• Pre-Columbian Societies

o Early inhabitants of the Americas

 the arrival of peoples from northeastern Asia during the last Ice Age when
land linked Siberia and Alaska (Bering Land Bridge)

 hundreds of independent tribes

 early civilizations

• Aztecs

o known as “Mexica” at the time

o migrated from the north during the thirteenth century and

settled on the shore of Lake Texcoco as subjects of the local
inhabitants.

o overthrew rulers in 1428 and went on to conquer other cities

around the lake and extended their domain to the Gulf Coast

o four year drought in the 1450’s

 Aztecs interpreted it as a sign that the gods, like

themselves, were hungry

 priests maintained that the only way to satisfy the gods

was to serve them human blood and hearts

• conquering Aztec warriors sought captives for

sacrifice in order to nourish the gods

o to support the nearly two hundred thousand people residing in

and around Tenochtitlan (capital) the Aztecs maximized the
production of food

 drained swampy areas and added rich soil from the lake
bottom

• called chinampas or artificial islands

 developed highly elaborate irrigation system

o rebellions constantly flared within their realm

 they had surrounded and weakened, but not subjugated,

one neighboring rival, while another blocked their
westward expansion

o 1519 - Spanish Conquistadores invaded and brought the Aztec

Empire to an end

 disease played important role

• Incas

o capital is Cuzco

o conquered and subordinated societies over much of the Andes

and adjacent regions after 1438

o key to the expansion was the ability to produce and distribute a

wide range of surplus crops

 including maize, beans, potatoes, and meats

o constructed terraced irrigation systems for watering crops on

uneven terrain

o perfected freeze-drying and other preservation techniques

o built vast storehouses

o vast network of roads and bridges

o still expanding when violently crushed in the sixteenth century

by the Spanish

• Anasazi

o located in the Four Corners area

 where Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah meet

o by around 700 A.D., the Anasazi people were harvesting crops,

living in permanent villages, and making pottery.

o expanded over a wide area and became the most powerful

people in the Southwest

o architecture

 villages consisted of extensive complexes of attached

apartments and storage rooms, along with kivas (partly
underground structures in which men conducted religious
ceremonies)

 Anasazi-style apartments and kivas are central features of

Pueblo Indian architecture in the Southwest

o height of Anasazi culture occurred between 900 and 1150 during

an unusually wet period in the Southwest

 built perfectly straight roads, even carving footholds or

stairs in cliffs
  by controlling rainwater runoff through small dams and
terraces, the towns fed themselves as well as the
satellites

o overriding cause of the decline of the Anasazi was drought

• Mayan

o Yucatan Peninsula

o developed advancement in the arts, literature and writing,

developed the calendar as well as a fully developed written
language, numerical system that included zero

o The Mayan religions are heavily based on the cyclical nature of

time. They viewed celestial and other events in nature and
practiced religious ceremonies for those events. Mayan priests
were used to translate these events and say what type of
ceremonies should be practiced. Like the Aztecs the Mayan also
practiced human sacrifice

o Unlike the Aztecs the Mayan empire took nearly 170 years
before the Conquistadors gained entire control of the region.

o influenced by the Teotihuacan

• Ohio River Valley

o mound builders

o Mississippi river settlements

o created the “Mississippian culture” 700 AD

o religious ceremonies focused on the sun, as a source of

agricultural fertility

 chief = to be related to the sun

• if died, wives and servants were killed to

accompany him into the afterlife0

o after 900 AD Mississippian centers formed extensive networks

based on river born trade and shared religious beliefs

o Cahokia

 major, most powerful center

• Transatlantic Encounters and Colonial Beginnings, 1492 – 1690

o Africa

 extended families
 • matrilineal

 religion

• animism – polytheistic, nature spirits

o interior of Africa

• Islam

o founded on the coast

o Muslims enslaved those of the interior of Africa, converted them

• trade

o brought Islam to Africa

o gold and salt are precious commodities

o important cause of the slave trade

 Ghana

• gold

o inflation caused by discovery

 Mali

• arose from the Ghana Empire

 Songhai

• 700-1400 CE

o Vasco da Gama

 Portuguese explorer

 first person to reach India from Europe

• by sailing around the coast of Africa

 used Lateen sails

o Henry the Navigator

 Portuguese explorer

 ignored the treaty of Tordesillas

• divided South America between Spain and Portugal

o Portugal was Brazil and East

  sugar

o Spain was west of Brazil

 silver and gold

o Christopher Columbus

 discovered America

• thought he was in India, but was really in the Caribbean

 sailed for Spain after being denied by the Portuguese

• he is Portuguese

 Columbian Exchange

• brought disease and manufactured goods to the New World

• brought new crops and slaves to the Old World

o Hernando Cortez

 conquers the Aztecs in 1521

 from Spain

o Picasso Pizarro

 conquered the Incas

 from Portugal

o Elizabethan Era

 religion

• Angelicans

• Puritans

• England

o state religion =Anglicans

o emperor = both religious and monarch (political power)

• lutherism-prussia

• Calvinism-france

o stressed predestination

 god is omnipotent/omniscient
 o humanity is sinful

• puritans

o didn’t believe prests/popes are important

o believed in direct relationship with god

o more militant

 not allowed to vote, education important, cater to second

class citizens

o test act – proved to be a true Anglican

o Separatists

 don’t want to be part of English church

• move to America

o Non Separatists

 okay with state church

 anti-catholic

 foreign policy

• “bloody” mary married to King Phillip of Spain

o if she died, he gets everything

• Elizabeth 1st took over

o encourages immigration to the new world

o wants to counter Spanish expeditions

o Spanish Colonization

 Motives

• economic

• spread religion – Catholic

 Conquer Vast Lasts/Establish empire

 enslave natives to work fields

 encomiendas- grants awarding Indian land, labor, and tribute to weathly

colonists

• earliest were gold minds

  conquistadors – Spanish explorers

 sent viceroy to administer/rule colonies

o French/Dutch Colonization

 build small colonies

 trade fur for weapons

• for hats

 do not try to make precious societies

• French

o settle in Quebec

o protestants

o friends with Indians – Iroquois

o Hurons – enemies

 major battle between Hurons and French ?????

 battle of Lake Champlain

• French and Iroquois won

• Dutch

o settled in New Amsterdam

o English Colonies

 failed settlements

• Roanoke - 1587

 Virginia Company of London

• issued charter by queen Elizabeth the first, was not financed by

monarch but by joint stock company

• Jamestown

o 1st successful settlement

o settle by gentry

 gentlemen

• educated commoners, no manual labor

 • died of disease/starvation

o john smith

 sets up military discipline

 wrote the starving time

 anglo-powhatan wars

 “no work =no food”

o challenges – disease (dysentery, malaria, etc.), and mal nutrition

o john Rolf – marries Pocahontas

 grew tobacco

• Plymouth

o 1622

o Plymouth company

o separatists puritans

 wanted to be separated from English church

o mayflower compact

 promised they would from a separatist puritan gov’t and

abide by it.

• example of American desire for gov’t

 Massachusetts Bay Colony

• 1630

• non separatists (Congregationalists)

o want to reform church/government

• unified

• absorbs Plymouth

• Winthrop’s utopian vision – “City upon a Hill”

• church and state separate

• became too successful and generations later began to loss sight of

their goal

 1625: European built colonies on the St. Lawrence to Rio Grande

o Slavery

 vast majority went to plantations in the Caribbean and north American

colonies

 depopulation and uprooting of native Americans in the 1500s

• warfare

• epidemics

o regions

 New England, Chesapeake, Carolina, Middle Colonies

o 1630: Puritan lead great migration to new England

 colony based on religious ideal

 first utopian or ideal society

 bishops made services according to book of common prayer

• Puritan minister refused so courts fined and excommunicated them

 established Massachusetts bay

• non separatists

• was different from Plymouth

• advocated reform rather than separation from church

 John Winthrop

• rich had an obligation to look after the poor

• poor should accept social superiors as rulers

 Period of Starvation

o Pequot War – 1637

 Massachusetts Bay prohibited North Americans from practicing own religions

• encouraged them to convert to Christianity

• praying towns

o taught North Americans Christianity and English Ways

 established Connecticut

• Indians were unhappy

 o violence broke out

 Settlers won

• established New Haven

o Dissent and Orthodoxy

 Puritans emphasized education, literacy, and Orthodoxy

• Harvard, Yale, Princeton – colleges that trained religious officials to

become ministers

o Power to the Saints

 “saints”

• saved people

• only saints could vote/choose minister

 general court

• became bicameral (two chambers)

 lawmaking body

• town meetings

• decentralized authority

• saints had power over political and economic issues

o New England families

 nuclear

 patriarchal

o Halfway Covenant

 permitted children of baptized adults, non-saints too, to receive baptism,

opted for worldly power of spiritual purity

• eventually ruins original Puritan ideals

o Salem Witchcraft

 mostly charged females who lived in the outskirts of village

 decreased the already nonexistent power of women

o Chesapeake Bay

 in Virginia and Maryland

 produced tobacco

 society

• dominated by a few wealthy planters

• mostly white indentured servants

• a small growing number of black slaves

• poor white farmers

 legislature split into two chambers

 1650 – House of Burgesses and Governor’s council

• first government body

• members held lifetime appointments

 Virginia adopted England’s county court systems

 state church = church of England

• loyalists

 each parish had six vestrymen

• chosen from wealthy planters

• handled church finances

• decided who was deserving of poor relief

• investigated complaints against the minister

 Virginia taxpayers were legally obligated to pay fixed rates to the Anglican
church

 shortage of clergymen

• many communities without functioning congregations

 Maryland

• meant to be a haven for Catholics

o unsuccessful

• crown gave land instead of joint stock companies

• Lord Baltimore

o obtained a grant from the Virginia Company

 o established a head right

 for people who brought settlers

o he had English Catholic worship at his home

• 1642 – conflict between Catholics and protestants

o lord Baltimore made Act for Religious Toleration

 made Maryland the second colony after Rhode Island to

affirm liberty of worship

• did not bring peace

• even though this was an act for religious toleration,

it was only for Christians

• 1654 – protestants bar the Catholics from voting

o ousted governor William Stone

 repealed the Toleration Act

• Battle of Severn River

o governor fights back but looses

• has an assembly

o made up of landowners

• divided by towns not counties

• people did not attend church that often

o because of location

o priests did not want to leave England

 men wrote wills, giving wives perpetual or complete control of the estates

 tobacco shapes the region (1630-1670)

 Bacons Rebellion (1675-1676)

• tensions between Natives and settlers

• Nathaniel Bacon, of the backcountry of Virginia

o won settlers support

o killed friendly Indians in April, 1676

o June of 1676, Bacon wanted to wage war against all Indians

 o governor forced to agree and a new law was made

 Indians that left their villages without English permission

were enemies

• lands forfeited and troops could take whatever they

wanted, even people as slaves

o governor Berkley changes his decision and rebels attack and win

o Bacon dies in 1676 of Dysentery, followers disperse

• shows rich coast people vs. poor interior backcountry people idea

• Territorial Expansion and Manifest Destiny

o Indian Removal Act

 Indians pushed from land and forced west by the colonists

• created future tension

• opened up land for the colonists

o Irish

 nativism – hatred towards Irish coming to America and taking American jobs

 small land owners

 mostly poor Catholics with a few rich protestants

 Anti-Catholicism – hatred of Catholics

 immigrate due to Great Potato Famine

 Irish competed with blacks and hated abolitionists

o Germans

 more independent than Irish

 own isolated societies

 skill laborers

 favored by Americans

o territorial acquisitions

 Americans settle in Texas in 1835

• white rebellion in Texas

o Hayden Edwards led a revolt against Mexico in 1826

• Texas revolution in 1836

 o Stephen Austin wanted to restore the Mexican constitution of
1824

• empresarios – peaceful Americans encouraged by Mexican government

to settle

• had silver and catholic missions

• southern farmers wanted slaves in Texas, not allowed because Mexico

was a slave free country

• 1836-1845 – Texas is independent

• 1845 – Texas annexed as a slave state

o accompanied by a joint resolution of both houses of congress

• 1845 - santé fee trail

 Americans have settlements in California, new Mexico, and Oregon

• California

o needed manufactured goods from Mexico

o had gold and cattle hides

o californios – Hispanics born in California

 Mexico was eager to trade with them

• new Mexico

o settlers cut off from country

o wagon trains (Oregon trail)

 high death rates

o traded with western states

• Oregon

o abundant farmland

 many settlers moved west (manifest destiny)

o divided at the 49th parallel between the Americans and British

o Oregon trail

 James K. Polk

• democrat

• talked about expansion

• supported the re-annexation of Texas

• big on tariffs and independent treasury

 • challenged the British for Oregon

 increased amount of land for American settlers

o John Deere – farming

o Charles River Bridge Case

 granted in 1785 a charter by the state of Massachusetts to operate a toll

bridge.

 The state later authorized in 1828 a competing bridge that would eventually
be free to the public, so the Charles River Bridge Company brought suit
against the competing company, claiming that the state charter had given it
a monopoly

 The court upheld the state's authorization to the other company, holding that
since the original charter did not specifically grant a monopoly, the contract
would operate in favor of the public, allowing bridge to be completed

o Cyrus McCormick – created the reaper in 1831

o Manifest Destiny

 Expand all the way to the Pacific Ocean “area of freedom”

 Invoked God and Nature

 Whigs – thought Democrats were spreading slavery

 Sullivan – against expanding because sink to level of British

 Herald focused on anxieties of working class – wanted to expel British from

Oregon, keep slavery

 Bennet’s telegraph would help communication

o Webster-Ashburton Treaty

 Created the border between New Brunswick and Maine

o “54-40 or Fight”/Oregon Treaty

 1846

 negotiations with the British after Polk's inauguration - the boundary

between the U.S. and British Canada was established at 49°

 The exception to the 49th parallel boundary is that it turns south in the
channel separating Vancouver Island with the mainland and then turns south
and then west through the Juan de Fuca Strait.

o Mexican War

 US hated Mexico due to large debt

 Mexico feared that if US got Texas, they would not stop there

 may 1846 – Zachary Taylor beat Mexicans in two battles

 • sent by Polk

• captured Monterrey

 march 1847 – US captured Mexico city

 treaty of Guadalupe- Hidalgo

• 1848

• ended the war

• Mexico ceded Texas with re-agreeing boundary

• US paid Mexico $15 million to Mexico

• treaty ratified march 10, 1848

o John Slidell

 served as agent to Mexico in the months preceding the outbreak of war

between that nation and the United States

 close ally of James K. Polk

o American Exceptionalism

 idea of American identity

 new world = Eden

 Monroe doctrine

• America is not to be corrupted by foreign affairs and ideas

 manifest destiny is an example of this

 America = best

• The Crisis of the Union

o slavery disputes

 Missouri Compromise

• opened debate on slavery in territories

 Wilmont Proviso

• reopened the debate of slavery in territories like the old Missouri

Compromise

• passed in the house but not the senate

o because Polk did not endorse it

 3/5 compromise

 fugitive slave act

 • angers north

• slaves get no jury

• judges were corrupt, got money for every slave returned

• impact

o north fired up against slavery

• vigilance and personal liberty laws

o union would surrender slaves or be prosecuted for helping

slaves

• Anthony Burns

o runaway slave taken back south

 Uncle Tom’s Cabin

• 1852 written by Harriet Beecher Stowe

• created anti-slavery feelings

 The Impending Crisis of the South

• Written by Hinton Rowan Helper

• Strongly attacked slavery as a barrier to the economic advancement of

whites

 Dred Scott case

• Dred Scott vs. Sandford

o debate over the northwest ordinance

o Dred Scott couldn’t sue for freedom

o slaves could not become US citizens

o the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional because it

violated the fifth amendment, which did not allow Congress or
territorial governments to exclude slavery from any area

o Scott lost

• due to the case, Lecompton Constitution in 1857

o protected the rights of slaveholders in Kansas regarding their

slave property

 never went through congress because Kansans (people of

Kansas) voted against it

o Nashville Convention

 Only 9/15 slave states sent delegates

o compromise of 1850

 omnibus bill

• makes California a free state

• new Mexico and Utah are organized without the mention of slavery

 Texas established as slave state

 no slave sales in D.C.

 Texas debts are to be paid by federal government

o Popular Sovereignty

 Territories decision to enter as a free or slave state

o Gadsden Purchase

 Land south of Gila River

o Stephen Douglas

 Democrat

 Sponsored Kansas-Nebraska Act

 Largely responsible for the compromise of 1850

o Kansas-Nebraska Act

 1854 – began with Stephen Douglas on the expansion of railroads from East
to West

 south said the railroads would go through non-slave land and Nebraska would
be a free state, therefore upsetting balance

 got rid of Missouri Compromise

• states would decide by popular sovereignty

 led to the collapse of the Whig party

• created territories without restrictions of slavery

• divided on the issue

o Free Soil Position and Party

 Did not want slavery to expand

 Supported Wilmot Proviso

 nominated Martin Van Buren on a platform of opposition to any kind of

slavery

 Although they were unable to carry any state, they had enough influence in
North to convey their point.
o Ostend Manifesto

 Take Cuba

o Know nothing party

 against slavery

 came from the secret organization called the Order of the Star Spangled
Banner – 1849

• wanted to get rid of immigrants and Catholics in the US

• saw Catholicism and slavery as evil

• protestants to hold office

 dispersed in 1856

o republicans

 made up of former Whigs and no nothings and free soilers

 1854

 were against slavery

• in the presidential election of 1860, the extension of slavery should b e

prohibited by the Federal Government, but protected in the States
where it already existed

 built organizations on the state level

o bleeding Kansas

 civil war in Kansas in 1856 between pro slavery and free soilers due to the
Kansas Nebraska Act

 ruffians vs. abolitionists

 Lecompton vs. Topeka

• free state government

 brooks vs. Sumner

• Charles Sumner, a senator from Massachusetts, made a speech titled,

"The Crime Against Kansas," denouncing slavery, and, at the same
time, ridiculing the South Carolina senator, Charles Butler, in 1856.

• Preston Brooks, Butler’s nephew came into the Senate chamber and
hit him on the head, making Brooks a hero in the South.

• brooks beats Sumner with a cane

 northwest Ordinance

• how a territory becomes a state

 • Lecompton vs. Topeka set constitution

o to settle the Kansas problem about whether to prohibit or allow

slavery

o Kansas is admitted as a free state

o constitution was crushed because the pro slavery people did not
follow it

o Lecompton backed by democrats

o Abraham Lincoln

 south did not like Lincoln

• they feared North was exerting control through him

• his personal views clashed against those of the South

 Lincoln – Douglas debates

• contrast each other ideologically and physically

• Lincoln joins republicans, Douglas joins democrats

• both wanted to keep slavery out of the way of white settlement

• both candidates agreed that popular sovereignty would keep slavery

out of territories

• Douglas wins debate, but Lincoln and supporters definitely made their
mark

o John Brown and Harpers Ferry

 October 16, 1859 at Harpers Ferry

• John Brown led 21 men to get slaves to rise up

• did not give his men food and forgot to tell the slaves

 Lee overpowered Brown and hanged him

 Brown put ideas of rebellion in slaves minds

o Election of 1860

 republicans knew that if they wanted to win election they needed to come up
with an economic program

• tariffs, internal improvements, and 163 acres of public land for settlers

• Lincoln is candidate

 democratic problems

• split between North and South due to Dred Scott case

  Lincoln won

o secession

 south was not happy about the election results

 south secedes from Union on December 20, 1860

• South Carolina secedes first

• makes the Confederate States of America

• Jefferson Davis is the first president

• were not united, just a loose confederation of states

o search for compromise

 south Carolina senator Crittenden proposed government to

compensate for runaway slaves to avoid secession

• did not work because Lincoln was against the free soil ideals

• Civil War

o advantages

 north

• naval ships to go through rivers

• industrialized

• better railroads

• more people

• enrolment Act of 1863 – draft that forced 20-45 year old whites into
Union Army

• Ulysses S. Grant - generals

 south

• political advantage

• home front battle

• Robert E. Lee – general

• impressments Act of 1863 – allowed army officers to take food from

farmers at prescribed rates

• conscription Act

o finances

 north
 • legal tender of paper money

• 50 million greenback

• war bonds

 south

• war bonds

• confederacy inflation

o border states

 north

• habeas corpus – keep secessionalists in jail

• major rivers

o Ohio and Mississippi

• ex parte Merryman

o court case

o Habeas Corpus

o put in jail in Maryland

 because he was a secessionist

o arms and strategy

 trench warfare

 guerilla warfare

 long range strategy – anaconda plan

• north

• blockade of the southern coastline

• invented by Winfield Scott

• works but takes forever

 rifles and machine guns

o Fort Sumter

 Lincoln sending supplies and food not ammunition to fort, to gain the military
advantage of attacking fort Sumter before the arrival of relief ships,
Confederate batteries began to bombard the fort shortly before dawn on April
12.

o foreign affairs

 Trent Affair
 • Mason and Slidell boarded British ship

• Britain is pro-union

 Laird Rams

• ships specifically designed to break blockades

• the English prevented them from being sold to the South

 Clayton-Bulwer Treaty

• British and U.S. agreed to:

o Not to seek exclusive control of the canal or territory on either

side of such a canal

o Not to fortify any position in the canal area

o Not to establish colonies in Central America

o Bull Run

 first major battle

 confederates won

 show that there will be a long bloody war

o Antietam

 bloodiest battle

 union victory

 Lee’s troops invaded Maryland because they needed supplies and hoped for
Europe’s help

o confiscation Acts

 the Union right to seize all property used in military aid of the rebellion
(South) including slaves

 freedom for slaves who join Union armies

 law gave the president the right to employ blacks as soldiers

o Emancipation Proclamation

 freed the slaves in rebellion states, not loyal states

 issued by Lincoln

 transformed Union’s war aims

 lays the groundwork for the 13th amendment which abolishes slavery

o Vicksburg
  union victory

 won control of the city

o Gettysburg

 very bloody battle

 Pickett attack the union

 Confederacy defeated, Union victory

o copperheads – northern democrats

o Sherman’s March

 marched through Atlanta, Savanna, and Columbia

 burned, killed, looted, and pulled up railroad tracks and roads on his way

o Appomattox

 Lee retreated from Petersburg with low amounts of men and supplies

 surrendered at Appomattox courthouse in 1865

 end of Civil War

o Seward’s Ice Box

 Seward's Icebox was Alaska when William Seward purchased it for the United
States

o Lincoln shot and died by John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865

o 600,000 casualties, the largest American casualty rate ever

o Economic effects of the war

 North

• pacific railroad Act – transcontinental railroad

• USMRR – united states military railroads

• industrialization increased = huge economic growth

• federal government strengthened and centralized

 south

• output declined

• decreased yield

• land ruined

• does not really recover until 1950

o Social effects of the war

  dissent

• loyalty to the Union

• states rights activists are strongest in border states and mid-west

• democrats had supported medical-war open hospitals

o women nurses

• had prison camps

o most died

• Vallandighan

o “peace democrat”

• Ex Parte Milligan (1866) – example

 women’s’ rights

• north

o women were rewarded for war services

o women’s’ loyal national league was created

• Reconstruction

o Lincoln’s plan

 proclamation of amnesty and reconstruction

• 1863 – outlined the path for rejoining the Union

 Wade Davis Bill

• 1864 – said former confederate states would be ruled by military

governor

o Lincoln pocket vetoed it

 10% plan

• 1863 – Lincoln’s plan for reconstruction

o offered full pardons to the people living in confederate states

who would take an oath of allegiance

 excluded former confederate military officers and civilian

authorities

o once 10% of the citizens of the state took the oath, the state
could rejoin the union

• radical republicans felt it was too lenient

o Johnson and his plan

  did not want freed slaves to have voting rights

 pardon to any southerner who swears allegiance to the Union

 opposed amnesty for individuals with over $20,000 worth of property

 he was impeached for the tenure of office law

• law prohibited the removal of civil officers without senate consent

• breaks law when he fires radical republicans

• he is impeached but not removed

 wanted to end the planter aristocracy

 he was a democrat added to the republican / national union ticket in 1864

 he created the black codes

• restricted black behavior

o segregation in public

o no racial intermarriage

o no jury service by blacks

o no testimony of blacks against whites

• were used to replace the slave codes and undermine the 13th
amendment

• radical republicans hated this because they were pro black rights

• freedmen bureau

o suspended the enforcement of the laws

o created schools for blacks

o reunited separated families

o 14th amendment

 1868 – gave all persons born in the US citizenship

 all citizens are guaranteed equal treatment under the law

o 15th amendment

 1870 – guaranteed the right to vote to all black men

o reconstruction Act of 1867

 passed by congress

 former confederate states were militarily occupied by US troops except

Tennessee
  states could reenter the Union once the 14th amendment was ratified

• Origins of the New South

o scalawags

 southern Whigs that became republicans and cooperated with the

government in the South

o carpetbaggers

 northerners who came down to meddle in southern business affairs

o KKK

 no officially linked to the democrat party

 white supremacy group (terrorists)

o Boss Tweed

 example of bossism

• which is where the boss provides jobs and housing to secure votes

• used to manipulate elections

• corrupt machine politics in the North

o especially NY

o share cropping / crop lien system

 plantations broken

 people work on land and share ½ of crops with the land owner

• live there

• independent from the owner

 crop lien was for credit

• no money, issued credit based on crops

o Panic of 1873

 lasted 4 years

 people lose money

• because money is used for railroads and houses

• banks are losing money

 brings up the question of what money should be used?

• greenback party

o 1875-1890
 o print money to keep economy going

 inflation

 bad for long term, good for short term

o Slaughterhouse Cases of 1873

 proposed by the federal government to protect basic rights; such as, freedom
of speech and religion

 brought up the idea that the 14th amendment could only protect on a national
basis, not state

o U.S. v. Reese

 A Kentucky electoral official had refused to register an African‐American's

vote in a municipal election and was indicted under two sections of the 1870
act:

• section 2 required that administrative preliminaries to elections be

conducted without regard to race, color, or previous condition of
servitude

• section 3 forbade wrongful refusal to register votes where a

prerequisite step “required as aforesaid” had been omitted.

 Reese lost

o U.S. v. Cruikshank

 limited the ability of the federal government to protect the civil rights of
newly-freed African Americans

 the Court concluded that punishment for the offenses committed in the
Colfax Massacre lay with the state
o Election of 1876
 Rutherford Hayes (republican) vs. Samuel Tilden (democrat)

 neither had enough votes to win

• undecided votes go to Hayes

o focused on Florida, SC, and Louisiana

o upset democrats and Tilden

 compromise = compromise of 1877

o Compromise of 1877

 because Hayes won by the manipulated votes, a deal was made with the
democrats

• democrats would gain control of SC and Louisiana

• troops would also be removed from said states

• democrats “forget” to treat southern freedmen fairly

o plains Indians

 nomadic

 follow buffalo with horses

 Americans tried to convert Indians into white culture

 each Indian head of household received 160 acres to farm and 320 acres for
grazing

• each additional family members received 40 acres

• land was held in trust by the government for 25 years

• participation was mandatory

• speculators took advantage of the land and sold it for profit

 impact

• 2/3 of tribal land was lost

• land was left over following the allotments of native Americans and
became open to white settlement

o destruction of buffalo

 whites wanted the hides and horns to sell

 mass murdering of buffalo

 buffalo population declines, Indian source of food declined

 William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody killed 4300 in a year to feed the crews building
the union pacific railroad in 1867-1868

o Sand Creek Massacre

 standard white invasion of Indian land

 after battle US needed a new Indian policy

o Battle of Little Bighorn

 Indians refused to go to reservations

 Custer lead 600 troops in June 1876

• wanted to search for gold, coverup = wanted to civilize Indians

• divided his men taking 211 of them thinking to stop the Indians of their
retreat

• were defeated/killed from the other side

 half of the Indians (over 100-3000) were wiped out

 significance
 • people questioned the current policy towards Indians

o reservation system

 put Indians in white schools and taught them white crap

 tried to convert Indians into models of white society

 attempted to force Christianity onto them

 to protect their land the Indians raided non-indian settlements and

intimidated federal agents

 Indian agencies were supposed to keep the Indians on the reservation

 “kill the Indian, save the man”

o Dawes Act

 1887

 designed to reform the weaknesses of Indian life which were – lack of private
property and nomadic style

 wanted to treat Indians as individuals, not as part of the tribe

o Wounded Knee Massacre

 December 29, 1890

 300 indians and 29 US soldiers were killed

 Indians were slaughtered

 Indians were “ghost dancing”, soldiers mistook it for battle

 significance

• decline of Indian population

o Ft. Laramie Treaty

 1868

 powder river war ended and land was set aside for the Sioux Indians

• Indians do not like it

o Helen Hunt Jackson

 supported the Dawes Act

• Knights of Labor

o founded in 1969 by nine Philadelphia tailors led by Uriah H. Stephens

o secret society modeled after the Masonic order

 o welcomed all wage earners or former wage earners, excluded only bankers, doctors,
lawyers, stockbroker, professional gamblers, and liquor dealers

o demanded equal pay for women, the end of child labor, the end of convict labor, the
cooperative employer-employee ownership of factories, mines, and other
businesses, called for a tax on all earnings, graduated so that the higher income
earners would pay more.

o in the 1880’s Terence V. Powderly replaced Stephens and the member total grew
rapidly

o preached temperance for all members

o accepted black members

o opposed to strikes

 many members disagreed and formed sections of radical local branches

• Pullman Strike

o 1894

o strike against Pullman Palace Car Company

o when the depression hit, George Pullman slashed workers wages but kept the rent
the same

o union members working for the nation’s largest railroads refused to switch Pullman
cars, paralyzing rail traffic in and out of Chicago

o the General Managers’ Association (made of railroad executives) imported

strikebreakers from jobless easterners and asked US attorney for a federal
injunction against the strikers for allegedly refusing to move railroad cars carrying
US mail

o when the union refused to order its members back to work, Debs (leader) was
arrested and federal troops poured in

 700 freight cars were burned, 13 people died, 53 wounded

o most systematic use of troops to smash union power

• Homestead Strike

o 1892

o at the Carnegie Steel Company Plant in Homestead, Pennsylvania, managers cut

wages and locked out the workers to destroy the union

o workers responded by firing on the armed men from the Pinkerton Detective
Agency who came to protect the plant

o seven union members and three Pinkertons died

o a week later the governor sent 8000 National Guardsmen to restore union

o the union was crushed and the mills resumed full operation a month later
• Haymarket Bombing

o 1886

o Chicago police shot and killed 4strikers at the McCormick Harvester plant on May 3

o at a protest rally the next morning in the city’s Haymarket Square, someone threw
a bomb from a nearby building, killing or fatally wounding 7 policemen

 in response, the policemen fired wildly into the crowd, killing 4 demonstrators

• injunction - a court order that requires somebody involved in a legal action to do

something or refrain from doing something

• Pinkertons

• Terrence Powderly

o young Pennsylvanian machinist of irich catholic immigrant origins

o successor of Uriah H. Stephens of the Knights of Labor

o his eloquence coupled with a series of successes in labor clashes brought thousands
of new members

o opposed to strikes, which he viewed as a “relic of barbarianism”

o he organized producer and consumer cooperatives

o he was a teetotaler and pressed temperance on all members

• Chinese Exclusion Act

o To prevent an excess of cheap labor, Congress in 1882 enacted the Chinese

Exclusion Act, designed to exclude Chinese immigrants from the U.S. and to provide
for the deportation of those adjudged illegally resident in the country.
• yellow dog contracts
o contracts that business owners and managers had workers and employees sign
stating that they would not join any unions or workers’ strikes
• Eugene V. Debs
o Leader of the American Railway Union
o vowed “to strip the mask of hypocrisy from the pretended philanthropist and show
him to the world as an oppressor of labor”
o arrested in the Pullman Strike
• In re Debs
• Henry George Progress and Poverty
o 1879
o noted that speculators reaped huge profits from the rising price of land that they
neither developed nor improved
 by taxing this the government could obtain the funds needed to ameliorate
the misery caused by industrialization
o preached the benefits of socialism without the stifling of individual initiative
o Georges program was so popular that he lectured around the country and narrowly
missed being elected mayor of New York in 1886
• Edward Bellamy Looking Backward
o 1888
o expressed a vision of harmonious industrialized society
 o novel that offers a vision of the future with a completely centralized, state run
economy, and a new religion of solidarity
o nearly 500 Bellamyite organizations, called Nationalist Clubs, sprang up to try to
turn Bellamy’s dream into a reality
• Gospel of Wealth
o published in 1889 by Andrew Carnegie
o justified the laissez-faire by applying the evolutionary theories of British scientist
Charles Darwin to human society
 “the law of competition”
o praised an unregulated competitive environment as a source of positive long-term
social benefits
• Social Darwinism
o “a drunkard in a gutter is just where he ought to be… the law of survival of the
fittest was not made by man, and it cannot be abrogated by man. we can only, by
interfering with it, produce the survival of the unfittest”
o the state owed its citizens nothing but law, order, and basic political rights
• Horatio Alger
o Unitarian minister turned dime novelist
o recounted the adventures of poor but honest lads who rose through ambition,
initiative, and self-discipline
o Andrew Carnegie was a perfect example of the types of tales that Alger wrote
• Jane Addams/Hull House
o American social settlement established in 1889 in Chicago
o established primarily as a welfare agency for needy families and also to combat
juvenile delinquency by providing recreational facilities for children living in slums
o sought to assist immigrants, then a large proportion of the Chicago population, to
learn the English language and to become American citizens.
o Funds for Hull House were provided entirely by voluntary contributions of private
citizens and grants by other social welfare agencies
• Louis Sullivan
o American architect
o argued a building’s form should follow its function
o led to modernism
o his early designs for the steel-framed skyscraper construction led to the skyscraper
as the distinctive American building type
• Social Gospel
o liberal movement in American Protestantism
o sought to apply Christian principles to a variety of social problems engendered by
industrialization
o tried to counteract the effects of expanding capitalism by teaching religion and
human dignity to the working class
o opposed the tacit support given by organized religions to unrestrained capitalism
o The Social Gospel movement's views were formally expressed in 1908 when the
Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America (a forerunner of the National
Council of Churches) adopted a “social creed of the churches.”
 This creed called for the abolition of child labor, improved working conditions
for women, a day off each week, and the right of all workers to a living wage.
• Cult of Domesticity
o idealized the home as “the woman’s sphere”
o praised the home as a protected retreat where females could express their special
maternal gifts
 including sensitivity toward children and an aptitude for religion
 o women became the directors of the household and were expected to foster an
artistic environment that would nurture her family’s cultural improvement
 upper-class women took this to heart, middleclass women had mixed feelings
regarding this
• Victorian morality
o human nature was malleable
 people could improve themselves
o Victorian Americans were intensely moralistic and eager to reform practices they
considered evil or undesired
o emphasized the social value of work
o stressed the importance of good manners and the value of literature and the fine
arts as marks of a truly civilized society

• Muckrakers
o coined by Theodore Roosevelt
o muckrakers were magazine writers who emphasized facts rather than abstractions
o awakened middle-class readers to conditions in industrial America
o examples include McClure’s and Collier’s
• Booker T. Washington (1856-1915)/Atlanta Compromise (1895)
o African-American who proposed patience and emphasis on manual skills for other
blacks to gradually earn civil rights
o ompromise was based on the intermarriage of science and agriculture
• W. E. B. Du Boise (1868-1963)/ NAACP (1909)
o African-American who demanded full racial equality, including the same educational
opportunities open to whites, and called on blacks to resist all forms of racism
o “Niagara Movement” formed the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People which the new organization called for vigorous activism, including
legal challenges, to achieve political equality for blacks and full integration into
American life; attracted urban black middle class
• Birth of a Nation (1915)
o D.W. Griffith was a film producer of the racist movie that helped regenerate the KKK
o inspired lynchings of blacks
• John Dewey
o advocate of progressive education; education reformer who wanted to teach social
moralities like honesty and respect within public schools
• William James
o philosopher who proposed pragmatism, that truth emerges from experience
o people need to be practical
• Charles and Mary Beard
o Charles-historian who saw the framers of the constitution as capitalist property
owners
o Mary-historian who wrote about workers and women
o basically, they were progressive historians
• Herbert Croly
o author of The Promise of American Life and founder of The New Republic
o he called for an activist federal government that would protect all citizens
o he wanted to reform for the poor in order to progress in a nation as a whole
• Jacob Riis
o photographer and journalist who published How the Other Half Lives in the 1890s to
show how poor people lived
• Robert LaFollette
o progressive governor and originator of the “Wisconsin Idea,” later Senator
 o one of the Insurgents against Taft’s presidential term, which divided the Republican
Party into two-Conservatives (traditionalists) and Progressivists (reformers)
• “White Slavery”/Mann Act (1910)
o prostitution came to symbolize the larger moral dangers of cities, especially ones
filled with immigrants
o act made it illegal to transport a woman across a state line “for immoral purposes”
o racism, anti-immigrant prejudice, fear of the city, and anxieties about changing
sexual mores all fueled the antiprostitution crusade
• Ballinger-Pinchot Affair
o widened the rift between Taft and the progressive Republicans
o Taft’s interior secretary, Richard Ballinger, disliked federal controls and favored
private development of natural resources
o Ballinger approved the sale of several million acres of public lands in Alaska
containing ocal deposits to a group of businessmen in 1909
o they in turn sold the land to a consortium of New York bankers including J. P.
Morgan
o Department of the Interior official protested and was fired
o significant because divided the Republican Party
• Bull Moose Party
o Theodore Roosevelt’s new political party, also the Progressive Party, that was
running against Wilson, Taft, and Debs
• The Jungle (1906)
o Upton Sinclair was the author of the novel that offered socialism as a solution to
conditions in the meat-packing industry
o he focused on immigrant and meat-packing issues but Americans ignored the
immigrants but directed their attention to the meat-packing industry
o influenced the Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act
• Meat Inspection Act (1906)
o imposed strict sanitary rules on meatpackers and set up a federal meat-inspection
system
o the more reputable food-processing, meatpacking, and medicinal companies, eager
to regain public confidence, supported these regulatory measures
• Pure Food and Drug Act (1906)
o outlawed the sale of adulterated foods or drugs and required accurate ingredient
labels
• Northern Securities Case (1904)
o Supreme Court upholds antitrust suit against Northern Securities Company, a
railroad conglomerate
• Federal Trade Commission (1914)
o created FTC as federal watchdog agency over corporations
o investigated suspected violations of federal regulations, require regular reports
from corporations, and issue cease-and-desist orders (subject to judicial review)
when it found unfair methods of competition
• Clayton Anti-Trust Act (1914)
o specifies illegal business practices
• IWW (Industrial Workers of the World, nicknamed the Wobblies)
o union that targeted the most exploited workers; leader was William “Big Bill”
Haywood
o most members were western miners, lumbermen, fruit pickers, and itinerant
laborers
o led mass strikes of Nevada gold miners
o Minnesota iron miners
 o and timber workers in Louisiana, Texas, and the Northwest, greatest strike was in
Massachusetts
• Federal Reserve System (1913)
o restructures U.S. money and banking system
o law created twelve regional Federal Reserve banks under mixed public and private
control
o each regional bank could issue U.S. dollars, called Federal Reserve notes, to the
banks in its district to make loans to corporations and individual borrowers
o significant because stands as Wilson’s greatest legislative achievement

• “Open Door”
o competition for the market in china
o American aim was not territorial wexpansion but protection of US commercial
opportunities
o spheres of influence
o called “informal empire”
• Roosevelt Corollary
o an addendum to the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, in response to European nations that
were trying to force Venezuela to repay its debts. Roosevelt threatened to send
naval ships to Venezuela if those nations sought to forcibly collect the debt. Stability
must be preserved, Roosevelt said in his 1904 annual message to Congress, even if
it requires an “exercise of international police power.” The Roosevelt Corollary,
based on the 1901 Platt Amendment, became the cornerstone of U.S. policy in Latin
America
• Hay-Bunau-Varilla Agreement
o Panama signed a treaty with the United States giving permission for the canal
project. The Panamanians had authorized Philippe Bunau-Varilla, a French citizen
and longtime official of the French canal company, to negotiate the terms and sign
the agreement. Bunau-Varilla gave the United States even more than it had asked
for: a perpetual lease on a section of central Panama 16 km (10 mi) wide, where the
canal would be built; the right to take over more Panamanian land if needed; and
the right to use troops to intervene in Panama. The United States agreed to
guarantee Panama’s independence and pay $10 million, plus an annual fee of
$250,000. In exchange for their independence, then, Panamanians were forced to
accept the treaty, which no Panamanian ever signed, that virtually gave away the
canal zone to the United States
• “gentlemen’s agreement”
o 1908
o Tokyo pledged to halt Japanese emigration to America
o racist attitudes continued to poison US-Japanese relations, and in 1913, the
California legislature prohibited Japanese aliens from owning land
• Great White Fleet
o Roosevelt thought it wise to implement diplomacy with displays of U.S. power. In
1907 he ordered a world tour by the U.S. fleet. It was intended particularly to
impress the Japanese, who, however, received the Great White Fleet, as it was
called, with enthusiasm.
• Dollar Diplomacy
o Taft encouraged U.S. bankers and industrialists to invest abroad and used
diplomatic pressure to force U.S. capital into regions where “it would not go of its
own accord.”
 One of the first regions he chose was China, where he persuaded U.S.
bankers to finance railroad construction.
 To safeguard the Panama Canal, Taft intensified dollar diplomacy in Latin
America. He promoted U.S. investments in the Caribbean, arranged it so that
 Americans were in charge of Latin American finances whenever possible, and
used U.S. Marines when persuasion failed to accomplish his objectives.
• Insular Cases
• Pancho Villa
o January 1916
o murdered 16 US mining engineers
o his gang burned Mexico City and killed 19 inhabitants
o Wilson dispatched a punitive expedition into Mexico
o when Pancho eluded and staged another cross-border raid, Wilson ordered 150,000
national guardsmen to the Mexican border
• Sussex/Arabic Pledges
o 1916
o a German U-Boat sank a French passanger ship in the English Channel, injuring
several Americans
o Wilson threatened to break diplomatic relations
 a step toward war
• Zimmerman Telegram
o Before the United States entered World War I, the German government tried to
provoke a war between the United States and Mexico. On January 19, 1917, the
German foreign secretary, Arthur Zimmermann, sent an encoded telegram to his
diplomatic representatives in Mexico, asking them to propose a secret alliance with
the Mexican government. But British intelligence officers intercepted and quickly
decoded the message, sending it on to President Woodrow Wilson. A huge public
outcry ultimately resulted in an American declaration of war against Germany.
• Selective Service Act, 1917
o In May 1917 Congress enacted conscription through the Selective Service Act to
draft men into the armed forces. Within a few months over 10 million American men
had registered for military duty.
• Bernard Baruch & War Industries Board
o The War Industries Board urged manufacturers to use mass production techniques
and increase efficiency.
o The National War Labor Board sought to resolve thousands of disputes between
management and labor that resulted from stagnant wages coupled with inflation.
• Herbert Hoover and Food Administration
o The Food Administration urged families to observe “meatless Mondays,” “wheatless
Wednesdays,” and other measures to help the war effort.
• George Creel and Comm. of Public Info.
o George Creel, a progressive journalist, headed the Committee on Public Information,
which enlisted progressive writers to explain war aims to the nation.
• Jeanette Rankin
o American legislator
o leader of woman suffrage movement
o first woman of the House of Representatives
o A Republican, she was one of 50 House members to vote against the declaration of
war against Germany. She was subsequently active in promoting legislation
benefiting women and was also active in the pacifist movement. Serving again in
the House, in 1941 she was the only member of Congress to oppose the declaration
of war against Japan; Rankin was thus the only House member to vote against both
wars. After completing her term of office in 1943, she remained active in civic
affairs and the peace movement.
• Liberty Loans
o series of five government bond drives that financed about two thirds of the war
debt
• Randolph Bourne
 o the war’s most incisive critic
o rejected Dewey’s prowar position and dissected his arguments in several
penetrating essays.
o dismissed the belief that reformers could direct to war to their own purposes
• Espionage Act, 1917
o principal U.S. legislation prohibiting espionage for a foreign country and providing
heavy penalties for such activity. As amended in 1940 and 1970, it is still in force.
o The 1917 law provided steep fines and imprisonment for collecting and transmitting
to a foreign power information related to U.S. national defense and for interfering
with the recruitment or loyalty of the armed forces. Use of the U.S. mail for material
urging treason or resistance to U.S. laws was prohibited; sabotage, especially of
trading ships, was subjected to severe penalties; the movement of neutral ships in
U.S. waters was regulated (an attempt to stop such vessels from shipping arms or
supplies to an enemy country); and the fraudulent use of passports as well as the
unauthorized representation of a foreign government were prohibited. An important
amendment to the law, usually called the Sedition Act, was passed in 1918 but
repealed in 1921; it forbade spoken or printed attacks on the U.S. government,
Constitution, or flag.
• Schenck v. U.S.
o US supreme court upheld the Espionage Act convictions of war critics
o Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., writing for a unanimous court, justified such
repression in cases where a person’s exercise of the First Amendment right of free
speech posed a “clear and present danger” to the nation
• Fourteen Points
o name given to the proposals of President Woodrow Wilson designed to establish the
basis for a just and lasting peace following the victory of the Allies in World War I.
The 14 proposals were contained in Wilson's address to a joint session of the U.S.
Congress on January 8, 1918. The idealism expressed in them was widely acclaimed
and gave Wilson a position of moral leadership among the Allied leaders. Opposition
to various points on the part of the European Allies, however, developed at the
conclusion of hostilities, and the attempt at practical application of the 14 points
exposed a multilateral system of secret agreements between the European victors.
In order to secure support of his 14th, and most important, point, which called for
the creating of an “association of nations,” Wilson was compelled to abandon his
insistence upon the acceptance of his full program. Wilson's 14th point was realized
in the League of Nations, established as a result of the Paris Peace Conference
(1919).
• Meuse-Argonne campaign
o major battle of World War I, fought in the fall of 1918 between the United States
First Army, which included the XVII French Corps, and strong units of the German
army. Also called the Meuse-Argonne offensive, the battle was part of a general
Allied offensive against the Hindenburg line, the highly fortified German defense
positions in western Europe. To weaken these positions in the Argonne region of
France was the immediate objective of the First Army; the secondary objective was
to capture the chief German supply line, extending through Sedan and Mézières
(both in France).
o The battle caused the final breakdown of German resistance and helped bring about
the German request for an armistice, which was granted on November 11, 1918.
• Treaty of Versailles
o Treaty of Versailles, peace treaty signed at the end of World War I between
Germany and the Allies. It was negotiated during the Paris Peace Conference held in
Versailles beginning January 18, 1919. Represented were the United States, Great
Britain, France, and Italy; the German Republic, which had replaced the imperial
German government at the end of the war, was excluded from the parley. Included
in the first section of the treaty was the Covenant of the League of Nations, the
 world's first peacekeeping body, which was given the responsibility for executing
the terms of the various treaties negotiated after World War I. The treaty was
signed on June 28, 1919, in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles near Paris.
(The U.S. did not ratify the agreement but signed a separate Treaty of Berlin with
Germany on July 2, 1921.)
• League of Nations
o international alliance for the preservation of peace. The league existed from 1920 to
1946. The first meeting was held in Geneva, on November 15, 1920, with 42 nations
represented. The last meeting was held on April 8, 1946; at that time the league
was superseded by the United Nations (UN). During the league's 26 years, a total of
63 nations belonged at one time or another; 28 were members for the entire period
o US was not a member
o Never truly effective as a peacekeeping organization, the lasting importance of the
League of Nations lies in the fact that it provided the groundwork for the UN. This
international alliance, formed after World War II, not only profited by the mistakes of
the League of Nations but borrowed much of the organizational machinery of the
league.
• Henry Cabot Lodge
o senator that rejected the League of Nations
o became a member of the UN
• Reservationists
o demanded amendments to the League covenant as a condition of their support
o believed the 10th article limited America’s freedom of action in foreign affairs and
infringed on congress’s constitutional right to declare war
• Irreconcilables
o opposed the League absolutely
• Red Scare & Mitchell Raids
o heightened concerns about foreign sabotage and internal security led to the “Red
Scare” of 1919 and 1920. In 1919 Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer created the
General Intelligence Division (GID) to investigate American radicals. Led by a Justice
Department attorney named J. Edgar Hoover, the GID targeted anarchists,
Communists, trade union activists, civil rights activists, and foreign resident
agitators. In the so-called Palmer Raids of January 2 and 6, 1920, special agents and
local police arrested thousands of Communists and suspected sympathizers across
the country. However, the bureau came under sharp criticism when an independent
review uncovered a range of abuses during the raids, including illegal searches and
seizures, warrantless arrests, denial of legal counsel, and poor detainment
conditions.
• McNary-Haugen Bill
o a price support plan under which the government would annually purchase the
surplus of six basic farm commodities at their average price
o the government would then sell these surpluses abroad at prevailing prices and
make up any resulting losses through a tax of domestic sales
• Teapot Dome
o notorious government scandal in the early 1920s over the leasing of government-
owned oil reserves. President Warren G. Harding transferred the administration of
two naval oil reserves located at Elk Hills, California, and Teapot Dome, Wyoming,
to the Department of the Interior soon after his inauguration in 1921. The Secretary
of the Interior Albert Bacon Fall secretly leased these oil reserves to private oil
companies in 1922. In return for the Elk Hills leasing deal, Fall received $100,000 as
an interest-free “loan” from Edward L. Doheney, president of the Pan-American
Petroleum Company. Harry Sinclair, president of the Mammoth Oil Company, gave
Fall more than $300,000 in cash and bonds for Teapot Dome. In October 1923 the
Senate Public Lands Committee began an investigation into the oil reserves leases
 (President Harding had died two months earlier). Congress agreed to file a lawsuit
to cancel the leases and in 1927 won the suit. Fall, who had resigned his office in
1923 and joined the Mammoth Oil Company, served a year in prison and paid a fine
of $100,000 following his conviction in 1929 of accepting a bribe.
• Washington Naval Conference
o meeting of representatives of Belgium, China, France, the United Kingdom, Italy,
Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal, and the United States, called by the U.S. and
convening in Washington, D.C., from November 12, 1921, to February 6, 1922. The
conference was held to limit naval armaments generally and to promote better
relations among nations with conflicting interests in the Pacific Ocean and East Asia.
o limited the number of ships in the pacific
• Kellogg-Briand Pact
o also called the Pact of Paris and, more formally, the Treaty for the Renunciation of
War, multilateral treaty signed by 15 nations in Paris on August 27, 1928, and later
almost universally ratified. The treaty was sponsored and drafted by U.S. Secretary
of State Frank B. Kellogg and Foreign Minister Aristide Briand of France. Kellogg was
awarded the 1929 Nobel Peace Prize.
o The Kellogg-Briand Pact had its genesis in the international antiwar and
disarmament conferences held in the 1920s in the aftermath of World War I. In
1927 Briand suggested that the U.S. and France abolish the possibility of war
between them. Kellogg expressed the U.S. desire to cast the proposal in a general
treaty among all world powers. As a result of the negotiations that followed, the
pact bound its signatories to renounce war as an instrument of national policy and
to settle international disputes by peaceful means.
o As a practical instrument for preventing war the treaty was totally useless; it failed
to halt aggression in the 1930s—by Japan in Manchuria (1931) and by Italy in
Ethiopia (1935)—and was thus discredited by the time World War II broke out. In
international law, however, the treaty was an important step toward establishing
the 20th-century concept of war as an outlaw act by an aggressor state on a victim
state—in contrast to the older view that war is a legitimate act of state and the
initiation of hostilities is of no concern to neutral nations.
• National Origins Act/quotas
o Restricted annual immigration from any foreign country to two percent of the total
number of persons of the “national origin” in the US in 1890
• F. Scott Fitzgerald
o “This Side Paradise (1920), The Great Gatsby (1925)
o part of the Jazz Age
• Sinclair Lewis
o Satirized the smugness and cultural barrenness of a fictional Midwestern farm in
Main Street (1920), and wrote about a real estate agent trapped in middle class
conformity in Babbitt (1922)
• Harlem Renaissance
o It was above all a literary movement
 Langston Hughes (a poet) – The Weary Blues (1926)
 Jean Toomer – Cane (1923)
o It offered sensuality, eroticism, and escape from taboos – had prostitutes, speakeasies, and cocain
o Ended with the stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression
o Monument to black cultural creativity
• Marcus Garvey/UNIA
o The Garvey Movement
o Marcus Garvey – Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA)
o Glorified all things black, urged black economic solidarity, and summoned
blacks to return to “Motherland Africa” to establish a great
nation
 o About 80000 blacks joined
o Parades, uniforms, flags = popularity
o Critics – white America and middle-class leaders of the NAACP and black
churches, like W.E.B. Du Bois
o Garvey was convicted of fraud in the Black Star Steamship Line
 Deported to Jamaica
 UNIA collapsed
• First mass movement in black America
• Modernism
o Should know what this is
• fundamentalism
• Named after The Fundamentals – series of essays from 1909-1914
• Insisted on the literal truth of the Bible, rejected evolution theory
o Scopes Trial
o Media sensation
• Aimee Semple McPherson – theatrical sermons, mass-entertainment
techniques
• Scopes Trial
• The Scopes trial
o ACLU offered to defend any teacher willing to challenge the
• Tennessee law barring the teaching of evolution in 1925
o John T. Scopes took up offer
o Although the jury found Scopes guilty, the trial exposed
fundamentalism to ridicule
• Billy Sunday/Aimee Semple McPherson
o an American athlete who after being a popular outfielder in baseball's National
League during the 1880s, became the most celebrated and influential American
evangelist during the first two decades of the 20th century.
o Aimee Semple McPherson – theatrical sermons, mass-entertainment
techniques
• H.L. Menken
o an American journalist, essayist, magazine editor, satirist, acerbic critic of American
life and culture
o a student of American English.
o Mencken, known as the "Sage of Baltimore"
o regarded as one of the most influential American writers of the first half of the 20th
century
• Alice Paul
o an American suffragist leader
o she led a successful campaign for women's suffrage that resulted in the passage of
the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920.
• Al Capone
o 1929 alcohol consumption about 70 percent of prewar level
o Organized crime
o Rival gangs battled to control the liquor business
o Ex: Al Capone in Chicago

• Sacco and Vanzetti

o Nativism and Anti-Radicalism
o Sacco-Vanzetti case – anarchists and Italian immigrants – electrocuted even though
there was a complete lack of evidence
• Black Thursday/Crash
 o There was extreme prosperity in the 1920’s.
o Prices were steadily rising and the stock market was values at $27 billion.
o Some 9 million Americans were playing the stock market, borrowing most of what
the stock was worth.
o Margin buying - the use of credit, in which stockbrokers lent speculators up to 75%
of the stock’s actual cost.
o Black Thursday - October 24, 1929 - there was an unexpected volume of selling on
Wall Street, and stock prices plunged.
• Bonus March
o In the summer of 1932, a thousand unemployed World War I veterans marched to
Washington D.C. to demand immediate payment of the bonuses promised to them
in 1945. They were eventually joined by thousands more veterans and their
families.
 Congress failed to pass the bill they sought.
 Hoover ordered the army to break up the march.
 This caused many Americans to regard Hoover as heartless and uncaring.
• Reconstruction Finance Corp.
• Federally funded government corporation designed in 1932 to prop up faltering
railroads, banks, life insurance companies, and other financial institutions.
• The idea was to benefit big business and then have the benefits “trickle down” to
smaller businesses to bring a huge recovery.
• Emergency Banking Act
o was an act of the United States Congress spearheaded by President Franklin D.
Roosevelt during the Great Depression. It was passed on March 9, 1933. The act
allowed a plan that would close down insolvent banks and reorganize and reopen
those banks strong enough to survive.
• FDIC
• The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) - Guaranteed individual bank
deposits of up to $5,000.
• Fireside Chat
• A series of radio talks in which the president insured the trusting of banks.
• New Deal
o The Three R’s:
 Relief for people out of work.
 Recovery for business and the economy as a whole.
 Reform of American economic institutions.
• Brain Trust
o A group of advisors that Roosevelt entrusted to work with him on the New Deal.
o Francis Perkins - First woman cabinet member, worked as the industrial
commissioner.
o Harold L. Ickes - Organized liberal Republicans.
o Henry A. Wallace - Secretary of agriculture.
o Harry Hopkins - Worked with relief programs.
o John Maynard Keynes - A British economist who dealt with financial policies.
o Mary McLeod Bethune - Dealt with African American issues and civil rights.
o Goal = improve the economy
o Roosevelt chose people that had many different beliefs and ideas so that he could
make a good decision having heard the sides of different groups of people and their
views.
• Keynesian Economics
o The use of deficit spending, like “priming the pump” in order to increase investment
and create jobs.
 o With this belief, Roosevelt’s spending on public works and relief went up and so did
employment and industrial production.
• CCC
o The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) - Employed young men on projects on federal
lands and paid their families small monthly sums.
• TVA
o The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) - A huge experiment in regional development
and public planning, hiring thousands of people to help one of the nation’s poorest
regions.
• NRA
o The national recovery administration
o came into being through a significant measure in 1933. The NRA attempted to
revive industry by raising wages, reducing work hours and reining in unbridled
competition
o After two year the National Recovery Administration was declared unconstitutional
in the case Schechter v. U.S (1935).
• WPA
o Works Progress Administration (WPA) - Spent billions of dollars to provide people
with jobs. 3.4 million men and women were employed in the first year.
• AAA
o Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) - Encouraged farmers to reduce
production by offering to pay government subsidies for every acre they plowed
under. The AAA was also declared unconstitutional.
• Federal Securities Act/SEC
o The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) - Created to regulate the stock
market and to place strict limits on the kind of speculative practices that had led to
the Wall Street crash in 1929.
• Huey Long
o Proposed a “Share Our Wealth” program that promised a minimum annual income
of $5,000 for every American family, to be paid for by taxing the wealthy. He was
considered to be the most dangerous challenge to Roosevelt.
• Charles Coughlin
o Through radio broadcasts and the founding of the National Union for Social Justice,
he called for issuing an inflated currency and nationalizing all banks, becoming very
anti-Semitic and Fascist until his superiors in the Catholic Church ordered him to
stop
• Second New Deal
• Set off in the summer of 1935, largely focused on relief and reform.
A. Relief Programs

• Works Progress Administration (WPA) - Spent billions of dollars to provide

people with jobs. 3.4 million men and women were employed in the first
year.
• National Youth Administration (NYA) - Provided part-time jobs to help
young people stay in high school and college or until they could get a job
with a private employer.
• Resettlement Administration (RA) - Provided loans to sharecroppers,
tenants, and small farmers. It also established federal camps where
migrant workers could find decent housing.
B. Reform Programs

• National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act - Replaced the labor provision of the
NIRA, guaranteeing a worker’s right to join a union and a union’s right to
bargain collectively. It also outlawed business practices that were unfair to
 labor.
• National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) - Empowered to enforce the law
and make sure that workers’ rights were protected.
• Rural Electrification Administration (REA) - Provided loans for electrical
cooperatives to supply power in rural areas.
• Federal Taxes - A revenue act of 1935 that significantly increased the tax
on incomes of the wealthy.
• The Social Security Act - Created a federal insurance program bases upon
the automatic collection of taxes from employees and employers
throughout people’s working careers. The Social Security trust fund would
then be used to make monthly payments to retired persons over the age
of 65.
• Social Security Act
o Created a federal insurance program bases upon the automatic collection of taxes
from employees and employers throughout people’s working careers. The Social
Security trust fund would then be used to make monthly payments to retired
persons over the age of 65.

Missing stuff
• Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
o measure passed by the Congress of the United States on August 7, 1964, which
gave President Lyndon Johnson the power to initiate an air war against North
Vietnam and subsequently to send ground forces to South Vietnam. The resolution
was passed after the United States claimed that North Vietnam had attacked two
American naval vessels, the USS Maddox and the USS Turner Joy, in international
waters in the Gulf of Tonkin, off the coast of North Vietnam. Not repealed until 1970,
the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution provided the basis for much of the United States
military involvement in the Vietnam War.
• Rolling Thunder
• SDS, Port Huron Statement
• Roe v. Wade
o court case of 1973 in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that a
woman has a constitutional right to an abortion during the first six months of
pregnancy. Before the Court’s ruling, a majority of states prohibited abortion,
although most allowed an exception when pregnancy threatened the woman’s life.
The Court overturned these state prohibitions in Roe v. Wade. The Court ruled that
states could restrict abortions only during the final three months of pregnancy, a
stage when medical experts considered the fetus capable of “meaningful life”
outside the womb.
• Tet offensive
o military campaign of the Vietnam War (1959-1975), in which almost every major
city and province in South Vietnam was attacked by the Communist forces of the
National Liberation Front (NLF), with support from the North Vietnamese Peoples’
Army of Vietnam (PAVN). Although the Communist forces failed to hold the cities,
the Tet Offensive helped undermine American public support for the U.S military
involvement in Vietnam.
• George Wallace
o United States political figure, governor of Alabama and presidential candidate
known for his antidesegregation platform. Wallace was born in Clio, Alabama, and
educated at the University of Alabama. After serving as an assistant attorney
general of Alabama, a member of the state legislature, and a district court judge,
Wallace was elected governor, serving from 1963 to 1967. As governor, he
personally blocked the door of the University of Alabama to black students in 1963,
 but backed down when faced with federal troops. Ineligible to succeed himself, he
had his wife, Lurleen Burns Wallace, run for governor in his place in 1966, and she
was elected. Wallace sought the U.S. presidency in 1968 as candidate of the
American Independent Party, running on antidesegregation issues, respect for law
and order, and freedom from excessive federal control; he received 13.5 percent of
the popular vote and 46 electoral votes from five southern states.
• OPEC oil embargo
o The 1973 war also marked the first successful use of oil as a political weapon in the
Arab-Israeli conflict. From October 1973 to November 1974, the oil-producing Arab
countries maintained an embargo on oil exports to Western nations friendly to
Israel, causing gasoline shortages and inflated oil prices. The embargo had a
particularly negative effect on the U.S. economy.
• Watergate crisis
o designation of a major United States political scandal that began with the burglary
and wiretapping of the Democratic Party’s campaign headquarters, later engulfed
President Richard M. Nixon and many of his supporters in a variety of illegal acts,
and culminated in the first resignation of a U.S. president.
• SALT I & II
o The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), between the U.S. and the USSR led to
an agreement in 1971 fixing the number of ICBMs that could be deployed by the
armed forces of the two nations. One year later, a second treaty discouraged the
continued development of antiballistic missile systems that might have made the
existing ICBM forces obsolete.
• Camp David Accords
o framework for peace in the Middle East signed by United States president Jimmy
Carter, Egyptian president Anwar al-Sadat, and Israeli prime minister Menachem
Begin on September 17, 1978, in Washington, D.C. Although the accords led to a
peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, they did not result in peace between Israel
and other Arab states. For their efforts to resolve their long-standing conflict, Sadat
and Begin received the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize.
• Iran Hostage Crisis
o As radical students vie for a political voice in the new Islamic Republic of Iran, they
decide to take over the United States Embassy in Tehrān. They hold 53 Americans
captive for 444 days. The Carter administration suffers a setback when it fails in an
attempt to rescue the hostages. Negotiations finally succeed where war tactics
failed.
• New Right
• Reganomics
• ERA
o proposed amendment to the Constitution of the United States to provide for the
equality of sexes under the law. The central language of the amendment states:
“Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United
States or by any State on account of sex.” The ERA would have made
unconstitutional any laws that grant one sex different rights than the other.
• SDI
o United States military research program for developing an antiballistic missile (ABM)
defense system, first proposed by President Ronald Reagan in March 1983. The
Reagan administration vigorously sought acceptance of SDI by the United States
and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies. As initially described, the
system would provide total U.S. protection against nuclear attack. The concept of
SDI marked a sharp break with the nuclear strategy that had been followed since
the development of the armaments race. This strategy was based on the concept of
deterrence through the threat of retaliation (see Arms Control). More specifically,
the SDI system would have contravened the ABM Treaty of 1972 (see Strategic
 Arms Limitation Talks). For this reason and others, the SDI proposal was attacked as
a further escalation of the armaments race.
• Moral Majority
• Three Mile Island
o A maintenance error and a defective valve led to a loss-of-coolant accident. The
reactor itself was shut down by its safety system when the accident began, and the
emergency core cooling system began operating as required a short time into the
accident. Then, however, as a result of human error, the emergency cooling system
was shut off, causing severe core damage and the release of volatile fission
products from the reactor vessel. Although only a small amount of radioactive gas
escaped from the containment building, causing a slight rise in individual human
exposure levels, the financial damage to the utility was very large, $1 billion or
more, and the psychological stress on the public, especially those people who live in
the area near the nuclear power plant, was in some instances severe.
o The official investigation of the accident named operational error and inadequate
control room design, rather than simple equipment failure, as the principal causes
of the accident. It led to enactment of legislation requiring the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission to adopt far more stringent standards for the design and construction
of nuclear power plants. The legislation also required utility companies to assume
responsibility for helping state and county governments prepare emergency
response plans to protect the public health in the event of other such accidents.
• Iran-Contra scandal
o American political scandal of 1985 and 1986, in which high-ranking members in the
administration of President Ronald Reagan arranged for the secret sales of arms to
Iran in direct violation of existing United States laws. Profits from the $30 million in
arms sales were channeled to the Nicaraguan right-wing “contra” guerrillas to
supply arms for use against the leftist Sandinista government. This, too, was in
direct violation of U.S. policy. The chief negotiator of these deals was Lieutenant
Colonel Oliver North, a military aide to the National Security Council. North reported
his activities initially to National Security Adviser Robert C. McFarlane, the council's
head, and subsequently to his successor, Vice Admiral John M. Poindexter. The sale
of arms to Iran was initiated at the suggestion of the Israeli government with the
dual goal of bettering relations with Iran and of obtaining the release of American
hostages held in Lebanon by pro-Iranian terrorists. North was instrumental in setting
up a covert network for providing support to the contras, with its own ship,
airplanes, airfield, and secret bank accounts.
• “peace dividend”
• Noriega
o general and former dictator of Panama (1983-1989).
o In 1986 allegations emerged that Noriega was involved in drug trafficking, money
laundering, and acting as a double agent for both the United States Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Cuba’s intelligence agency. Panamanians staged
protests demanding Noriega’s resignation, and he responded by cracking down on
civil liberties in 1987. The U.S. Senate urged the government of Panama to remove
Noriega from office and investigate his activities, and the United States suspended
aid to Panama. In 1988 a U.S. grand jury in Florida indicted Noriega on charges of
violating racketeering and drug laws and money laundering. The United States put
greater economic and diplomatic pressure on Panama to force Noriega from power,
while protests and violence within Panama increased. In December 1989 U.S. forces
invaded Panama and arrested Noriega, who was taken to Florida to stand trial.
• Desert Storm
o Persian Gulf War, conflict beginning in August 1990, when Iraqi forces invaded and
occupied Kuwait. The conflict culminated in fighting in January and February 1991
between Iraq and an international coalition of forces led by the United States. By
the end of the war, the coalition had driven the Iraqis from Kuwait.
• NAFTA
o pact that calls for the gradual removal of tariffs and other trade barriers on most
goods produced and sold in North America. NAFTA became effective in Canada,
Mexico, and the United States on January 1, 1994. NAFTA forms the world’s second
largest free-trade zone, bringing together 365 million consumers in Canada, Mexico,
and the United States in an open market. The largest free-trade zone is the
European Economic Area (which includes the members of the European Union and
the European Free Trade Association), which also became effective in 1994.
• Contract with America
• ADA
o legislation passed by the United States Congress in 1990 to prohibit discrimination
against people with disabilities and to guarantee them equal access to employment,
public services, public accommodations, and telecommunications. Unlike earlier
laws that were much more limited in scope, the ADA forbids unequal treatment of
people with disabilities in a broad variety of circumstances.
• Bosnia
• Kosovo
o The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) initiates a campaign of air strikes
against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY). The strikes are launched after FRY
—a federation comprised of the republics of Serbia and Montenegro—refuses to
accept an international peace plan for the Serbian province of Kosovo. NATO
charges that Serbian forces are systematically terrorizing and killing ethnic
Albanians, who make up an estimated 90 percent of the Kosovo population, in an
effort to force the Albanians from the province. The air strikes mark the first time in
NATO's 50-year history that the alliance mounted an uninvited military assault on a
sovereign nation.
• Million Man March
o In 1995 Farrakhan organized the Million Man March in Washington, D.C., to draw
attention to the plight of black men in the United States. In 1999 Farrakhan battled
prostate cancer. In February 2000 he returned to the public stage when he
reconciled with his longtime rival Warith Deen Mohammed. Their reconciliation was
part of a reported effort by Farrakhan to move the Nation of Islam closer to the
mainstream of Islamic belief and practice.
• Oklahoma City bombing
o The bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995 was one of
the worst acts of terrorism in United States history, killing 168 people and injuring
850 others. In June 1997 former U.S. soldier Timothy McVeigh was found guilty of
the bombing and given a sentence of death.
• World Trade Center bombing
o New York was remarkably free of terrorism over its centuries-long history until
1993. In February of that year, a car bomb exploded in an underground garage
below the 110-story World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. Six people were killed,
and more than 1,000 people were injured in the blast, which caused about $600
million worth of damage to the building. In 1994 ten individuals opposed to U.S.
support for Israel were convicted of conspiracy in connection with the bombing and
were sentenced to long prison terms.
o On September 11, 2001, a clear and cloudless day, a coordinated terrorist attack
struck at the heart of New York City (see September 11 Attacks). At 8:46 AM a
hijacked Boeing 767 carrying thousands of gallons of explosive jet fuel slammed
into the north tower of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. A second Boeing
767, traveling at an even greater speed, struck the south tower 16 minutes later. As
the towers burned, tens of thousands of men and women ran for their lives, flooding
the surrounding streets. On a typical day, more than 50,000 people worked in the
World Trade Center complex itself, while another 50,000 people could be found in
the adjacent skyscrapers. At 9:59 AM, the south tower suddenly collapsed in a huge
 roar, and at 10:28 AM the north tower did the same. The largest office complex on
earth was reduced to smoldering steel, broken concrete, and a whitish dust that
coated lower Manhattan.
o The human toll, about 2,800 victims in New York, made the September 11 attack
easily the worst terrorist incident in all of U.S. history.
• Welfare Reform Act, 1996
o signed in August by President Bill Clinton. The new law, which ended guaranteed
federal cash assistance to individuals and substituted block grants to states,
contained many features pioneered by states, including a lifetime limit on welfare
benefits and a requirement for recipients to find work within a specified time.
Similar rules were in effect or requested under waivers of earlier federal law in more
than 30 states. In another provision similar to one in many states, the federal act
required unwed parents under age 18 to live with an adult and attend school if they
were to receive welfare benefits