Why It Matters
Put It All Together
Looking Backward, Looking Ahead
Chronology

Chapter 17 The Contested West, 1865–1900

An American Story
What did U.S. expansion mean for Native Americans?

Indian Removal and the Reservation System
The Decimation of the Great Bison Herds
The Santee Uprising and the Collapse of Comanchería
Red Cloud’s War and the Fight for the Black Hills

In what ways did different Indian groups defy and resist colonial rule?

Indian Schools and the War on Indian Culture
The Dawes Act and Indian Land Allotment
Indian Resistance and Survival

How did mining shape American expansion?

Life on the Comstock Lode
The Diverse Peoples of the West

How did the fight for land and resources in the West unfold?

Moving West: Homesteaders and Speculators
Tenants, Sharecroppers, and Migrants
Commercial Farming and Industrial Cowboys
Territorial Government and the Political Economy of the West

Conclusion: How did the West set the tone for the Gilded Age?
Chapter Review

Explain Why It Matters
Put It All Together
Looking Backward, Looking Ahead
Chronology

Chapter 18 The Gilded Age, 1865–1900

An American Story
How did the railroads stimulate big business?

Railroads: America’s First Big Business
Andrew Carnegie, Steel, and Vertical Integration
John D. Rockefeller, Standard Oil, and the Trust
New Inventions: The Telephone and Electricity

Why did the ideas of social Darwinism appeal to wealthy Americans?

J. P. Morgan and Finance Capitalism
Social Darwinism, Laissez-Faire, and the Supreme Court

What factors influenced political life in the late nineteenth century?

Political Participation and Party Loyalty
Sectionalism and the New South
Gender, Race, and Politics
Women’s Activism

What issues shaped party politics in the late nineteenth century?

Corruption and Party Strife
Garfield’s Assassination and Civil Service Reform
Reform and Scandal: The Campaign of 1884
Henry George and the Politics of Inequality

What role did economic issues play in party realignment?

The Tariff and the Politics of Protection
Railroads, Trusts, and the Federal Government
The Fight for Free Silver
Panic and Depression

Conclusion: How did business dominate the Gilded Age?
Chapter Review

Explain Why It Matters
Put It All Together
Looking Backward, Looking Ahead
Chronology

Chapter 19 The City and Its Workers, 1870–1900

An American Story
Why did American cities experience explosive growth in the late nineteenth century?

The Urban Explosion: A Global Migration
Racism and the Cry for Immigration Restriction
The Social Geography of the City

What kinds of work did people do in industrial America?

America’s Diverse Workers
The Family Economy: Women and Children
White-Collar Workers: Managers, “Typewriters,” and Salesclerks

Why did the fortunes of the Knights of Labor rise in the late 1870s and decline in the 1890s?

The Great Railroad Strike of 1877
The Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor
Haymarket and the Specter of Labor Radicalism

How did urban industrialism shape home life and the world of leisure?

Domesticity and “Domestics”
Cheap Amusements

How did municipal governments respond to the challenges of urban expansion?

Building Cities of Stone and Steel
City Government and the “Bosses”
New York and the Consolidation of the Capitalist Class
White City or City of Sin?

Conclusion: Who built the cities?
Chapter Review

Explain Why It Matters
Put It All Together
Looking Backward, Looking Ahead
Chronology

Chapter 20 Dissent, Depression, and War, 1890–1900

An American Story
Why did American farmers organize alliances in the late nineteenth century?

The Farmers’ Alliance
The Populist Movement

What led to the labor wars of the 1890s?

The Homestead Lockout
The Cripple Creek Miners’ Strike of 1894
Eugene V. Debs and the Pullman Strike

How were women involved in late-nineteenth-century politics?

Frances Willard and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and the Movement for Woman Suffrage

How did economic depression affect American politics in the 1890s?

Coxey’s Army
The People’s Party and the Election of 1896

Why did the United States largely abandon its isolationist foreign policy in the 1890s?

Markets and Missionaries
The Monroe Doctrine and the Open Door Policy
“A Splendid Little War”
The Debate over American Imperialism

Conclusion: What was the connection between domestic strife and foreign policy?
Chapter Review

Explain Why It Matters
Put It All Together
Looking Backward, Looking Ahead
Chronology

Chapter 21 Progressive Reform, 1890–1916

An American Story
How did grassroots progressives attack the problems of urban industrial America?

Civilizing the City
Progressives and the Working Class

What were the key tenets of progressive theory?

Reform Darwinism and Social Engineering
Progressive Government: City and State

How did Theodore Roosevelt advance the progressive agenda?

The Square Deal
Roosevelt the Reformer
Roosevelt and Conservation
The Big Stick
The Troubled Presidency of William Howard Taft

How did progressivism evolve during Woodrow Wilson’s first term?

Progressive Insurgency and the Election of 1912
Wilson’s Reforms: Tariff, Banking, and the Trusts
Wilson, Reluctant Progressive

What were the limits of progressive reform?

Radical Alternatives
Progressivism for White Men Only

Conclusion: How did the Progressive Era give rise to the liberal state?
Chapter Review

Explain Why It Matters
Put It All Together
Looking Backward, Looking Ahead
Chronology

Chapter 22 World War I: The Progressive Crusade, 1914–1920

An American Story
What was Woodrow Wilson’s foreign policy agenda?

Taming the Americas
The European Crisis
The Ordeal of American Neutrality
The United States Enters the War

What role did the United States play in World War I?

The Call to Arms
The War in France

What impact did the war have on the home front?

The Progressive Stake in the War
Women, War, and the Battle for Suffrage
Rally around the Flag — or Else

What part did Woodrow Wilson play at the Paris peace conference?

Wilson’s Fourteen Points
The Paris Peace Conference
The Fight for the Treaty

Why was America’s transition from war to peace so turbulent?

Economic Hardship and Labor Upheaval
The Red Scare
The Great Migrations of African Americans and Mexicans
Postwar Politics and the Election of 1920

Conclusion: Victory, but at what cost?
Chapter Review

Explain Why It Matters
Put It All Together
Looking Backward, Looking Ahead
Chronology

Chapter 23 From New Era to Great Depression, 1920–1932

An American Story
How did big business shape the “New Era” of the 1920s?

A Business Government
Promoting Prosperity and Peace Abroad
Automobiles, Mass Production, and Assembly-Line Progress
Consumer Culture

In what ways did the Roaring Twenties challenge traditional values?

Prohibition
The New Woman
The New Negro
Entertaining the Masses
The Lost Generation

Why did the relationship between urban and rural America deteriorate in the 1920s?

Rejecting the Undesirables
The Rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan
The Scopes Trial
Al Smith and the Election of 1928

How did President Hoover respond to the economic crash of 1929?

Herbert Hoover: The Great Engineer
The Distorted Economy
The Crash of 1929
Hoover and the Limits of Individualism

What impact did the economic depression have on everyday life?

The Human Toll
Denial and Escape
Working-Class Militancy

Conclusion: Why did the hope of the 1920s turn to despair?
Chapter Review

Explain Why It Matters
Put It All Together
Looking Backward, Looking Ahead
Chronology

Chapter 24 The New Deal Experiment, 1932–1939

An American Story
Why was Franklin D. Roosevelt elected president in 1932?

The Making of a Politician
The Election of 1932

What were the goals and achievements of the first New Deal?

The New Dealers
Banking and Finance Reform
Relief and Conservation Programs
Agricultural Initiatives
Industrial Recovery

Who opposed the New Deal?

Resistance to Business Reform
Casualties in the Countryside
Politics on the Fringes

Why did the New Deal begin to create a welfare state?

Relief for the Unemployed
Empowering Labor
Social Security and Tax Reform
Neglected Americans and the New Deal

Why did the New Deal lose support during Roosevelt’s second term as president?

The Election of 1936
Court Packing
Reaction and Recession
The Last of the New Deal Reforms

Conclusion: What were the achievements and limitations of the New Deal?
Chapter Review

Explain Why It Matters
Put It All Together
Looking Backward, Looking Ahead
Chronology

Chapter 25 The United States and the Second World War, 1939–1945

An American Story
How did isolationism shape American foreign policy in the 1930s?

Roosevelt and Reluctant Isolation
The Good Neighbor Policy
The Price of Isolation

How did war in Europe and Asia influence U.S. foreign policy?

Nazi Aggression and War in Europe
From Neutrality to the Arsenal of Democracy
Japan Attacks America

How did the United States mobilize for war?

Home-Front Security
Building a Citizen Army
Conversion to a War Economy

How did the Allies reverse Axis advances in Europe and the Pacific?

Turning the Tide in the Pacific
The Campaign in Europe

How did war change the American home front?

Women and Families, Guns and Butter
The Double V Campaign
Wartime Politics and the 1944 Election
Reaction to the Holocaust

How did the Allies win the war?

From Bombing Raids to Berlin
The Defeat of Japan
Atomic Warfare

Conclusion: Why did the United States emerge as a superpower at the end of the war?
Chapter Review

Explain Why It Matters
Put It All Together
Looking Backward, Looking Ahead
Chronology

Chapter 26 The New World of the Cold War, 1945–1960

An American Story
How did the Cold War begin?

U.S.-Soviet Tensions Emerge
The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan
Building a National Security State

How did anticommunism drive U.S. policy at home and abroad?

Superpower Rivalry around the Globe
The Domestic Chill: McCarthyism

Why did the United States go to war in Korea?

Military Implementation of Containment
From Containment to Rollback to Containment
Korea’s Political Fallout
An Armistice and the War’s Costs

How did Truman’s and Eisenhower’s approaches to the superpower struggle differ?

The “New Look” in Foreign Policy
Applying Containment to Vietnam
Interventions in Latin America and the Middle East
The Nuclear Arms Race

Conclusion: What were the costs and consequences of the Cold War?
Chapter Review

Explain Why It Matters
Put It All Together
Looking Backward, Looking Ahead
Chronology

Chapter 27 Postwar Culture and Politics, 1945–1960

An American Story
What were the prospects for domestic reform in the Truman years?

Reconverting to a Peacetime Economy
The Fair Deal Falters
Race and Rights in the 1940s

To what extent did Eisenhower dismantle the New Deal?

A Republican “Middle Way”
A Shifting Indian Policy

What fueled postwar prosperity?

Technology Transforms Agriculture and Industry
Suburban Migrations
The Rise of the Sun Belt
The Democratization of Higher Education

How did economic growth affect American society, politics, and culture?

A Consumer Culture
The Revival of Domesticity and Religion
Television Transforms Culture and Politics
Countercurrents

What mobilized African Americans to fight for civil rights in the 1950s?

African Americans Challenge the Supreme Court and the President
Montgomery and Mass Protest

Conclusion: What challenges did peace and prosperity mask?
Chapter Review

Explain Why It Matters
Put It All Together
Looking Backward, Looking Ahead
Chronology

Chapter 28 Rights, Rebellion, and Reaction, 1960–1974

An American Story
What were the achievements of JFK’s New Frontier and LBJ’s Great Society?

Kennedy and a New Frontier in the 1960s
Johnson and the War on Poverty
Liberalism at High Tide
Legacies of the Great Society
The Judicial Revolution

How did the black freedom movement evolve?

The Flowering of Civil Rights
The Response in Washington
Black Power and Urban Rebellions

What other social movements emerged in the 1960s?

Native American Protest
Latino Struggles for Justice
Youth Rebellions, the New Left, and the Counterculture
Gay Men and Lesbians Organize
Environmental Activists Mobilize

What were the goals of the new wave of feminism?

A Multifaceted Movement Emerges
Feminist Gains Spark a Countermovement

Why and where did the conservative movement gain ground?

A Grassroots Right
Nixon and the Election of 1968

Conclusion: What were the lasting effects of sixties-era reform?
Chapter Review

Explain Why It Matters
Put It All Together
Looking Backward, Looking Ahead
Chronology

Chapter 29 Confronting Limits, 1961–1979

An American Story
What led to the United States’ deepening involvement in Vietnam?

Anticommunism in the Kennedy Years
A Growing War in Southeast Asia
An All-Out Commitment in Vietnam
Those Who Served

How did a war abroad provoke a war at home?

The Antiwar Movement
The Tet Offensive and Steps toward Peace
The Tumultuous Election of 1968

How did U.S. foreign policy change under Nixon?

Détente with the Soviet Union and China
U.S. Interventions around the World
Nixon’s War in Vietnam
Peace Accords
The Legacy of Defeat

What accounted for the growth of conservatism in the 1970s?

The End of the Boom
Nixon Courts the Right
The Election of 1972
The Watergate Scandal
The Ford Presidency and the 1976 Election

What challenges did the Carter administration face?

A Retreat from Liberalism
Energy and Environmental Reform
Promoting Human Rights Abroad
New Foreign Crises

Conclusion: How did the constraints of the 1970s reshape U.S. policy and politics?
Chapter Review

Explain Why It Matters
Put It All Together
Looking Backward, Looking Ahead
Chronology

Chapter 30 Divisions at Home and Abroad in a Conservative Era, 1980–2000

An American Story
What conservative goals were realized during Reagan’s presidency?

Appealing to the New Right and Beyond
Unleashing Free Enterprise
Winners and Losers in a Flourishing Economy

What strategies did liberals use to fight the conservative turn?

Battles in the Courts and Congress
Feminism on the Defensive
The Gay and Lesbian Rights Movement

Why did the Cold War intensify, and how did it end?

Militarization and Interventions Abroad
The Iran-Contra Scandal
Soviet-American Relations Transformed
A “New World Order”
War in Central America and the Persian Gulf

What led to increased political polarization in the 1990s?

Gridlock in Government
The 1992 Election
Clinton’s Reforms
Accommodating the Right
Impeaching the President

How did Clinton respond to the challenges of globalization?

The Booming Economy of the 1990s
Debates over Free Trade
Defining America’s Place in a New World Order

Conclusion: What were the legacies of the “Reagan Revolution”?
Chapter Review

Explain Why It Matters
Put It All Together
Looking Backward, Looking Ahead
Chronology

Chapter 31 America in a New Century, Since 2000

An American Story
How did George W. Bush alter the focus of U.S. foreign and domestic policy?

The Disputed Election of 2000
The 9/11 Attacks
Security and Civil Liberties
Unilateralism and the “War on Terror”
Domestic Achievements — and Disasters

What were the strengths and weaknesses of the American economy?

Globalized Labor and Production
Immigration and Its Discontents
The New Economy and the Old

What obstacles stood in the way of Obama’s reform agenda?

A Post-Racial America?
Governing with Resistance
Multilateralism in Foreign Policy

How did new social movements change politics?

Progressives Mobilize
Civil Rights and Black Lives
Social Media and Activism

What was the significance of the 2016 election?

Platforms, Polls, and Protests
Right-Wing Populism on the Rise
A Retreat from U.S. Global Leadership

Conclusion: In a deeply polarized America, was there any common ground?
Chapter Review

Explain Why It Matters
Put It All Together
Looking Backward, Looking Ahead
Chronology

Appendix

The Declaration of Independence
The Constitution of the United States
Amendments to the Constitution (including the six unratified amendments)

Glossary
Index
About the Authors
Inside Back Cover
Back Cover