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When the Constitution was first written, Article 1. Section 2 was the three-fifths clause. Stating that "any person who was not free would be counted as three-fifths of a free individual". In 1865, the 13th Amendment was added that would abolish slavery for good. "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."

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Today there are few more controversial topics in the study of American history and government than the issue of slavery and the Constitution. On the surface, the Constitution seemed to protect slavery in the states, prohibited Congress from banning the slave trade for twenty years, and required that fugitive slaves, even in the North, be returned to their masters. Because of these apparent constitutional protections, a bloody Civil War was fought to free the slaves and win ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to end slavery in the U.S. forever. The Constitution, therefore, in the eyes of some scholars, seems to be a contradiction to the universal ideals of liberty and equality in the American Founding and the Declaration of Independence which proclaimed "all men are created equal" and endowed with "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

Abraham Lincoln's contention that the American Founding and its Constitution put slavery "in the course of ultimate extinction" runs contrary to much of the contemporary criticism of the U.S. Constitution's stance on slavery. Does Lincoln's contention hold up under scrutiny? Let us first examine the facts. Slaves were imported into and held as property all of the American colonies for more than a century. Slavery persisted despite the Revolutionary War and ratification of the Constitution, with most of the signers of the Declaration and the Constitution owning slaves, and the number of slaves steadily grew through natural increase and slave imports from abroad. Westward expansion caused sectionalism—disputes between the northern and southern sections of the new nation—to rise over slavery, and Congress continued to put off the controversy through a series of compromises name them until it could no longer be ignored.

The Founders knew that slavery violated the "self-evident truth" of the Declaration and the promise of equality in the Declaration of Independence. They were aware of the immorality of slavery and the need for action, yet were—sometime by their own admission—not active enough. Despite this fact, some scholars portray the Founders as racists who on the principle of racial superiority theories sought to protect slavery and its expansion. In fact, it was later generations of statesmen before the Civil War who took this view. They were morally relative about slavery or believed it was a "positive good." They did not think that slavery violated natural law and believed that slavery was good for the inferior slave and the larger society.
Several important nineteenth century politicians embraced this "positive good" view of slavery and contradicted the Founders that slavery was morally wrong. In 1848, Senator John Calhoun argued that the natural rights language in the Declaration of Independence was "dangerous" and "erroneous," and doubted that men were created equal.
Calhoun's vision of consensual republican government, which was fundamentally at odds with the universal principles of the Founders, was one for white men only.
Another statesman, Stephen Douglas, did not take a stance on whether slavery was good or bad.

He believed that the great constitutional principle of popular sovereignty (the idea that all authority ultimately resides in the people) gave the whites in states the right to decide for themselves whether they wanted to own other humans. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney agreed with Douglas in the Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857) decision. The prevailing idea at the time of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, he wrote, was that the African-Americans "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."

Alexander Stephens, the Vice-President of the Confederacy, presented a different understanding of the Founders and the most significant challenge to the idea that African- Americans were meant to be included in the Declaration of Independence.
The "cornerstone" of the Confederacy, not the Union, rested upon the "great truth" that blacks are not equal to whites. Stephens, unlike many scholars today, admitted that Thomas Jefferson and the other Founders included African-Americans in the universal understanding of the promise of liberty and equality for all humans, he just believed Jefferson was wrong.
Contrary to the ideas of the statesmen and scholars who doubted that all men were created free and equal, the Framers of the Constitution and other American statesmen believed slavery contradicted the natural rights all had and denied the idea of consent in a republic. They consistently worked to build a constitutional republic of liberty that equally protected the rights of all Americans. Far from being proponents of slavery, the Founding Fathers criticized the institution severely.

Another Virginian, George Mason, feared that slavery brought down "the judgment of heaven on a country." At the Constitutional Convention, Gouverneur Morris called slavery a "nefarious institution" and the "curse of heaven" (James Madison, Notes on the Federal Convention, 1787). John Adams wrote, "Every measure of prudence, therefore, ought to be assumed for the eventual total extirpation of slavery from the United States...I have, through my whole life, held the practice of slavery in...abhorrence." (James Madison to Robert J. Evans, June 8, 1819)

Several Founders launched critiques of the slave trade for violating natural rights. In a draft of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson attacked the slave trade in harsh language, calling it a "cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people." At the Convention, Morris echoed these sentiments and said that the slave trade continued "in defiance of the most sacred laws of humanity" (James Madison, Notes on the Federal Convention, 1787).

No delegates to the Constitutional Convention defended the morality of slavery. The best argument that they could muster on behalf of slavery was protecting their own economic interest.
The Framers made a prudential compromise with slavery because they sought to achieve their highest goal of a stronger Union of republican self-government. Since some slaveholding delegations threatened to walk out of the Constitution if slavery was threatened, there was a real possibility that there would have been separate free and slave confederacies instead of the United States. The free states would have lost all leverage over the slave states to end slavery if they had separated. The Framers had to create the Union with the institution of slavery but built a regime of liberty that they hoped would lead to slavery's ultimate extinction.
The specific clauses of the Constitution related to slavery were the Three-Fifths Clause, the ban on Congress ending the slave trade for twenty years, the fugitive slave clause, and the slave insurrections. However, the Constitution only very obliquely referred to slavery and never used the words slave or slavery because the Framers were embarrassed by the institution. They believed that slavery was morally wrong and would die out, and they did not want that permanent moral stain on the document. Interestingly, they avoided the word slave and referred to slaves as persons.
The Constitution itself had four clauses that indirectly addressed slavery and the slave trade though it did not actually use those terms.
In the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, Abraham Lincoln argued that the Framers avoided any specific mention of slavery because the enduring Constitution would not have "on the face of the great charter of liberty suggesting that such a thing as negro slavery had ever existed among us" (Abraham Lincoln, Seventh Joint Debate at Alton, "Mr. Lincoln's Reply," October 15, 1858).
Four clauses have been used to indict the Constitution and show it to be a pro-slavery document. The Three-Fifths Clause in Article I, Section 2 purportedly meant that slaves were considered less than fully human. However, it was little more than a compromise when creating the Congress and determining how slaves were counted for purposes of representation and taxation. Some have argued that it gave greater power to the southern states but Frederick Douglass believed that it encouraged freedom because it gave "an increase of 'two-fifths' of political power to free over slave States...taking it at its worst, it still leans to freedom, not to slavery" (Fredrick Douglass, "The Constitution of the United States: Is it Pro-Slavery or Antislavery?" March 26, 1860).
The second clause, known as the Importation Clause, dealing with slavery was Article I, Section 9, in which the Congress could not ban the slave trade for 20 years. The Framers were not protecting the slave trade (and thus slavery) with this clause but rather were seeking to end the infernal trade in humans. And, indeed, on January 1, 1808, that is exactly what happened when the 1807 bill that President Thomas Jefferson signed, went into effect.
The third clause is the Slave Insurrection Clause in Article I, Section 8. While it might include slave insurrections, Douglass argued that it is also a general statement that the chief executive has the power and duty to suppress all "riots or insurrections" in the interests of maintaining law and order.
Finally, Article IV, Section 9, of the Constitution provided for the return of fugitive slaves from the North back to the South. Douglass noted that the Fugitive Slave Clause only made sense in a country where half the states either banned slavery or were moving quickly in that direction. Indeed, the northern states abided by Revolutionary principles and either banned slavery outright or introduced schemes of gradual emancipation.
In sum, the Constitution was a document that sought, as Abraham Lincoln contended, to put "slavery in the course of ultimate extinction." As Frederick Douglass noted, importantly, the Constitution's "language is 'we the people;' not we the white people'" (Fredrick Douglass, "The Constitution of the United States: Is it Pro-Slavery or Antislavery?" March 26, 1860).
By contrast, the Constitution of the Confederate States of America was deeply rooted in inequality and freedom for whites only. The Confederates rejected universal principles in favor of power and domination in which only whites had any rights that the government was bound to respect. Although the Confederate Constitution appealed to justice, the blessings of liberty, and divine guidance, it made property in human beings an essential right when it stated, "No law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed." The Confederate Constitution of 1861, not the U.S. Constitution of 1787, was the Founding document that violated liberty and equality of African-Americans.
The first decades after the ratification of the Constitution saw the rise of freedom in the new nation. In the wake of the American Revolution, the northern states banned slavery outright or with gradual emancipation schemes in which African-Americans were born free. In 1787, while the Constitution was being framed, the Northwest Ordinance banned slavery in new western territory and eventually advanced liberty and equality in five states. In 1820, the Missouri Compromise banned slavery in the northern part of the Louisiana Territory, again contributing greatly to the spread of liberty and equality over a large swath of America. The new nation was mostly bent on expanding liberty and equality.
During and after the Civil War, Americans would end slavery constitutionally. Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation as a war measure, and the Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery in the United States forever. Slavery could not survive in a nation half-slave and half-free, but it could also not endure in a nation founded upon the natural right ideals of liberty and equality in the constitutional republic provided by the Declaration of Independence and Constitution.nnInstead, he wanted to let the people decide whether or not to own slaves. Douglas was challenging Abraham Lincoln in 1858 for a Senate seat from Illinois when he argued, "Our government can endure forever, divided into free and slave States as our fathers made it" (Stephen Douglas, Seventh Joint Debate at Alton, "Mr. Douglas' Opening Speech," October 15, 1858).
In his "Corner Stone" speech of 1861, Stephens argued that most of the Founding Fathers believed that slavery was a "violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically." However, it was an "evil they knew not well how to deal with." They believed that it would "be evanescent and pass away" in time. Those ideas were fundamentally wrong, Stephens argued, because they "rested upon the assumption of the equality of the races" (Alexander Stephens, "Corner Stone Speech," March 21, 1861).
The "Father of the Constitution," James Madison, attacked slavery early in the Convention, stating, "We have seen the mere distinction of colour made in the most enlightened period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man" (James Madison, Notes on the Federal Convention, 1787).
The author of the Declaration of Independence wrote a withering attack on slavery when he stated, "The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other." (Thomas Jefferson, "Notes on the State of Virginia," 1785).
John Rutledge of South Carolina admitted: "Religion and humanity had nothing to do with this question. Interest alone is the governing principle with nations" (James Madison, Notes on the Federal Convention, 1787).
The former-slave Frederick Douglass noted that that the framers purposefully avoided the mention of slavery in the Constitution. "It so happens that no such words as 'African slave trade,' no such words as 'slave representation,' no such words as 'fugitive slaves," no such words as 'slave insurrections,' are anywhere used in that instrument. These are...not the words of the Constitution of the United States" (Fredrick Douglass, "The Constitution of the United States: Is it Pro-Slavery or Antislavery?" March 26, 1860).
Frederick Douglass argued that the Clause "looked to the abolition of slavery rather than to its perpetuity," and that the Founders' intentions "were good, not bad" (Fredrick Douglass, "The Constitution of the United States: Is it Pro-Slavery or Antislavery?" March 26, 1860).nn
The Founders knew that slavery violated the "self-evident truth" of the Declaration and the promise of equality in the Declaration of Independence. They were aware of the immorality of slavery and the need for action, yet were—sometime by their own admission—not active enough.

No delegates to the Constitutional Convention defended the morality of slavery. The best argument that they could muster on behalf of slavery was protecting their own economic interest.

Article IV, Section 9 of the Constitution provided for the return of fugitive slaves from the North back to the South.
nnJames Madison,equality,Founders,popular sovereignty,property,liberty,Justice,republic,John Adams,Thomas Jefferson,Declaration of Independence,Framers,Constitution,Thirteenth Amendment,natural rights,republican government

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Slavery and the Constitution - Bill of Rights Institute

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Today there are few more controversial topics in the study of American history and government than the issue of slavery and the Constitution. On the surface, the Constitution seemed to protect slavery in the states, prohibited Congress from banning the slave trade for twenty years, and required that fugitive slaves, even in the North, be returned to their masters.

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Otherwise known as the counterculture of the 1960's. Mainly young men and women who were called "hippies" opposed the Vietnam War and were advocates for civil rights. Since there was a large enough group of them, they were the driving force behind the antiwar movement.

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A new identity was born at the start of the counterculture movement in the late 1960s. This youth movement criticized consumerism, promoted peace, and yearned for individualism. The 1960s and '70s revolutionized pop culture and encouraged social reform. This 20-year period was a turning point in history that influenced future decades, and still has an impact on the present day.

Counterculture Movement Beginnings: The Overlooked Beat Movement

The counterculture movement involved youths who rejected mainstream American culture and societal norms. The "American dream" was no longer a goal for this new generation. Prior to the 1950s, the ideal woman was a housewife who cared for the children, cooked, and cleaned the home. Men were expected to find a steady job and be the provider for the family. Counterculture began to boil up in the late 1940s and seeped into the 1950s with the beat movement. This movement involved literary "hipsters" who rejected social norms, often referred to as beatniks.

The beat movement was the foundation of the counterculture movement that emerged in the late 1960s. Beat poetry began in New York City in the 1940s and made its way to San Francisco a decade later. Beatniks focused on topics that clashed with mainstream culture and ideas. These perspectives carried into a slightly younger group in their teens to mid-20s.

In the latter half of the 1960s, San Francisco became a hotspot for tens of thousands of youths who shared the common desire for peace and freedom. Haight-Ashbury was the most notable San Francisco neighborhood that drew in almost 100,000 youths during the summer of 1967, who soon became the heart and soul of the counterculture movement. This summer of youth migration became known as the Summer of Love, which marked the prominence of a movement that would impact decades to come.

1950s Consumerism Fuels Anti-Materialistic Perspectives

Consumerism was at an all time high in the 1950s. World War II encouraged production of goods, provided an abundance of jobs, and motivated those on the home front to support their nation by spending. The economy finally felt relief for the first time since the booming age of the Roaring Twenties, before the Great Depression collapsed it all. People were focused on building families, working a steady job, and buying homes. Appliances, cars, and TVs were at the top of consumers' list to modernize their homes. Additionally, consumer credit became a popular way for people to afford more things.

The counterculture movement rejected most things that were praised by the government. This included consumerism. The hippie-style clothing worn was often hand-me-downs bought at flea markets, yard sales, or second-hand shops. This was a purposeful effort to avoid buying from major brand-name stores and contributing to mainstream consumerist habits. Most of the counterculture movement youths were children of the middle and upper-middle class. They opposed everything that the previous decades were all about: wartime support, materialism, and work.

The Hippie Identity of the Counterculture Movement

Not everyone involved in the counterculture movement was involved in the hippie movement. The two merged together because of matching perspectives. The hippie identity wasn't actually accepted by hippies themselves at the time. Many preferred to be called a "freak" or "love child." The term "hippie" was coined by local media outlets in San Francisco.

Hippie stuck as a derogatory identifier of rebellious youths participating in counterculture. It later manifested in a much lighter sense. It is generally no longer viewed as an insult to the modern-day hippie. Individuals who referred to people as hippies in the '60s and '70s were called "straights." This phrase referred to anyone who didn't support the counterculture movement. It described people who followed the traditional and "square" ways of life.

There were a few different types of hippies, including visionaries, freaks and heads, and plastic hippies. Although all youths who identified as love children were against much of the social and political norms of the times, many weren't activists or protestors. Some groups fit the general description of a hippie but were more politically active and involved in protests. Examples of these groups included the "Diggers" and "Yippies." Both groups emerged in the latter half of the '60s. Yippies stemmed from the Youth International Party. Diggers and Yippies were viewed as radical leftists who were anti-war socialism supporters with anarchist-like points of view.

Visionary hippies closely resembled the intellectual beatniks of the previous decades. They were the original hippies with anti-conventional values that rejected the ways of the generation before them. The freaks and heads were the hippies who sought freedom through spiritual connections using hallucinogenic drugs, such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). Plastic hippies took on the classic hippie fashion, dabbled in drug use, and enjoyed the atmosphere the hippie movement brought. They didn't fully resonate with the actual roots of the movement and essentially just scratched the surface of what it meant to be a love child at the time.

Hippies were the baby boomer generation. There was a 14.5% population increase between 1940 and 1950. As a result, tens of millions of individuals came of age in the 1960s and '70s. This created a vast, rebellious generation that became the main focus for two decades. As with many youths coming of age, taking on rebelling perspectives and defying the common order wasn't unheard of. However, the number of youths spread across the nation allowed the counterculture movement to expand exponentially.

Anti-War & the Rejection of Mainstream Society

The "American dream" was in full motion for many in the late 1940s and '50s. People felt a sense of patriotism. Many supported the first few years of US involvement in the Vietnam War to stop the spread of communism. This was especially apparent for those who lived through the first and second waves of Communist paranoia, known as the Red Scare. Counterculture activists were disappointed in the US government's involvement in the Vietnam War.

The anti-war movement was a big part of counterculture. Just as Americans were experiencing relief from the Great Depression and the peace of post-WWII, the US entered the Vietnam War. More than two million American men were drafted. Some counterculturists took the opportunity to show their contempt for the war by burning their draft cards. Hippies who were especially against the war were known as "flower children" and advocated for peace and love. The peace sign, created by British artist Gerald Holtom, became an anti-war symbol and iconic representation of the counterculture hippie movement. It was originally designed as a logo for Nuclear Disarmament in 1958.

There were also other movements taking place within the counterculture movement. The Civil Rights Movement waged on from the mid-1950s to the late '60s. The Women's Rights Movement emerged alongside counterculture. People were tired of oppression and discrimination. Youths were yearning for individuality, and many refused to carry on the bad habits of the generations that preceded them.

Counterculture Revolutionizes Pop Culture

Perhaps one of the counterculture movement's most significant impacts was its influence on pop culture. Fashion, music, and media were all affected. The iconic styles that emerged from the counterculture movement were bright, flamboyant, and less conventional. Comfortability and individuality conquered over conservative wear. Twiggy, Cher, and Janis Joplin are just a few women who influenced the fashion scene of the late '60s and early '70s. Bold colors, patterns, and the free-spirited bohemian aesthetic were in full swing. Part of men's fashion was heavily influenced by the rock 'n roll scene that bloomed in the late 1950s. Long hair, bell-bottoms, and vibrant patterns were common among male youths.

Rockabilly, which stemmed from jazz, blues, and gospel from previous decades, had a heavy influence on the counterculture movement. Different subgenres of rock emerged, such as psychedelic, folk, soft, and pop rock. Psychedelic rock fit the counterculture hippie movement scene, making sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll a common identifier of the '60s and '70s. These subgenres would influence the punk rock and hair metal scene of the 1980s.

Some of the most iconic and influential singers and musicians popped up in the '60s and '70s. One of the most defining events of the movement was the 1969 Woodstock Music and Art Fair that took place in a muddy farm field in Bethel, New York. Hundreds of thousands of people attended, well over the estimated number. It was an unorganized mess but so successful it became the epitome of the counterculture hippie movement. People traveled far and wide to attend and indulge in music and drugs. More than 150 musicians attended with 32 musical acts. Some of the most notable performers of the time played at the event, such as Janis Joplin, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Jimi Hendrix.

Media played a significant role in not only pinning love children and freaks as hippies with a negative connotation but also in romanticizing the movement. After the Vietnam War ended in the mid-1970s, the counterculture movement died down. However, the media continued to idolize the hippie scene. Even today, the hippie movement is often missed by those who desire to live in a more "free" society. However, not everything was as joyous as it seemed.

The large influx of people coming into the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood turned it into a poverty-stricken area that wasn't well-kept. This led to a lot of crime and changed the scene from a safe haven for artists, intellectuals, and those alike to a dangerous and unsanitary place. The image of peace, love, and freedom from the movement stuck around thanks to the media, but the more bleak truths of the two decades were kept in the shadows.

Memories of the Counterculture Movement Live On

The counterculture movement of the 1960s and '70s was arguably one of the most influential time periods in modern American history. A more individualized identity was sought after by coming-of-age outsiders that took over the nation due to the baby boom. Nonconformists emerged and publicly rejected traditional social norms. The anti-war perspective encouraged an idealistic peace and love movement that made the decades somewhat euphoric.

Pop culture was forever changed, with fashion and music taking on revolutionary forms. The bohemian aesthetic is still appreciated and reappears in fashion in waves. The media romanticized the movement so much that it would forever be remembered as a time when people felt the most free, which holds some truth to a certain extent. The defiance of mainstream culture helped push other movements forward, such as the Civil Rights and Women's Rights Movements. It was truly one of the most captivating and transformative moments in social and cultural history.

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The Counterculture Hippie Movement of the 1960s and 1970s

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The counterculture movement was the result of a generation that rejected social norms and traditional ways of previous decades.

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The battle of Gettysburg was fought July 1863 and the Address was given by Abraham Lincoln in November of 1863 when dedicating the Gettysburg National Cemetery. It was a brief two minute speech that tied together the beginning of the nation, the current struggles in the Nation, and the brave men who fought and would not be forgotten.

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Photograph of 1905 lithograph by Heritage Images

The Battle of Gettysburg was fought between July 1 and July 3, 1863. It was one of the bloodiest battles of the United States Civil War, with over 51,000 casualties-soldiers killed, injured, or otherwise lost to action-combined. Around 3,100 U.S. troops were killed, while 3,900 Confederates died. The U.S. victory there marked the turning point of the war.

President Lincoln was asked to deliver a message at the dedication of the Gettysburg Civil War Cemetery on November 19, 1863. The featured speaker for the occasion was Edward Everett, a former dean of Harvard University, and one of the most famous orators of his day. He spoke for two hours. Then Lincoln delivered his message; it took two minutes.

Lincoln tied the current struggle to the days of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, speaking of the principles that the nation was conceived in: liberty and the proposition that all men are created equal. Moreover, he tied both to the abolition of slavery-a new birth of freedom-and the maintenance of representative government.

Despite (or perhaps because of) its brevity, since the speech was delivered, it has come to be recognized as one of the most powerful statements in the English language and, in fact, one of the most important expressions of freedom and liberty in any language. Indeed, Everett immediately afterward wrote to Lincoln that "I wish that I could flatter myself that I had come as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes."
"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives, that that nation might live.

It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate-we cannot hallow-this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.

The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us-that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion-that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain-that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Director

Tyson Brown, National Geographic Society

Author

National Geographic Society

Production Managers

Gina Borgia, National Geographic Society

Jeanna Sullivan, National Geographic Society

Program Specialists

Sarah Appleton, National Geographic Society, National Geographic Society

Margot Willis, National Geographic Society

Last Updated

October 19, 2023

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In the wake of the United States Civil War's deadliest battle, President Abraham Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address. Now praised, this speech was not always seen this way.

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These 13 Articles served as the United States' first Constitution. In these the major ideas were that the combined 13 States were to be named The United States of America, state governments had their own powers, the combined states helped each other from attacks. Another major point was having one vote for each state in congress and can send 2-7 people to participate in Congress. In other words, it served as a way to explain the roles of state government and the role of the federal government.

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From the beginning of the American Revolution, Congress felt the need for a stronger union and a government powerful enough to defeat Great Britain. During the early years of the war this desire became a belief that the new nation must have a constitutional order appropriate to its republican character.

A fear of central authority inhibited the creation of such a government, and widely shared political theory held that a republic could not adequately serve a large nation such as the United States. The legislators of a large republic would be unable to remain in touch with the people they represented, and the republic would inevitably degenerate into a tyranny.

To many Americans, their union seemed to be simply a league of confederated states, and their Congress a diplomatic assemblage representing 13 independent polities. The impetus for an effective central government lay in wartime urgency, the need for foreign recognition and aid and the growth of national feeling.

Who Wrote the Articles of Confederation?

Altogether, six drafts of the Articles were prepared before Congress settled on a final version in 1777. Benjamin Franklin wrote the first and presented it to Congress in July 1775. It was never formally considered. Later in the year Silas Deane, a delegate from Connecticut, offered one of his own, which was followed still later by a draft from the Connecticut delegation, probably a revision of Deane's.

None of these drafts contributed significantly to the fourth version written by John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, the text that after much revision provided the basis for the Articles approved by Congress. Dickinson prepared his draft in June 1776; it was revised by a committee of Congress and discussed in late July and August. The result, the third version of Dickinson's original, was printed to enable Congress to consider it further. In November 1777 the final Articles, much altered by this long deliberative process, were approved for submission to the states.

Ratification of the Articles of Confederation

By 1779 all the states had approved the Articles of Confederation except Maryland, but the prospects for acceptance looked bleak because claims to western lands by other states set Maryland in inflexible opposition. Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Connecticut and Massachusetts claimed by their charters to extend to the "South Sea" or the Mississippi River.

The charters of Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and Rhode Island confined those states to a few hundred miles of the Atlantic. Land speculators in Maryland and these other "landless states" insisted that the West belonged to the United States, and they urged Congress to honor their claims to western lands. Maryland also supported the demands because nearby Virginia would clearly dominate its neighbor should its claims be accepted.

Eventually Thomas Jefferson persuaded his state to yield its claims to the West, provided that the speculators' demands were rejected and the West was divided into new states, which would be admitted into the Union on the basis of equality with the old. Virginia's action persuaded Maryland to ratify the Articles, which went into effect on March 1, 1781.

Weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation

The weakness of the Articles of Confederation was that Congress was not strong enough to enforce laws or raise taxes, making it difficult for the new nation to repay their debts from the Revolutionary War. There was no executive and no judiciary, two of the three branches of government we have today to act as a system of checks and balances. Additionally, there were several issues between states that were not settled with ratification: A disagreement over the appointment of taxes forecast the division over slavery in the Constitutional Convention.

Dickinson's draft required the states to provide money to Congress in proportion to the number of their inhabitants, black and white, except Indians not paying taxes. With large numbers of slaves, the southern states opposed this requirement, arguing that taxes should be based on the number of white inhabitants. This failed to pass, but eventually the southerners had their way as Congress decided that each state's contribution should rest on the value of its lands and improvements. In the middle of the war, Congress had little time and less desire to take action on such matters as the slave trade and fugitive slaves, both issues receiving much attention in the Constitutional Convention.

Article III described the confederation as "a firm league of friendship" of states "for their common defense, the security of their liberties and their mutual and general welfare." This league would have a unicameral congress as the central institution of government; as in the past, each state had one vote, and delegates were elected by state legislatures. Under the Articles, each state retained its "sovereignty, freedom and independence." The old weakness of the First and Second Continental Congresses remained: the new Congress could not levy taxes, nor could it regulate commerce. Its revenue would come from the states, each contributing according to the value of privately owned land within its borders.

But Congress would exercise considerable powers: it was given jurisdiction over foreign relations with the authority to make treaties and alliances; it could make war and peace, maintain an army and navy, coin money, establish a postal service and manage Indian affairs; it could establish admiralty courts and it would serve as the last resort on appeal of disputes between the states. Decisions on certain specified matters-making war, entering treaties, regulating coinage, for example-required the assent of nine states in Congress, and all others required a majority.

Although the states remained sovereign and independent, no state was to impose restrictions on the trade or the movement of citizens of another state not imposed on its own. The Articles also required each state to extend "full faith and credit" to the judicial proceedings of the others. And the free inhabitants of each state were to enjoy the "privileges and immunities of free citizens" of the others. Movement across state lines was not to be restricted.

To amend the Articles, the legislatures of all thirteen states would have to agree. This provision, like many in the Articles, indicated that powerful provincial loyalties and suspicions of central authority persisted. In the 1780s-the so-called Critical Period-state actions powerfully affected politics and economic life.

For the most part, business prospered and the economy grew. Expansion into the West proceeded and population increased. National problems persisted, however, as American merchants were barred from the British West Indies and the British army continued to hold posts in the Old Northwest, which was named American territory under the Treaty of Paris.

These circumstances contributed to a sense that constitutional revision was imperative. Still, national feeling grew slowly in the 1780s, although major efforts to amend the Articles in order to give Congress the power to tax failed in 1781 and 1786. The year after the failure of 1786, the Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia and effectively closed the history of government under the Articles of Confederation.

The Articles of Confederation Text
Preamble:
To all to whom these Presents shall come, we the undersigned Delegates of the States affixed to our Names send greeting.

Whereas the Delegates of the United States of America in Congress assembled did on the fifteenth day of November in the Year of our Lord One Thousand Seven Hundred and Seventy seven, and in the Second Year of the Independence of America, agree to certain articles of Confederation and perpetual Union between the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts-bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, in the words following, viz:

Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union between the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts-bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia.
Thirteen Articles: Article I.
The Stile of this confederacy shall be "The United States of America."
Article II.
Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every Power, Jurisdiction and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.
Article III.
The said states hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defence, the security of their Liberties and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other, against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretence whatever.
Article IV.
The better to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and intercourse among the people of the different states in this union, the free inhabitants of each of these states, paupers, vagabonds and fugitives from justice excepted, shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several states; and the people of each state shall have free ingress and regress to and from any other state, and shall enjoy therein all the privileges of trade and commerce, subject to the same duties impositions and restrictions as the inhabitants thereof respectively, provided that such restriction shall not extend so far as to prevent the removal of property imported into any state, to any other state, of which the Owner is an inhabitant; provided also that no imposition, duties or restriction shall be laid by any state, on the property of the united states, or either of them. If any Person guilty of, or charged with treason, felony, - or other high misdemeanor in any state, shall flee from Justice, and be found in any of the united states, he shall, upon demand of the Governor or executive power, of the state from which he fled, be delivered up and removed to the state having jurisdiction of his offense. Full faith and credit shall be given in each of these states to the records, acts and judicial proceedings of the courts and magistrates of every other state.
Article V.
For the more convenient management of the general interests of the united states, delegates shall be annually appointed in such manner as the legislature of each state shall direct, to meet in Congress on the first Monday in November, in every year, with a power reserved to each state, to recal its delegates, or any of them, at any time within the year, and to send others in their stead, for the remainder of the Year.

No state shall be represented in Congress by less than two, nor by more than seven Members; and no person shall be capable of being a delegate for more than three years in any term of six years; nor shall any person, being a delegate, be capable of holding any office under the united states, for which he, or another for his benefit receives any salary, fees or emolument of any kind.

Each state shall maintain its own delegates in a meeting of the states, and while they act as members of the committee of the states. In determining questions in the united states in Congress assembled, each state shall have one vote.

Freedom of speech and debate in Congress shall not be impeached or questioned in any Court, or place out of Congress, and the members of congress shall be protected in their persons from arrests and imprisonments, during the time of their going to and from, and attendance on congress, except for treason, felony, or breach of the peace.
Article VI.
No state, without the Consent of the united states in congress assembled, shall send any embassy to, or receive any embassy from, or enter into any conference agreement, alliance or treaty with any King prince or state; nor shall any person holding any office of profit or trust under the united states, or any of them, accept of any present, emolument, office or title of any kind whatever from any king, prince or foreign state; nor shall the united states in congress assembled, or any of them, grant any title of nobility.

No two or more states shall enter into any treaty, confederation or alliance whatever between them, without the consent of the united states in congress assembled, specifying accurately the purposes for which the same is to be entered into, and how long it shall continue.

No state shall lay any imposts or duties, which may interfere with any stipulations in treaties, entered into by the united states in congress assembled, with any king, prince or state, in pursuance of any treaties already proposed by congress, to the courts of France and Spain.

No vessels of war shall be kept up in time of peace by any state, except such number only, as shall be deemed necessary by the united states in congress assembled, for the defence of such state, or its trade; nor shall any body of forces be kept up by any state, in time of peace, except such number only, as in the judgment of the united states, in congress assembled, shall be deemed requisite to garrison the forts necessary for the defence of such state; but every state shall always keep up a well regulated and disciplined militia, sufficiently armed and accoutered, and shall provide and constantly have ready for use, in public stores, a due number of field pieces and tents, and a proper quantity of arms, ammunition and camp equipage. No state shall engage in any war without the consent of the united states in congress assembled, unless such state be actually invaded by enemies, or shall have received certain advice of a resolution being formed by some nation of Indians to invade such state, and the danger is so imminent as not to admit of a delay till the united states in congress assembled can be consulted: nor shall any state grant commissions to any ships or vessels of war, nor letters of marque or reprisal, except it be after a declaration of war by the united states in congress assembled, and then only against the kingdom or state and the subjects thereof, against which war has been so declared, and under such regulations as shall be established by the united states in congress assembled, unless such state be infested by pirates, in which case vessels of war may be fitted out for that occasion, and kept so long as the danger shall continue, or until the united states in congress assembled, shall determine otherwise.
Article VII.
When land-forces are raised by any state for the common defence, all officers of or under the rank of colonel, shall be appointed by the legislature of each state respectively, by whom such forces shall be raised, or in such manner as such state shall direct, and all vacancies shall be filled up by the State which first made the appointment.
Article VIII.
All charges of war, and all other expences that shall be incurred for the common defence or general welfare, and allowed by the united states in congress assembled, shall be defrayed out of a common treasury, which shall be supplied by the several states in proportion to the value of all land within each state, granted to or surveyed for any Person, as such land and the buildings and improvements thereon shall be estimated according to such mode as the united states in congress assembled, shall from time to time direct and appoint.

The taxes for paying that proportion shall be laid and levied by the authority and direction of the legislatures of the several states within the time agreed upon by the united states in congress assembled.
Article IX.
The united states in congress assembled, shall have the sole and exclusive right and power of determining on peace and war, except in the cases mentioned in the sixth article - of sending and receiving ambassadors - entering into treaties and alliances, provided that no treaty of commerce shall be made whereby the legislative power of the respective states shall be restrained from imposing such imposts and duties on foreigners as their own people are subjected to, or from prohibiting the exportation or importation of any species of goods or commodities, whatsoever - of establishing rules for deciding in all cases, what captures on land or water shall be legal, and in what manner prizes taken by land or naval forces in the service of the united states shall be divided or appropriated - of granting letters of marque and reprisal in times of peace - appointing courts for the trial of piracies and felonies committed on the high seas and establishing courts for receiving and determining finally appeals in all cases of captures, provided that no member of congress shall be appointed a judge of any of the said courts.

The united states in congress assembled shall also be the last resort on appeal in all disputes and differences now subsisting or that hereafter may arise between two or more states concerning boundary, jurisdiction or any other cause whatever; which authority shall always be exercised in the manner following. Whenever the legislative or executive authority or lawful agent of any state in controversy with another shall present a petition to congress stating the matter in question and praying for a hearing, notice thereof shall be given by order of congress to the legislative or executive authority of the other state in controversy, and a day assigned for the appearance of the parties by their lawful agents, who shall then be directed to appoint by joint consent, commissioners or judges to constitute a court for hearing and determining the matter in question: but if they cannot agree, congress shall name three persons out of each of the united states, and from the list of such persons each party shall alternately strike out one, the petitioners beginning, until the number shall be reduced to thirteen; and from that number not less than seven, nor more than nine names as congress shall direct, shall in the presence of congress be drawn out by lot, and the persons whose names shall be so drawn or any five of them, shall be commissioners or judges, to hear and finally determine the controversy, so always as a major part of the judges who shall hear the cause shall agree in the determination: and if either party shall neglect to attend at the day appointed, without showing reasons, which congress shall judge sufficient, or being present shall refuse to strike, the congress shall proceed to nominate three persons out of each state, and the secretary of congress shall strike in behalf of such party absent or refusing; and the judgment and sentence of the court to be appointed, in the manner before prescribed, shall be final and conclusive; and if any of the parties shall refuse to submit to the authority of such court, or to appear or defend their claim or cause, the court shall nevertheless proceed to pronounce sentence, or judgment, which shall in like manner be final and decisive, the judgment or sentence and other proceedings being in either case transmitted to congress, and lodged among the acts of congress for the security of the parties concerned: provided that every commissioner, before he sits in judgment, shall take an oath to be administered by one of the judges of the supreme or superior court of the state, where the cause shall be tried, "well and truly to hear and determine the matter in question, according to the best of his judgment, without favour, affection or hope of reward:" provided also, that no state shall be deprived of territory for the benefit of the united states.

All controversies concerning the private right of soil claimed under different grants of two or more states, whose jurisdictions as they may respect such lands, and the states which passed such grants are adjusted, the said grants or either of them being at the same time claimed to have originated antecedent to such settlement of jurisdiction, shall on the petition of either party to the congress of the united states, be finally determined as near as may be in the same manner as is before prescribed for deciding disputes respecting territorial jurisdiction between different states.

The united states in congress assembled shall also have the sole and exclusive right and power of regulating the alloy and value of coin struck by their own authority, or by that of the respective states - fixing the standard of weights and measures throughout the united states - regulating the trade and managing all affairs with the Indians, not members of any of the states, provided that the legislative right of any state within its own limits be not infringed or violated - establishing or regulating post offices from one state to another, throughout all the united states, and exacting such postage on the papers passing thro' the same as may be requisite to defray the expences of the said office - appointing all officers of the land forces, in the service of the united states, excepting regimental officers - appointing all the officers of the naval forces, and commissioning all officers whatever in the service of the united states - making rules for the government and regulation of the said land and naval forces, and directing their operations.

The united states in congress assembled shall have authority to appoint a committee, to sit in the recess of congress, to be denominated "A Committee of the States," and to consist of one delegate from each state; and to appoint such other committees and civil officers as may be necessary for managing the general affairs of the united states under their direction - to appoint one of their number to preside, provided that no person be allowed to serve in the office of president more than one year in any term of three years; to ascertain the necessary sums of money to be raised for the service of the united states, and to appropriate and apply the same for defraying the public expences to borrow money, or emit bills on the credit of the united states, transmitting every half year to the respective states an account of the sums of money so borrowed or emitted, - to build and equip a navy - to agree upon the number of land forces, and to make requisitions from each state for its quota, in proportion to the number of white inhabitants in such state; which requisition shall be binding, and thereupon the legislature of each state shall appoint the regimental officers, raise the men and cloth, arm and equip them in a soldier like manner, at the expence of the united states; and the officers and men so cloathed, armed and quipped shall march to the place appointed, and within the time agreed on by the united states in congress assembled: But if the united states in congress assembled shall, on consideration of circumstances judge proper that any state should not raise men, or should raise a smaller number than its quota, and that any other state should raise a greater number of men than the quota thereof, such extra number shall be raised, officered, cloathed, armed and equipped in the same manner as the quota of such state, unless the legislature of such sta te shall judge that such extra number cannot be safely spared out of the same, in which case they shall raise officer, cloath, arm and equip as many of such extra number as they judge can be safely spared. And the officers and men so cloathed, armed and equipped, shall march to the place appointed, and within the time agreed on by the united states in congress assembled.

The united states in congress assembled shall never engage in a war, nor grant letters of marque and reprisal in time of peace, nor enter into any treaties or alliances, nor coin money, nor regulate the value thereof, nor ascertain the sums and expences necessary for the defence and welfare of the united states, or any of them, nor emit bills, nor borrow money on the credit of the united states, nor appropriate money, nor agree upon the number of vessels of war, to be built or purchased, or the number of land or sea forces to be raised, nor appoint a commander in chief of the army or navy, unless nine states assent to the same: nor shall a question on any other point, except for adjourning from day to day be determined, unless by the votes of a majority of the united states in congress assembled.

The congress of the united states shall have power to adjourn to any time within the year, and to any place within the united states, so that no period of adjournment be for a longer duration than the space of six Months, and shall publish the Journal of their proceedings monthly, except such parts thereof relating to treaties, alliances or military operations, as in their judgment require secrecy; and the yeas and nays of the delegates of each state on any question shall be entered on the Journal, when it is desired by any delegate; and the delegates of a state, or any of them, at his or their request shall be furnished with a transcript of the said Journal, except such parts as are above excepted, to lay before the legislatures of the several states.
Article X.
The committee of the states, or any nine of them, shall be authorized to execute, in the recess of congress, such of the powers of congress as the united states in congress assembled, by the consent of nine states, shall from time to time think expedient to vest them with; provided that no power be delegated to the said committee, for the exercise of which, by the articles of confederation, the voice of nine states in the congress of the united states assembled is requisite.
Article XI.
Canada acceding to this confederation, and joining in the measures of the united states, shall be admitted into, and entitled to all the advantages of this union: but no other colony shall be admitted into the same, unless such admission be agreed to by nine states.
Article XII.
All bills of credit emitted, monies borrowed and debts contracted by, or under the authority of congress, before the assembling of the united states, in pursuance of the present confederation, shall be deemed and considered as a charge against the united states, for payment and satisfaction whereof the said united states, and the public faith are hereby solemnly pledged.
Article XIII.
Every state shall abide by the determinations of the united states in congress assembled, on all questions which by this confederation are submitted to them. And the Articles of this confederation shall be inviolably observed by every state, and the union shall be perpetual; nor shall any alteration at any time hereafter be made in any of them; unless such alteration be agreed to in a congress of the united states, and be afterwards confirmed by the legislatures of every state.
Conclusion:
And Whereas it hath pleased the Great Governor of the World to incline the hearts of the legislatures we respectively represent in congress, to approve of, and to authorize us to ratify the said articles of confederation and perpetual union. Know Ye that we the undersigned delegates, by virtue of the power and authority to us given for that pur pose, do by these presents, in the name and in behalf of our respective constituents, fully and entirely ratify and confirm each and every of the said articles of confederation and perpetual union, and all and singular the matters and things therein contained: And we do further solemnly plight and engage the faith of our respective constituents, that they shall abide by the determinations of the united states in congress assembled, on all questions, which by the said confederation are submitted to them. And that the articles thereof shall be inviolably observed by the states we respectively represent, and that the union shall be perpetual.

In Witness whereof we have hereunto set our hands in Congress. Done at Philadelphia in the state of Pennsylvania the ninth day of July in the Year of our Lord one Thousand seven Hundred and Seventy-eight, and in the third year of the independence of America.

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From the beginning of the American Revolution, Congress felt the need for a stronger union and a government powerful enough to defeat Great Britain. During the early years of the war this desire became a belief that the new nation must have a constitutional order appropriate to its republican character.

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Spain's purpose of exploration of America

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Spain's purpose of exploration of America

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Spain had a multitude of explorers for the new land but they had the motive(s) of locating gold, converting people to Christianity.

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Captain Juan Bautista de Anza II (1736-1788)

Tristan de Luna y Arellano (1519-1571)

Captain Pedro Menendez de Aviles (1519-1574)

Lucas Vazquez de Ayllon (1475-1526)

Vasco Nunez de Balboa (1475?-1519)

Andres Dorantes de Carranza (1500?-1550s)

Sebastiao Melendez Rodriguez Cermeno (1560?-1602)

Christopher Columbus (1451-1506)

Francisco Vasquez de Coronado (1510-1554)

Diego de Vargas (1643-1704)

Estevanico (1500?-1539)

Juan de Fuca (15??-1602)

Father Francisco Tomas Garces (1738-1781)

Father Eusebio Francisco Kino (1645-1711)

Juan Ponce de Leon (1460?-1521)

Panfilo de Narvaez (1478?-1528)

Fray Marcos de Niza (1495?-1558)

Juan de Onate (1550?-1626)

Captain Alonso Alvarez de Pineda (1494-1520)

Hernando de Soto (1500-1542)

Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca (1490?-1558?)

"Gold is a treasure, and he who possesses it does all he wishes to in this world and succeeds in helping souls into paradise. "

- Christopher Columbus

Between 1513, when Juan Ponce de Leon first set foot in Florida, and 1821, when Mexico gained her independence, as well as the Spanish possessions in the present United States, Spain left an indelible influence - especially in the trans-Mississippi West, which the United States began to acquire in 1803. Spain was the leading European power in the early imperial rivalry for control of North America and, for centuries, dominated the Southeastern and Southwestern parts of what was later the United States - particularly the States of Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California.

Spain held Louisiana territory between 1762 and 1803 and was, for the most part, content to foster the settlements founded by France rather than initiate new ones. She lost Florida temporarily in 1763 but regained it in 1783. Her possessions reached their maximum extent between 1783 and 1803 when they ranged in a crescent from Florida to California.

Except in California, Spain happened to colonize less fruitful regions than England and France. Yet, she tenaciously clung to them long after she had lost her dominance in Europe, some years after the English defeated her armada in 1588. Frustrated in their search for gold and precious metals, the Spaniards were usually forced to try to wrest a living from the barren soil of an inhospitable land by farming and ranching. Finding native labor much scarcer in the present United States than in her possessions to the south, Spain was forced to spread her colonial empire dangerously thin. A small number of soldiers, settlers, and friars controlled the native masses and, through their labors, obtained what wealth was to be had.

Spain's motives for colonization were threefold: to locate mineral wealth, convert the Indians to Christianity, and counter French and English efforts. The Spanish colonization system was highly successful. First, an armed force subdued the natives and established forts, or presidios, for future protection. Then, zealous missionaries moved in to convert the Indians to the religion of Spain and teach them the arts of civilization. Finally, representatives of the King founded civil settlements in conjunction with the presidios and missions. The Crown controlled the highly centralized process through a bureaucracy that burgeoned as the empire expanded. But, the story begins in the first years of the 16th century, when Spain first realized that Columbus had discovered not island outposts of Cathay, but a New World!

In the two decades after the first voyage of Columbus, Spanish navigators only began to realize the nature and extent of his remarkable find. The presence of a continental landmass was surmised but not known. Columbus himself had sailed around Puerto Rico, charted most of the West Indies' shores, touched on the shores of South America, but, without realizing that it was a continent, and mapped the Central American coast from Panama nearly to southern Yucatan.

On his first voyage, late in 1492, he had established the colony of Navidad on Hispaniola, but, finding it destroyed on his second voyage, he founded Isabella in January 1494. Isabella failed within two years, and the colonists established Santo Domingo, the first permanent European settlement in the New World.

In 1508-1509, while Juan Ponce de Leon was occupying Puerto Rico and subduing its natives, Vicente Pinzón explored the southern Yucatan coast, and Sebastian de Ocampo circumnavigated the island of Cuba. In 1510, the Spaniards occupied Jamaica and, the following year, Cuba. In 1513, Vasco Nunez de Balboa, who dominated a struggling colony in present Colombia, hacked a trail across the Isthmus of Panama and discovered the Pacific Ocean. In 1522, one of the five vessels of the Ferdinand Magellan expedition completed the first circumnavigation of the globe. The lure of adventure and discovery whetted the Spanish desire to explore.

Juan Ponce de Leon was the first Spaniard to touch the shores of the present United States. As Columbus had not remotely realized the extent of his momentous discovery, de Leon never dreamed that his "island" of Florida was a peninsular extension of the vast North American Continent. After coming to the New World with Columbus in 1493, he led the occupation of Puerto Rico in 1508 and governed it from 1509 to 1512. In 1509, he started a colony at Caparra, later abandoned in favor of San Juan. He was one of the first of the adelantados - men who "advanced" the Spanish Empire by conquest, the subjugation of the Indians, and the establishment of a quasi-military government.

In 1513, the aging King Ferdinand awarded de Leona a patent to conquer and govern the Bimini Islands in the Bahamas, which the Spaniards had heard but had not yet seen. According to a persistent legend, de Leon would find the marvelous spring whose waters would restore lost youth and vigor. So many wonders had the Spaniards already encountered in the Western Hemisphere that only a cynic would have doubted the existence of such a spring.

By the time of de Leon's hapless attempt to exercise his patent rights to the "island" of Florida in 1521, many geographers and navigators realized that Florida was likely the giant arm of a continent. Two expeditions indicated this was true, one in 1519 by Captain Alonso Alvarez de Pineda and another in 1521 by Francisco Gordillo.

The Pineda expedition inspired Francisco de Garay, Governor of Jamaica. He placed four vessels under the command of Pineda. He ordered him to find a water passage around or through the landmass whose existence had been indicated by a series of Spanish explorations from 1515 to 18. Captain Alonso Alvarez de Pineda circled west and south around the coast from Florida to Vera Cruz. He named the land off his starboard bow "Amichel"; he called what was probably the Mississippi River "Rio del Espíritu Santo"; and he recommended a settlement at the mouth of the "Rio de las Palmas" - possibly the Rio Grande. Most importantly, he gained substantial knowledge of the unbroken coastline and revealed that a huge continental landmass lay to the west of Spain's island headquarters in the Caribbean.

Lucas Vazquez de Ayllon, a prominent magistrate in Hispaniola, in 1521 sent out Captain Francisco Gordillo to sail northward through the Bahamas and strike the continent's shore, following part of de Leon's route and trying to round the "island" of Florida from the east. Up the coast, he tacked, extending de Leon's exploration at least 3° northward and landing on the shores of present South Carolina. Ignoring orders, he loaded his ship with innocent and friendly natives and put about for Hispaniola. He planned to sell his cargo into slavery to replace the large losses of natives during the first years of the Spanish conquest.

Lucas Vazquez de Ayllon reprimanded him and released the unfortunate captives but listened greedily to the report of the fair land to the north. Rushing to Spain, he obtained a patent to colonize the region. A reconnaissance expedition in 1525, led by Pedro de Quexos, extended De Ayllón's knowledge of the coast as far as present Virginia. The following year, after extensive preparation, Lucas Vazquez de Ayllon set out with three vessels, more than 500 colonists, three padres, and ample supplies and livestock to establish a lasting settlement on the Atlantic shore. He failed. Attempting to settle at an unknown site, possibly in present North Carolina, he shifted about 100 miles to the south. He founded a crude settlement named San Miguel de Guadalupe in South Carolina. He died of a fever before the year was out, and internal dissension rent the settlement into anarchy. Less than a third of the colonists survived to return to Hispaniola.

The previous year a Portuguese navigator named Stephen Gomez, also flying the flag of Spain, had completed the exploration of the Atlantic coast by sailing from Newfoundland south to the Florida peninsula in search of the Northwest Passage. The continental block extended from Newfoundland to Tierra del Fuego. Intrepid Spanish explorers were forced off their ships and onto the land if they wished to make additional discoveries, as had Vasco Nunez de Balboa and Cortes before them.

Compiled and edited by Kathy Alexander/ Legends of America, updated February 2023
Also See: Missions & Presidios of the United States Early America Exploration of America San Antonio Missions National Historic Park

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Captain Juan Bautista de Anza II (1736-1788) Tristan de Luna y Arellano (1519-1571) Captain Pedro Menendez de Aviles (1519-1574) Lucas Vazquez de Ayllon (1475-1526) Vasco Nunez de Balboa (1475?-1519) Andres Dorantes de Carranza (1500?-1550s) Sebastiao Melendez Rodriguez Cermeno (1560?-1602) Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) Francisco Vasquez de Coronado (1510-1554) Diego de Vargas

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The 13 original colonies had a lot to do with agriculture and plantations. They were on the East coast were a religious group of people. The colonists were here for a variety of reasons and these colonies, of course, eventually became part of the United States

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English Colonial Expansion

Sixteenth-century England was a tumultuous place. Because they could make more money from selling wool than from selling food, many of the nation's landowners were converting farmers' fields into pastures for sheep. This led to a food shortage; at the same time, many agricultural workers lost their jobs.

Did you know? Virginia Dare, the first American-born child of English parents, was born in Roanoke in 1587.

The 16th century was also the age of mercantilism, an extremely competitive economic philosophy that pushed European nations to acquire as many colonies as they could. As a result, for the most part, the English colonies in North America were business ventures. They provided an outlet for England's surplus population and (in some cases) more religious freedom than England did, but their primary purpose was to make money for their sponsors.

The Tobacco Colonies

In 1606, King James I divided the Atlantic seaboard in two, giving the southern half to the London Company (later the Virginia Company) and the northern half to the Plymouth Company.

The first English settlement in North America had actually been established some 20 years before, in 1587, when a group of colonists (91 men, 17 women and nine children) led by Sir Walter Raleigh settled on the island of Roanoke. Mysteriously, by 1590 the Roanoke colony had vanished entirely. Historians still do not know what became of its inhabitants.

In 1606, just a few months after James I issued its charter, the London Company sent 144 men to Virginia on three ships: the Godspeed, the Discovery and the Susan Constant. They reached the Chesapeake Bay in the spring of 1607 and headed about 60 miles up the James River, where they built a settlement they called Jamestown.

The Jamestown colonists had a rough time of it: They were so busy looking for gold and other exportable resources that they could barely feed themselves. It was not until 1616, when Virginia's settlers learned how to grow tobacco, that it seemed the colony might survive. The first enslaved African arrived in Virginia in 1619.

In 1632, the English crown granted about 12 million acres of land at the top of the Chesapeake Bay to Cecilius Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore. This colony, named Maryland after the queen, was similar to Virginia in many ways. Its landowners produced tobacco on large plantations that depended on the labor of indentured servants and (later) enslaved workers.

But unlike Virginia's founders, Lord Baltimore was a Catholic, and he hoped that his colony would be a refuge for his persecuted coreligionists. Maryland became known for its policy of religious toleration for all.

The New England Colonies

The first English emigrants to what would become the New England colonies were a small group of Puritan separatists, later called the Pilgrims, who arrived in Plymouth in 1620 to found Plymouth Colony. Ten years later, a wealthy syndicate known as the Massachusetts Bay Company sent a much larger (and more liberal) group of Puritans to establish another Massachusetts settlement. With the help of local natives, the colonists soon got the hang of farming, fishing and hunting, and Massachusetts prospered.

As the Massachusetts settlements expanded, they formed new colonies in New England. Puritans who thought that Massachusetts was not pious enough formed the colonies of Connecticut and New Haven (the two combined in 1665). Meanwhile, Puritans who thought that Massachusetts was too restrictive formed the colony of Rhode Island, where everyone-including Jewish people-enjoyed complete "liberty in religious concernments." To the north of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, a handful of adventurous settlers formed the colony of New Hampshire.

The Middle Colonies

In 1664, King Charles II gave the territory between New England and Virginia, much of which was already occupied by Dutch traders and landowners called patroons, to his brother James, the Duke of York. The English soon absorbed Dutch New Netherland and renamed it New York.

Most of the Dutch people (as well as the Belgian Flemings and Walloons, French Huguenots, Scandinavians and Germans) who were living there stayed put. This made New York one of the most diverse and prosperous colonies in the New World.

In 1680, the king granted 45,000 square miles of land west of the Delaware River to William Penn, a Quaker who owned large swaths of land in Ireland. Penn's North American holdings became the colony of "Penn's Woods," or Pennsylvania.

Lured by the fertile soil and the religious toleration that Penn promised, people migrated there from all over Europe. Like their Puritan counterparts in New England, most of these emigrants paid their own way to the colonies and had enough money to establish themselves when they arrived. As a result, Pennsylvania soon became a prosperous and relatively egalitarian place.

The Southern Colonies

By contrast, the Carolina colony, a territory that stretched south from Virginia to Florida and west to the Pacific Ocean, was much less cosmopolitan. In its northern half, hardscrabble farmers eked out a living. In its southern half, planters presided over vast estates that produced corn, lumber, beef and pork, and-starting in the 1690s-rice.

These Carolinians had close ties to the English planter colony on the Caribbean island of Barbados, which relied heavily on African slave labor, and many were involved in the slave trade themselves. As a result, slavery played an important role in the development of the Carolina colony. (It split into North Carolina and South Carolina in 1729.)

In 1732, inspired by the need to build a buffer between South Carolina and the Spanish settlements in Florida, the Englishman James Oglethorpe established the Georgia colony. In many ways, Georgia's development mirrored South Carolina's.

The Revolutionary War and the Treaty of Paris

In 1700, there were about 250,000 European settlers and enslaved Africans in North America's English colonies. By 1775, on the eve of revolution, there were an estimated 2.5 million. The colonists did not have much in common, but they were able to band together and fight for their independence.

The American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) was sparked after American colonists chafed over issues like taxation without representation, embodied by laws like The Stamp Act and The Townshend Acts. Mounting tensions came to a head during the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, when the "shot heard round the world" was fired.

It was not without warning; the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770 and the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773 showed the colonists' increasing dissatisfaction with British rule in the colonies.

The Declaration of Independence, issued on July 4, 1776, enumerated the reasons the Founding Fathers felt compelled to break from the rule of King George III and parliament to start a new nation. In September of that year, the Continental Congress declared the "United Colonies" of America to be the "United States of America."

France joined the war on the side of the colonists in 1778, helping the Continental Army conquer the British at the Battle of Yorktown in 1781. The Treaty of Paris ending the American Revolution and granting the 13 original colonies independence was signed on September 3, 1783.

13 Colonies Flag

During the Revolutionary War, a flag featuring thirteen alternating red and white stripes and thirteen five-pointed stars arranged in a circle was adopted. This variant is also known as the " Betsy Ross Flag," as she was believed to have designed it. The stars and stripes represent the 13 colonies.

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The 13 Colonies: Map, Original States & Facts | HISTORY

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The 13 Colonies were a group of colonies of Great Britain that settled on the Atlantic coast of America in the 17th and 18th centuries. The colonies declared independence in 1776 to found the United States of America.

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Dred Scott was born into slavery and fought his whole life for his freedom. He was transferred multiple times to different owners and although he was awarded his freedom from his third and final owner, he went to the Supreme Court to fight. The Supreme Court ruled that they could not interfere because slave states and non slave states are not a federal matter. This outraged abolitionists and fired up the Civil War further.

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William Lloyd Garrison was the founding father of the Liberator, an antislavery newspaper. He also was an advocate and very outspoken leading up to the 13th amendment that abolished slavery. He was imprisoned for a short time, and his beliefs helped lead to the nomination of Abraham Lincoln.

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William Lloyd Garrison (U.S. National Park Service)

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A printer, newspaper publisher, radical abolitionist, suffragist, civil rights activist William Lloyd Garrison spent his life disturbing the peace of the nation in the cause of justice.

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The Louisiana Purchase happened in 1803 between the United States and France. In this the Unites states acquired thousands of acres of land west of the Mississippi for about 4 cents an acre.

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Jefferson's Revolutionary Louisiana Purchase | The American Presidency with Bill Clinton (Season 1)

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The founding father that signed all 3 documents that freed America from Britain. He helped draft the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and negotiated the Treaty of Paris. He is also credited with multiple inventions and is considered an extremely influential person in American Independence.

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Biography of Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin was an American printer, scientist, inventor, politician, diplomat, statesman, author, and one of the most colorful characters of the American Revolution.

Early Life

Franklin was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1706 to Josiah Franklin and Abiah Folger. He was the 15th and youngest son of Josiah's seventeen children.

Franklin learned the printing trade while working for the weekly Boston newspaper, New England Courant. The paper was owned by his brother James. When the brothers quarreled over letters young Benjamin published under a pseudonym, he left Boston before his apprenticeship expired. Franklin ran off to Philadelphia.

To London and Back

In Philadelphia, Franklin worked as a printer at several different shops. Encouraged by the Governor of Pennsylvania, Sir William Keith, he traveled to London to purchase equipment to start his own newspaper. Unfortunately, this did not work out and Franklin found employment as a typesetter in the Smithfield area of London. A Quaker merchant, Thomas Denham, loaned him the money for passage on a ship back to Philadelphia. In debt to Denham, Franklin worked in his shop until he passed away.

Franklin in Philadelphia

Franklin formally attended school for less than three years, but he read a considerable amount and in 1727 he created the Junto. The Junto was a group of "like minded aspiring artisans and tradesmen who hoped to improve themselves while they improved their community." The members of the Junto created a library, which eventually led to the creation of the Library Company. In 1731, Franklin chartered the Library Company of Philadelphia.

Marriage to Deborah Read

In 1730, Franklin married Deborah Read by common-law and adopted his illegitimate son, William. The identity of William's mother remains unknown. Franklin had two other children with Deborah, Francis, born in 1732, and Sarah, born in 1743.

Business Success and Political Connections

Franklin began saving money and became a successful businessman selling books and publishing the weekly Pennsylvania Gazette. He also clerked for the House of Representatives and promoted civic enterprises, such as the library, that still thrive today. He was on good terms with Lord Thomas Penn and was rewarded with local offices. He aligned himself with Penn's secret agent, William Smith, in opposition to a large influx of German immigrants from the Rhineland, which seemed to threaten English sovereignty. The Germans had been aided by the Quakers in their move to the colony, and in return, the Germans supported Quaker politicians. Franklin was ambivalent toward the Quakers, who were pacifists. Although he respected their toleration, he hated their pacifism. During King George's War (1744-1748), he organized an extralegal military association that helped him gain popular support, to the dismay of Penn, who feared popular leaders.

Franklin Gains Fame with the Kite Experiment

Franklin's most famous scientific experiment is likely that of flying a kite in a thunderstorm with a key attached to a piece of twine. The purpose of the experiment was to prove that lightning is a form of electricity. He published the proposal for the experiment in 1750, although there is some debate as to whether or not he actually conducted the experiment himself, due to the danger of electrocution. His experiments and research into electricity, a new science at the time, led the London Royal Society to award him the Copley Gold Medal. As a result, his name became well known both in America and abroad.

Deputy Postmaster and Pennsylvania Assembly

Franklin was appointed as deputy postmaster of the colonies in 1753 and served in that capacity until 1774. During his tenure, he made the post offices profitable and essentially franchised several printers by supplying them with equipment on a profit-sharing basis. In 1751 he was elected to the Assembly, where he had to cooperate with the dominant Quakers. In 1755 he persuaded German farmers to rent their heavy wagons to Major General Edward Braddock for his doomed campaign against the French and Fort Duquesne.

Albany Congress and Plan of Union

In 1754, the French and Indian War, pitting Great Britain against France and its allies from the Native Tribes, loomed on the horizon. Sensing the benefit of creating an alliance with the powerful Iroquois Confederation, British officials called for a conference between the American colonies and Iroquois leaders in Albany, New York. Franklin was selected as a delegate from Pennsylvania for the Albany Congress.

The most significant part of the conference was the development of the Albany Plan of Union, which Franklin proposed. The plan outlines a permanent federation of the colonies, as a means to reform colonial-imperial relations and to more effectively address shared colonial interests. The plan was introduced on June 19, and the commissioners adopted a final version on July 10.

Despite the support of those who attended the Albany Congress, the Albany Plan of Union was rejected by King George II and by all of the individual colonial governments that considered its adoption. The Congress and the plan were significant milestones, however, as they marked the first official attempts to develop inter-colonial cooperation among the American colonies.

Franklin Organizes and Leads Pennsylvania Militia

During the French and Indian War (1754-1763), Franklin served in the Pennsylvania Assembly. He helped to organize a legal militia and was chosen as its commanding colonel. He used Tun Tavern in Philadelphia as a recruiting station. The Pennsylvania Militia was organized as Pennsylvania's 103rd Artillery and 11th Infantry Regiment at the Continental Army. He set up a ring of garrisoned forts for defense against Indian raids and eventually learned that the Indians were upset over being cheated out of their lands by Lord Thomas Penn. This led to Franklin eventually turning against the Quakers.

Franklin Opposes the Stamp Act

In 1764, Franklin found himself embroiled in disputes between members of the Pennsylvania Assembly and the heirs of William Penn. He was dispatched to London where in 1765 he was on hand to voice American opposition to the Stamp Act. His testimony to the House of Commons helped lead to its repeal and he emerged as a leading voice for American interests in England.

Franklin Leaks Massachusetts Letters

For several years, Franklin traveled throughout Europe, where his popularity continued to grow due to his eccentric personality. Yet while in England he grew weary of corruption and was able to obtain the private letters of Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson and Lieutenant Governor, Andrew Oliver. These letters made it clear that they were encouraging the British to come down hard on the rights of the citizens of Boston. He left London in March 1775.

Second Continental Congress and Declaration of Independence

Upon arriving in America, he became a leading figure in the Second Continental Congress, which led to the Declaration of Independence. He served on the Committee of Five, which was tasked with drafting a document that would proclaim to the world the reasons for removing the colonies from the British Empire. The other members were John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Livingston, and Roger Sherman. Jefferson produced a draft that was reviewed by Adams and Franklin, who recommended minor changes. The document was presented to Congress on Friday, June 28, 1776. At the signing, he supposedly said "Yes, we must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately."

Peace Negotiations

In December of 1776, Franklin was sent to France to serve as an ambassador of the United States, in an effort to gain aid from the French in the Revolutionary War. He helped negotiate the Treaty of Paris in 1783, which brought peace with Great Britain. He returned to the United States in 1785.

Governor of Pennsylvania

On October 18, 1785, he was elected the sixth President of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania, a role that is equivalent to Governor. He replaced fellow Founding Father John Dickinson. He was re-elected to a full term on October 29, 1785, then again in the Fall of 1786 and 1787.

Constitutional Convention of 1787

In 1787 he served as a delegate to the Philadelphia Convention which resulted in the United States Constitution. Franklin signed the Constitution, becoming the only Founding Father to have signed the four major documents that helped to found and establish the nation. The other documents were the Declaration of Independence, Treaty of Paris, and Treaty of Alliance with France.

Supporter of Abolition

In his later years, Franklin wrote several essays concerning the abolition of slavery. Those essays were, An Address to the Public, published in 1789, A Plan for Improving the Condition of the Free Blacks, also in 1789, and Sidi Mehemet Ibrahim on the Slave Trade in 1790.

Death

On April 17, 1790, Franklin passed away. His body was laid to rest at Christ Church Burial Ground in Philadelphia.

Significance

Benjamin Franklin is important because he helped write the Declaration of Independence, was involved in negotiating the Treaty of Alliance with France, helped negotiate the Treaty of Paris with Britain that ended the American Revolutionary War, participated in the Constitutional Convention, and signed the United States Constitution. Very few Americans participated in so many key moments in American history and the founding of the nation.

Founding Father

Benjamin Franklin is considered a Founding Father for all of his dedication to the cause of American liberty and freedom. He represented American interests in Europe during the Stamp Act Crisis and after the War for Independence. During the war, he played a vital role in helping shape the direction of the Second Continental Congress, which culminated in the Declaration of Independence. It is quite possible that no other American played as important a role in the political formation of the United States of America as Benjamin Franklin.

Benjamin Franklin - Quick Facts

Born January 17, 1706, Boston, Massachusetts.

Attended Boston Latin School from 1714 to 1716.

Began working as a printer apprenticed to his brother from 1718 to 1723.

Moved o Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1724.

Bought the Pennsylvania Gazette in 1729.

Began publishing Poor Richard's Almanac in 1733.

Helped launch the American Philosophical Society in 1743.

Conducted experiments and verified the nature of electricity during the 1750s.

Credited with inventing the Franklin Stove, bifocal glasses, and the lightning rod.

Was instrumental in establishing a library, hospital, fire company, and an insurance company in the City of Philadelphia.

Moved to London and represented the interests of Pennsylvania, Georgia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts before Parliament from 1757 to 1775.

Elected to the Second Continental Congress and worked on a committee of five that helped to draft the Declaration of Independence.

Signed Declaration of Independence in 1776.

Served as the American Ambassador to France during the American Revolution and during the Confederation Era.

Signed the Treaty of Paris, which ended the American Revolution, in 1783.

Served as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention and signed the U.S. Constitution.

Died April 17, 1790, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Buried at Christ Church Burial Ground, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Benjamin Franklin Quotes from "Poor Richard's Almanack"

"God heals, and the doctor takes the fees."

"God helps them that help themselves."

"Work as if you were to live 100 years; pray as if you were to die tomorrow."

"Keep your eyes open before marriage, half shut afterwards."

"My father convinced me that nothing was useful which was not honest."

"Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature."

"Virtue alone is sufficient to make a man great, glorious and happy."

"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters."

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Benjamin Franklin, Biography, Significance, Facts, Quotes, Founding Father

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Benjamin Franklin was an American printer, scientist, inventor, politician, diplomat, statesman, author, and one of the most colorful characters of the American Revolution. Franklin was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1706 to Josiah Franklin and Abiah Folger. He was the 15th and youngest son of Josiah's seventeen children.

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The Civil Rights Movement was a non-violent political and social movement that aimed at achieving equal rights for African Americans. The movement began in 1954 and ended in 1968. The goals of the movement were to end segregation, disenfranchisement and exploitation of African Americans in the United States.  Members of the movement staged marches, freedom rides and sit-ins. Major players in the Civil Rights Movement were Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, Jr., Jesse Jackson and Rosa Parks.

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The Civil Rights Movement happened throughout the 1950s and 1960s with powerful figures, like Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and John Lewis, making their voices heard. How much was accomplished during this time?

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The Civil Rights Movement happened throughout the 1950s and 1960s with powerful figures, like Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and John Lewis, making their voices heard. How much was accomplished during this time?

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The Unites States had longed believed in isolationism and neutrality, but when World War I ended in 1918, Americans were unhappy about the financial strain of the war as well as the number of lives lost in the war. In 1920, Warren Harding was elected president and he said the US needed to return to normal and focus on things happening within the US and stay out of global issues. The US stayed out of the League of Nations and thanks to domestic production and technological advances, the US went through an economic boom. Unfortunately, due these trade rules and tariffs, the US economy eventually collapsed in 1929 leading to the Great Depression.

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Beginning with George Washington's presidency, the United States sought a policy of isolationism and neutrality with regards to the internal affairs of other nations. Early American political leaders argued that with the exception of free trade, self-defense and humanitarian emergencies, the U.S. would do best to avoid permanent alliances that do not serve American interests but instead deflect attention from domestic issues. When World War I broke out in July 1914, the United States actively maintained a stance of neutrality, and President Woodrow Wilson encouraged the U.S. as a whole to avoid becoming emotionally or ideologically involved in the conflict. Americans were more than happy to stay out of the war, and Wilson won a second Presidential term in 1916 by running on a platform of non-interference; the phrase, "he kept us out of war" became a popular slogan used by Wilson's supporters.

Upon re-election, Woodrow Wilson was resolute in staying out of a war, even as a significant movement within the American government advocated for preparedness in the face of events that signified growing German international aggression-such as the sinking of the British ocean liner Lusitania by a German submarine, which claimed the lives of many Americans. After several years observing these and similar acts of aggression by the Germans, Wilson-a political scientist by profession-began to change his viewpoint as he saw that the devastating war in Europe was threatening to spill across the Atlantic Ocean. With massive loss of life came a moral imperative that could no longer be ignored, requiring the United States to take a leadership role in maintaining and promoting freedom, sovereignty and self-determination for all nations. Wilson began making public statements that framed the war as a means to right the wrongs in the world rather than simple military posturing. Thus, the United States' intervention in the First World War or, the "Great War," helped shape the nation's status as a self-proclaimed defender of freedom and democracy worldwide and radically altered U.S. foreign policy.

Seeds of Isolationism

On April 2, 1917, President Wilson asked Congress for permission to enter the war and make the world "safe for democracy" by April 6th, the resolution was approved and the U.S. officially declared war on Germany. While the United States did not join the Allies in an official capacity, it fought alongside the British and French against Germany and the other Central Powers, such as Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. As the war continued and news of wanton devastation made headlines, U.S. public support for the war began to wane. While Europe suffered more casualties than the United States, (tens of millions of Europeans lost their lives, compared to over 400,000 Americans),

Americans reeled from the emotional and financial costs of war and began to feel as though joining the war effort was a mistake. In 1918, Wilson articulated fourteen points to help end the war and establish a basis for cooperation, which included freedom of the seas, open economic trade, the evacuation of occupied territories, the liberation of non-Turkish peoples in the Ottoman Empire, and a general collection of nation states to offer members territorial integrity and political independence-setting the stage for what would later become the League of Nations.

What ensued was a radical shift in U.S. foreign policy, which promoted a stance of isolationism that would last until World War II. Warren Harding won the 1920 presidential election on the promise of staying out of global affairs, and by arguing that the United States needed normalcy and a focus on internal problems. Thus, U.S. foreign policy during the 1920s was characterized by the enactment of isolationist policies; for instance, the U.S. opted not to join the burgeoning League of Nations, even though it had been the nation to first propose such international cooperation. Instead, the United States focused on building the domestic economy by supporting business growth, encouraging industrial expansion, imposing tariffs on imported products and limiting immigration.

The League of Nations

In 1916, Wilson first articulated his vision for the League of Nations as an international organization designed to facilitate cooperation, and it was backed by many Americans eager to see the end to the devastating war. The League of Nations was intended to help ensure a global "permanent peace" in which nations, small and large, would be protected and could take any actions necessary to safeguard said peace. The League of Nations would also provide mechanisms for promoting negotiation and mediating disputes. While the idea of the League of Nations was popular at the time, and the consequences of war showcased the necessity for such an organization, some members of Congress-such as Henry Cabot Lodge-opposed it and thought it would be an expensive distraction from the United States' own interests.

As more Americans lamented the consequences of war and voiced their desire to avoid future intervention in foreign affairs at all costs, public opposition to the League of Nations grew. It was perhaps isolationist Warren Harding's election to the office of President that offered the greatest repudiation of the League of Nations and Wilson's interventionism. While Wilson had participated in the creation of the League of Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Harding never allowed the United States to become a member. Many historians and political theorists attribute the relative inability of the League of Nations to prevent World War II to U.S. isolationism and the country's lack of participation and leadership in the organization.

Tariffs

Following President Harding's victory in 1920, he and his vice president, Calvin Coolidge, decided to focus more on domestic problems facing the United States. In contrast to Wilson's progressive agenda-which allowed the government to regulate big business-the new administration sought to empower businesses, decrease regulation and cut taxes to enable them to grow and contribute more to domestic production. This was not surprising given Harding's campaign promise: "less government in business and more business in government." Business became a symbol of American prosperity, and the 1920s saw the United States come out of a post-war recession with high economic growth. During that time, industry flourished, the stock market rose, technology rapidly evolved, and the commercialization and expansion of aviation and the automobile radically altered the American lifestyle.

The economic boom was facilitated by tariffs that were enacted to restrict the influx of imported goods, thereby increasing domestic production. American farmers had experienced dramatic growth during World War I, following a significant increase in demand stemming from their European counterparts' inability to keep up with agricultural demands while fighting the war. As European farmers began to recover postwar, U.S. agriculture suffered from overproduction, and demand and prices plummeted. American farmers, who had gone heavily into debt to finance their expansion during the war, faced difficulty in honoring their repayments and asked the government for assistance, hoping tariffs would lead to an increase in prices; ultimately, this only helped prices for specific products, such as sugar and wool. Upon taking office, President Harding implemented the Emergency Tariff of 1921, which imposed duties on over two dozen food imports and agricultural products.

In 1922, President Harding signed the Fordney-McCumber Act into law, which raised tariffs by about 25 percent and made it easier to enact them without congressional approval. In 1930, Congress also passed the Smoot-Hawley Act, which raised duties and tariffs significantly on over 20,000 foreign products in all sectors of the economy. Many debate whether these tariffs were effective, but in the long term, they may have done more harm than good, as other countries retaliated by increasing their own tariffs. In turn, this created trade barriers that ultimately hurt American producers and jobs by decreasing the presence of U.S. products in foreign markets. It also impeded Europeans from generating enough revenue to pay back their wartime debts to the United States. Many economists argue that the combination of these tariffs and other factors led to the collapse of the U.S. economy in 1929.

Immigration Quotas

With 1.3 million immigrants passing through Ellis Island, New York in 1907 alone, Congress had grown concerned that continuing to accept immigrants at an unfettered rate would become costly to the U.S. economy. Efforts to restrict immigration began during World War I with the 1917 Immigration Act, which imposed literacy tests and taxes on immigrants and banned immigrants deemed "undesirables"-essentially any sick, disabled, or criminal members of society. The label of undesirable soon came to include specific races and ethnicities; all immigrants from a region termed the Asiatic Barred Zone (modern day India, Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Southeast Asia and the Asian-Pacific islands) were blocked, supposedly as an effort to protect national interests and security.

The U.S. government sought to enact greater limits on immigration after World War I because of strong anti-European sentiment, exacerbated by the "Red Scare" that convinced many Americans that communism, anarchism and a Bolshevik-style revolution would soon sweep the United States. Attempts were made to Americanize immigrants through new naturalization processes that included higher taxes on immigrant adults and new literacy initiatives. After the war the U.S. economy slowly declined into recession while anti-immigration sentiments continued to peak. The cost of living had become unmanageable for most Americans and unemployment rates had spiked, with many citizens holding a belief that their misfortune was due to a disproportionate number of recent immigrants claiming jobs that would normally be worked by native U.S. citizens.

In 1921, Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act, which set numerical quotas for the number of immigrants coming to the United States. Under the Emergency Quota Act, the U.S. would refer to the 1910 census in order to determine the number of foreign citizens living in America; subsequently, the U.S. would admit immigrants on a country by country basis, taking no more than the equivalent of three percent of a country's existing U.S.-based population. Immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe were disproportionately targeted by the new limits with a three percent quota of total immigrants already living in the United States; professionals, such as actors, scientists, ministers and other specialists from all countries were excluded from the quota.

In 1924, Congress enacted the Johnson-Reed Act to replace the Emergency Quota Act. The Johnson-Reed Act further reduced the percentage of immigrants eligible for admission to the U.S.; the act would allow for a number of immigrants equal to two percent of a country's population already present in the United States. Because this act used data from the 1890 census, rather than the 1910 census, the lower number of current residents being used to calculate the percentages practically ensured that far fewer immigrants would be accepted into the U.S. The act was notable for introducing the concepts of consular control and border protection to fight smuggling by establishing Border Patrol and requiring visas to be obtained abroad prior to being allowed to enter the U.S.

During Woodrow Wilson's presidency, the United States briefly shed its isolation-based foreign policy in order to defend democracy on a global scale. However, the effects of World War I led the United States to retreat from global affairs and engage in isolationist policies to help foster internal growth and development-with decidedly mixed results. By completing a Master of International Relations degree program, students can enhance their understanding of how isolationist policies have impacted other international governments and juxtapose that knowledge with what they have learned about U.S. foreign policy to develop a strong grasp of the ways in which diverse theories of international relations can impact the global community.

Learn More

As the nation's oldest private military college, Norwich University has been a leader in innovative education since 1819. Through its online programs, Norwich delivers relevant and applicable curricula that allow its students to make a positive impact on their places of work and their communities.

Our online Master of Arts in International Relations program offers a curriculum that evolves with current events to help you face the future of international affairs. Norwich University's master's degree in international relations covers many subjects to give you a look at the internal workings of international players, examine the role of state and non-state actors on the global stage, and explore different schools of thought. You can further strengthen your knowledge by choosing one of five concentrations in International Security, National Security, International Development, Cyber Diplomacy, or Regions of the World.
Recommended Readings: Sources:
Do Economic Sanctions Work?
Interstate Relations Versus International Relations Careers
American Business and Foreign Policy, Google Books

American Economic History: A Dictionary and Chronology, Google Books

Treaty of Versailles, Library of Congress

American Isolationism in the 1930's, Office of the Historian, Bureau of Public Affairs

Protectionism in the Interwar Period, Office of the Historian, Bureau of Public Affairs

The League of Nations, 1920, Office of the Historian, Bureau of Public Affairs

The Immigration Act of 1924 (The Johnson-Reed Act), Office of the Historian, Bureau of Public Affairs

1930's Isolationism, U.S. History

Words and Deeds in American History, American Memory

The Harding Administration, the League of Nations, and the Separate Peace Treaty, JSTOR

League of Nations, Library of Congress

Long Echoes of War and Speech, The New York Times

League of Nations Instituted, History Channel

Immigration Act of 1921, Immigration to United States

Did My Family Really Come "Legally"?, American Immigration Council

Literacy Tests and Asian Exclusion Were the Hallmarks of the 1917 Immigration Act, Smithsonian

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Isolationism and U.S. Foreign Policy After World War I

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Beginning with George Washington's presidency, the United States sought a policy of isolationism and neutrality with regards to the internal affairs of other nations. Early American political leaders argued that with the exception of free trade, self-defense and humanitarian emergencies, the U.S.

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The WPA is one of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programs that was started in 1935 during the Great Depression. Many of Americans were out of jobs and could not support themselves or their families. The WPA gave public works jobs to the unemployed. They had jobs like building bridges, working on roads and buildings as well as in airports and parks. The program employed 8.5 million people - mostly men, but also women and artists. The WPA ended when World War II began and production jobs were in high demand.

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Works Progress Administration 1941, Library of Congress

Of all of President Roosevelt's New Deal programs, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) is the most famous, because it affected so many people's lives. Roosevelt's work-relief program employed more than 8.5 million people. For an average salary of $41.57 a month, WPA employees built bridges, roads, public buildings, public parks and airports.

Under the direction of Harry Hopkins, an enthusiastic ex-social worker who had come from modest means, the WPA would spend more than $11 million in employment relief before it was canceled in 1943. The work relief program was more expensive than direct relief payments, but worth the added cost, Hopkins believed. "Give a man a dole," he observed, "and you save his body and destroy his spirit. Give him a job and you save both body and spirit".

The WPA employed far many more men than women, with only 13.5 percent of WPA employees being women in the peak year of 1938. Although the decision had been made early on to pay women the same wages as men, in practice they were consigned to the lower-paying activities of sewing, bookbinding, caring for the elderly, school lunch programs, nursery school, and recreational work. Ellen Woodward, director of the women's programs at the WPA, successfully pushed for women's inclusion in the Professional Projects Division. In this division, professional women were treated more equally to men, especially in the federal art, music, theater, and writers' projects.

When federal support of artists was questioned, Hopkins answered, "Hell! They've got to eat just like other people." The WPA supported tens of thousands of artists, by funding creation of 2,566 murals and 17,744 pieces of sculpture that decorate public buildings nationwide. The federal art, theater, music, and writing programs, while not changing American culture as much as their adherents had hoped, did bring more art to more Americans than ever before or since. The WPA program in the arts led to the creation of the National Foundation for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The WPA paid low wages and it was not able to employ everyone - some five million were left to seek assistance from state relief programs, which provided families with $10 per week. However, it went a long way toward bolstering the self-esteem of workers. A poem sent to Roosevelt in February 1936, in block print, read, in part,
"I THINK THAT WE SHALL NEVER SEE
A PRESIDENT LIKE UNTO THEE . . .
POEMS ARE MADE BY FOOLS LIKE ME,
BUT GOD, I THINK, MADE FRANKLIN D."

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The Works Progress Administration | American Experience | PBS

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For an average salary of $41.57 a month, Works Progress Administration employees built bridges, roads, public buildings, public parks and airports.

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Harriet Beecher Stowe was born in Connecticut in 1811. Some of her 12 siblings were involved in the abolitionist movement which most likely piqued Harriet's interest in the movement. She was a strong Christian who believed slavery was a sin. She was also a skilled writer and in 1851 she published the book Uncle Tom's Cabin about a runaway slave. The book was successful, but it was criticized in the north and the south. Uncle Tom's Cabin is even said to have partly led to the beginning of the Civil War.

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The Cotton Gin was patented in 1794 by Eli Whitney. The machine separated the cotton fiber from seeds and husks, making the previous manual job, much easier and quicker. The invention made cotton manufacturing more profitable for plantation owners in the south, which in turn, called for more slaves to work on the plantations.

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The cotton gin, patented by American-born born inventor Eli Whitney in 1794, revolutionized the cotton industry by greatly speeding up the tedious process of removing seeds and husks from cotton fiber. Similar to today's massive machines, Whitney's cotton gin used hooks to draw unprocessed cotton through a small-mesh screen that separated the fiber from seeds and husks. As one of the many inventions created during the American Industrial Revolution, the cotton gin had an enormous impact on the cotton industry, and the American economy, especially in the South.

Unfortunately, it also changed the face of the trade of enslaved people -for the worse.

How Eli Whitney Learned About Cotton

Born on Dec. 8, 1765, in Westborough, Massachusetts, Whitney was raised by a farming father, a talented mechanic, and inventor himself. After graduating from Yale College in 1792, Whitney moved to Georgia, after accepting an invitation to live on the plantation of Catherine Greene, the widow of an American Revolutionary War general. On her plantation named Mulberry Grove, near Savannah, Whitney learned of the difficulties cotton growers faced trying to make a living.

While easier to grow and store than food crops, cotton's seeds were hard to separate from the soft fiber. Forced to do the job by hand, each worker could pick the seeds from no more than about 1 pound of cotton per day.

Shortly after learning about the process and the problem, Whitney had built his first working cotton gin. Early versions of his gin, although small and hand-cranked, were easily reproduced and could remove the seeds from 50 pounds of cotton in a single day.

Historical Significance of the Cotton Gin

The cotton gin made the cotton industry of the South explode. Before its invention, separating cotton fibers from its seeds was a labor-intensive and unprofitable venture. After Whitney unveiled his cotton gin, processing cotton became much easier, resulting in greater availability and cheaper cloth. However, the invention also had the by-product of increasing the number of enslaved people needed to pick the cotton and thereby strengthening the arguments for continuing enslavement. Cotton as a cash crop became so important that it was known as King Cotton and affected politics up until the Civil War.

A Booming Industry

Whitney's cotton gin revolutionized an essential step in cotton processing. The resulting increase in cotton production dovetailed with other Industrial Revolution inventions, namely the steamboat, which greatly increased the shipping rate of cotton, as well as machinery that spun and wove cotton much more efficiently than it had been done in the past. These and other advancements, not to mention the increased profits generated by the higher production rates, sent the cotton industry on an astronomical trajectory. By the middle of the 1800s, the United States produced over 75 percent of the world's cotton, and 60 percent of the nation's total exports came from the South. Most of those exports were cotton. Much of the South's suddenly-increased quantity of ready-to-weave cotton was exported to the North, much of it destined to feed the New England textile mills.

The Cotton Gin and Enslavement

When he died in 1825, Whitney had never realized that the invention for which he is best known today had actually contributed to the growth of enslavement and, to a degree, the Civil War.

While his cotton gin had reduced the number of workers needed to remove the seeds from the fiber, it actually increased the number of enslaved people the plantation owners needed to plant, cultivate, and harvest the cotton. Thanks largely to the cotton gin, growing cotton became so profitable that plantation owners constantly needed more land and labor of enslaved people to meet the increasing demand for the fiber.

From 1790 to 1860, the number of U.S. states where enslavement was practiced grew from six to 15. From 1790 until Congress banned the importation of enslaved people in 1808, the South imported over 80,000 Africans. By 1860, the year before the outbreak of the Civil War, approximately one in three residents of the Southern states was an enslaved person.

Whitney's Other Invention: Mass-Production

Though patent law disputes kept Whitney from significantly profiting from his cotton gin, he was awarded a contract by the U.S. government in 1789 to produce 10,000 muskets in two years, a number of rifles never before built in such a short period of time. At the time, guns were built one-at-a-time by skilled craftsmen, thus resulting in weapons each made of unique parts and difficult, if not impossible to repair. Whitney, however, developed a manufacturing process using standardized identical and interchangeable parts that both sped production and simplified repair.

While it took Whitney some 10 years, rather than two, to fulfill his contract, his methods of using standardized parts that could be assembled and repaired by relatively unskilled workers resulted in his being credited with pioneering the development of America's industrial system of mass-production.

-Updated by Robert Longley

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The Significance of the Cotton Gin and Its Impact on Enslavement

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When Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, it led to unprecedented growth in the cotton industry and the trade of enslaved people.

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Segregation began in southern states after the Civil War ended in 1865. Legally mandated segregation banned blacks from attending white schools, swimming pools, restaurants and residential areas. In 1896, the Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson created the idea of “separate but equal" and in 1954, the Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education deemed segregation in schools unconstitutional. Notable people like Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks and countless others fought for years for desegregation of all places.

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Black Codes and Jim Crow

The first steps toward official segregation came in the form of " Black Codes." These were laws passed throughout the South starting around 1865, that dictated most aspects of Black peoples' lives, including where they could work and live. The codes also ensured Black people's availability for cheap labor after slavery was abolished.

Segregation soon became official policy enforced by a series of Southern laws. Through so-called Jim Crow laws (named after a derogatory term for Blacks), legislators segregated everything from schools to residential areas to public parks to theaters to pools to cemeteries, asylums, jails and residential homes. There were separate waiting rooms for whites people and Black people in professional offices and, in 1915, Oklahoma became the first state to even segregate public phone booths.

Colleges were segregated and separate Black institutions like Howard University in Washington, D.C. and Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee were created to compensate. Virginia's Hampton Institute was established in 1869 as a school for Black youth, but with white instructors teaching skills to relegate Black people in service positions to whites.

The Supreme Court and Segregation

In 1875 the outgoing Republican-controlled House and Senate passed a civil rights bill outlawing discrimination in schools, churches and public transportation. But the bill was barely enforced and was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1883.

In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that segregation was constitutional. The ruling established the idea of "separate but equal." The case involved a mixed-race man who was forced to sit in the Black-designated train car under Louisiana's Separate Car Act.

Housing Segregation

As part of the segregation movement, some cities instituted zoning laws that prohibited Black families from moving into white-dominant blocks. In 1917, as part of Buchanan v. Warley, the Supreme Court found such zoning to be unconstitutional because it interfered with property rights of owners.

Using loopholes in that ruling in the 1920s, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover created a federal zoning committee to persuade local boards to pass rules preventing lower-income families from moving into middle-income neighborhoods, an effort that targeted Black families. Richmond, Virginia, decreed that people were barred from residency on any block where they could not legally marry the majority of residents. This invoked Virginia's anti-mixed race marriage law and was not technically in violation with the Supreme Court decision.

Segregation During the Great Migration

During the Great Migration, a period between 1916 and 1970, six million African Americans left the South. Huge numbers moved northeast and reported discrimination and segregation similar to what they had experienced in the South.

As late as the 1940s, it was still possible to find "Whites Only" signs on businesses in the North. Segregated schools and neighborhoods existed, and even after World War II, Black activists reported hostile reactions when Black people attempted to move into white neighborhoods.

Segregation and the Public Works Administration

The Public Works Administration's efforts to build housing for people displaced during the Great Depression focused on homes for white families in white communities. Only a small portion of houses was built for Black families, and those were limited to segregated Black communities.

In some cities, previously integrated communities were torn down by the PWA and replaced by segregated projects. The reason given for the policy was that Black families would bring down property values.

Red-Lining

Starting in the 1930s, the Federal Home Loan Bank Board and the Home Owners' Loan Corporation conspired to create maps with marked areas considered bad risks for mortgages in a practice known as "red-lining." The areas marked in red as "hazardous" typically outlined Black neighborhoods. This kind of mapping concentrated poverty as (mostly Black) residents in red-lined neighborhoods had no access or only very expensive access to loans.

The practice did not begin to end until the 1970s. Then, in 2008, a system of "reverse red-lining," which extended credit on unfair terms with subprime loans, created a higher rate of foreclosure in Black neighborhoods during the housing crisis.

Housing Segregation

In 1948, the Supreme Court ruled that a Black family had the right to move into their newly-purchased home in a quiet neighborhood in St. Louis, despite a covenant dating back to 1911 that precluded the use of the property in the area by "any person not of the Caucasian race." In Shelley v. Kramer, attorneys from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), led by Thurgood Marshall, argued that allowing such white-only real estate covenants were not only morally wrong, but strategically misguided in a time when the country was trying to promote a unified, anti-Soviet agenda under President Harry Truman. Civil rights activists saw the landmark case as an example of how to start to undo trappings of segregation at the federal level.

But while the Supreme Court ruled that white-only covenants were not enforceable, the real estate playing field was hardly leveled. The Housing Act of 1949 was proposed by Truman to solve a housing shortage caused by soldiers returned from World War II. The act subsidized housing for whites only, even stipulating that Black families could not purchase the houses even on resale. The program effectively resulted in the government funding white flight from cities.

One of the most notorious of the white-only communities created by the Housing Act was Levittown, New York, built in 1949 and followed by other Levittowns in different locations.

Segregation in Schools

Segregation of children in public schools was struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional in 1954 with Brown v. Board of Education. The case was originally filed in Topeka, Kansas after seven-year-old Linda Brown was rejected from the all-white schools there.

A follow-up opinion handed decision-making to local courts, which allowed some districts to defy school desegregation. This led to a showdown in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower deployed federal troops to ensure nine Black students entered high school after Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus had called in the National Guard to block them.

When Rosa Parks was arrested in 1955 after refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama, the civil rights movement began in earnest. Through the efforts of organizers like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the resulting protests, the Civil Rights Act was signed in 1964, outlawing discrimination, though desegregation was a slow process, especially in schools.

Boston Busing Crisis

One of the worst incidents of anti-integration happened in 1974. Violence broke out in Boston when, in order to solve the city's school segregation problems, courts mandated a busing system that carried Black students from predominantly Roxbury to South Boston schools, and vice versa.

The state had passed the Elimination of Racial Balance law in 1965, but it had been held up in court by Irish Catholic opposition. Police protected the Black students as several days of violence broke out between police and Southie residents. White crowds greeted the buses with insults, and further violence erupted between Southie residents and retaliating Roxbury crowds. State troopers were called in until the violence subsided after a few weeks.

Segregation in the 21st Century

Segregation persists in the 21st Century. Studies show that while the public overwhelmingly supports integrated schools, only a third of Americans want federal government intervention to enforce it.

The term "apartheid schools" describes still-existing, largely segregated schools, where white students make up 0 to 10 percent of the student body. The phenomenon reflects residential segregation in cities and communities across the country, which is not created by overtly racial laws, but by local ordinances that target minorities disproportionately.

Sources

Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi, published by Bodley Head.
The Case for Reparations by Ta-Nehisi Coates, The .
Dismantling Desegregation by Gary Orfield and Susan E. Eaton by the New Press.

Fact Check

We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate.

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Segregation in the United States - Meaning, Facts. & Legacy

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After the United States abolished slavery, Black Americans continued to be marginalized through Jim Crow laws and diminished access to facilities, housing, education-and opportunities.

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Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish-American philanthropist and industrialist who built up the steel industry and who was once the richest man in America. One of his biggest passions was funding libraries - most famously Carnegie Hall in New York City. He was also passionate about education and scientific research. Carnegie lived from 1835 to 1919.

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The Gettysburg Address was a speech given by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War on November 19, 1863 in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The relatively short speech reiterated America's dedication to treat all men equally and praised the soldiers who fought and died in the Civil War. The speech is widely known as one of the most important speeches in American history.

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John Adams lived from 1735 to 1826. He was the second president of the United States and was the first person to serve as Vice President of the US. He was one of the Founding Fathers and was involved in the Revolutionary War. He was rivals with Thomas Jefferson and the two ended up dying on the same day -July 4, 1826.

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King George III was alive from 1738 to 1820 and was the King of Great Britain and Ireland. King George III was in power during the 7 Years' War, the Revolutionary War as well as battles with France. His reign was marred with mental health issues, but he is the longest-lived and longest-reigning male monarch.

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The New Deal during the Great Depression 

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The New Deal during the Great Depression 

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The New Deal was a series of programs Franklin D. Roosevelt pushed through Congress to help Americans during the Great Depression. These programs affected different things such as banking, farming, and employment. These programs also gave Americans security & hope and are still in affect today. One of those programs that came out of this New Deal was the Social Security Act, passed by Congress in 1935. This gave the elderly, disabled, and unemployed a thing to fall back on. The banks were a mess at this time. To fix this, Roosevelt passed an Emergency Banking Act which reorganized the banks and closed the ones that were unable to pay debts they owed. Another program to come out of this new deal was the Tennessee Valley Authority Act. This program provided jobs and electricity to the rural area. Shortly after that act was passed by Congress, a bill designed to pay commodity farmers was passed. National Industrial Recovery Act was another New Deal program. This program said workers had the right to unionize. The Public Works Administration also came out of this Industrial Recovery Act. Glass-Steagall Act was an important banking bill Franklin D. Roosevelt passed. This act offered protection to people to put their savings in commercial banks. The FDIC emerged from this act. The Home Owner's Loan Act was yet another New Deal Program. All of the programs Franklin D. Roosevelt created during the New Deal put America back on track and are still in use today.

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New Deal - Programs, Social Security & FDR

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The New Deal was a series of programs and projects instituted during the Great Depression by President Franklin D. Roosevelt that aimed to restore prosperity to Americans. A Second New Deal was put in place shortly thereafter as a way to continue the country’s economic recovery.

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Franklin D. Roosevelt was the 32nd president of the United States.  He led the United States through the Great Depression by creating government programs through The New Deal.

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In the Gilded Age old industries expanded and several new ones started. These new industries included petroleum refining, steel manufacturing, and electrical power. Railroad were also growing significantly during this time period. This industrialization also transformed society. A new class of wealthy individuals emerged, as well as a middle class. It also created a growing blue collar working class.

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Harriet Tubman was a slave who escaped and helped others escape the same situation. She helped others slaves to their freedom as a conductor on the Underground Railroad. Harriet Tubman was also a scout, spy, soldier, and nurse for the Union army during the Civil War. Harriet Tubman is noted for being the first African American women in the military.

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MLA - Michals, Debra. "Harriet Tubman." National Women's History Museum. National Women's History Museum, 2015. Date accessed.

Chicago - Michals, Debra. "Harriet Tubman." National Women's History Museum. 2015. www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/harriet-tubman.

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Known as the "Moses of her people," Harriet Tubman was enslaved, escaped, and helped others gain their freedom as a "conductor" of the Underground Railroad. Discover more about her on womenshistory.org.

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Dred Scott vs. John F.A. Sandford was ruled on March 6, 1857. In this case, the Supreme Court ruled that a slave who lived in a free state or territory was not entitled to his or her freedom. It also ruled that African Americans were not citizens of the United States. This Supreme Court case pushed the U.S. closer to the Civil War.

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What was the Dred Scott decision?

How did the Dred Scott decision contribute to the American Civil War?

How did the Dred Scott decision affect the election of 1860?

How is the Dred Scott decision remembered?

Dred Scott decision, legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on March 6, 1857, ruled (7-2) that a slave ( Dred Scott) who had resided in a free state and territory (where slavery was prohibited) was not thereby entitled to his freedom; that African Americans were not and could never be citizens of the United States; and that the Missouri Compromise (1820), which had declared free all territories west of Missouri and north of latitude 36°30′, was unconstitutional. The decision added fuel to the sectional controversy and pushed the country closer to civil war.

Among constitutional scholars, Scott v. Sandford is widely considered the worst decision ever rendered by the Supreme Court. It has been cited in particular as the most egregious example in the court's history of wrongly imposing a judicial solution on a political problem. A later chief justice, Charles Evans Hughes, famously characterized the decision as the court's great "self-inflicted wound."

Background

Dred Scott was a slave who was owned by John Emerson of Missouri. In 1833 Emerson undertook a series of moves as part of his service in the U.S. military. He took Scott from Missouri (a slave state) to Illinois (a free state) and finally into the Wisconsin Territory (a free territory). During this period, Scott met and married Harriet Robinson, who became part of the Emerson household. Emerson married in 1838, and in the early 1840s he and his wife returned with the Scotts to Missouri, where Emerson died in 1843.

Scott reportedly attempted to purchase his freedom from Emerson's widow, who refused the sale. In 1846, with the help of antislavery lawyers, Harriet and Dred Scott filed individual lawsuits for their freedom in Missouri state court in St. Louis on the grounds that their residence in a free state and a free territory had freed them from the bonds of slavery. It was later agreed that only Dred's case would move forward; the decision in that case would apply to Harriet's case as well. Although the case was long thought to have been unusual, historians later demonstrated that several hundred suits for freedom were filed by or on behalf of slaves in the decades before the Civil War.

All-American History Quiz

Scott v. Emerson took years to be resolved. In 1850 the state court declared Scott free, but the verdict was reversed in 1852 by the Missouri Supreme Court (which thereby invalidated Missouri's long-standing doctrine of "once free, always free"). Emerson's widow then left Missouri and gave control of her late husband's estate to her brother, John F.A. Sanford, a resident of New York state (his last name was later incorrectly spelled Sandford on court documents). Because Sanford was not subject to suit in Missouri, Scott's lawyers filed a suit against him in U.S. district (federal) court, which found in Sanford's favour. The case eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which announced its decision in March 1857, just two days after the inauguration of Pres. James Buchanan.

The decision

Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney's opinion for the court was arguably the worst he ever wrote. He ignored precedent, distorted history, imposed a rigid rather than a flexible construction on the Constitution, ignored specific grants of power in the Constitution, and tortured meanings out of other, more-obscure clauses. His logic on the citizenship issue was perhaps the most convoluted. He admitted that African Americans could be citizens of a particular state and that they might even be able to vote, as they in fact did in some states. But he argued that state citizenship had nothing to do with national citizenship and that African Americans could not sue in federal court because they could not be citizens of the United States. Scott's suit, therefore, should have been dismissed for lack of jurisdiction by the district court. On this point, however, Taney stood on shaky constitutional ground: if even one state considered an African American a citizen, then the Constitution required that all states, and by inference also the federal government, had to accord that person "all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States" (Article IV, Section 2), which includes the right to sue in federal court. Furthermore, Article III, which establishes the jurisdiction of the federal courts, does not mention national citizenship but rather declares that "the judicial Power" shall extend, among other things, "to Controversies...between Citizens of different States" (the so-called "diversity jurisdiction").

Even with this weak argument, Taney could have been accused of nothing worse than faulty reasoning, if he had stopped there. If Scott was not a U.S. citizen, he could not sue in federal court, and the case would therefore have been improvidently granted. But Taney was determined to impose a judicial solution on the slavery controversy. Although later courts would adopt the policy of deciding constitutional questions on the narrowest possible grounds, the pre-Civil War courts often decided all issues that could support their rulings. Thus Taney continued, holding that Scott had never been free and that Congress had in fact exceeded its authority in the Missouri Compromise because it had no power to forbid or abolish slavery in the territories. The Missouri Compromise, which had served as the accepted constitutional settlement for nearly four decades, thus fell. Even the doctrine of popular sovereignty as articulated in the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)-whereby the people of each federal territory would have the power to decide whether the territory would enter the Union as a free or a slave state-lacked constitutional legitimacy, according to Taney. He thus voided the principles of free soil (opposition to slavery in the territories and in newly admitted states), territorial sovereignty, and indeed every aspect of antislavery constitutional thought.

Regarding the question of Scott's freedom, Taney held that Scott could not claim to be free on the basis of his residence in Illinois or Wisconsin. Whatever status Scott might have had while in a free state or territory, he argued, once he had returned to Missouri his status depended entirely on local law, notwithstanding the doctrine of once free, always free.

Taney would have been on reasonably strong ground had he limited himself to upholding the district court's decision based on the idea that status was to be determined by the states. Alternatively, he could have held that Scott was not entitled to sue Sanford in federal court on the basis of diversity of jurisdiction, because Missouri did not allow even free African Americans to be citizens. But Taney outraged much of the North by asserting that African Americans could never be citizens of the United States. The framers, in his view, did not regard African Americans as being among the "people" for whose benefit and protection the new government was founded, notwithstanding the perfectly general language of the Declaration of Independence and of the preamble to the Constitution.

Two justices, John McLean of Ohio and Benjamin R. Curtis of Massachusetts, wrote devastating critiques of Taney's opinion. Curtis in particular undercut most of Taney's historical arguments, showing that African Americans had voted in a number of states at the founding. "At the time of the ratification of the Articles of Confederation," he wrote:

All free native-born inhabitants of the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and North Carolina, though descended from African slaves, were not only citizens of those States, but such of them as had the other necessary qualifications possessed the franchise of electors, on equal terms with other citizens.

Thus, Curtis argued, they were members of the nation and could not now be denied the right to claim citizenship.

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Dred Scott decision | Definition, History, Summary, Significance, & Facts

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Dred Scott decision, legal case (1857) in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (7-2) that a slave who had resided in a free state and territory was not thereby entitled to his freedom, that African Americans were not and could never be U.S. citizens, and that the Missouri Compromise (1820) was unconstitutional.

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The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was an act that required slaves be returned to their owners. This act also had consequences for anyone aiding in a slave's escape.

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Table of Contents

1. What Were the Fugitive Slave Acts?

2. Fugitive Slave Act of 1793

3. Prigg v. Pennsylvania

4. Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

5. Repeal of the Fugitive Slave Acts

The Fugitive Slave Acts were a pair of federal laws that allowed for the capture and return of runaway enslaved people within the territory of the United States. Enacted by Congress in 1793, the first Fugitive Slave Act authorized local governments to seize and return escapees to their owners and imposed penalties on anyone who aided in their flight. Widespread resistance to the 1793 law led to the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which added more provisions regarding runaways and levied even harsher punishments for interfering in their capture. The Fugitive Slave Acts were among the most controversial laws of the early 19th century.

What Were the Fugitive Slave Acts?

Statutes regarding refugee slaves existed in America as early as 1643 and the New England Confederation, and slave laws were later enacted in several of the 13 original colonies.

Among others, New York passed a 1705 measure designed to prevent runaways from fleeing to Canada, and Virginia and Maryland drafted laws offering bounties for the capture and return of escaped enslaved people.

By the time of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, many Northern states including Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut had abolished slavery.

Concerned that these new free states would become safe havens for runaways, Southern politicians saw that the Constitution included a "Fugitive Slave Clause." This stipulation (Article 4, Section 2, Clause 3) stated that, "no person held to service or labor" would be released from bondage in the event they escaped to a free state.

Fugitive Slave Act of 1793

Despite the inclusion of the Fugitive Slave Clause in the U.S. Constitution, anti-slavery sentiment remained high in the North throughout the late 1780s and early 1790s, and many petitioned Congress to abolish the practice outright.

Bowing to further pressure from Southern lawmakers-who argued the slave debate was driving a wedge between the newly created states-Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793.

This edict was similar to the Fugitive Slave Clause in many ways, but included a more detailed description of how the law was to be put into practice. Most importantly, it decreed that owners of enslaved people and their "agents" had the right to search for escapees within the borders of free states.

In the event they captured a suspected runaway, these hunters had to bring them before a judge and provide evidence proving the person was their property. If court officials were satisfied by their proof-which often took the form of a signed affidavit-the owner would be permitted to take custody of the enslaved person and return to their home state. The law also imposed a $500 penalty on any person who helped harbor or conceal escapees.

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 was immediately met with a firestorm of criticism. Northerners bristled at the idea of turning their states into a stalking ground for bounty hunters, and many argued the law was tantamount to legalized kidnapping. Some abolitionists organized clandestine resistance groups and built complex networks of safe houses to aid enslaved people in their escape to the North.

Refusing to be complicit in the institution of slavery, most Northern states intentionally neglected to enforce the law. Several even passed so-called "Personal Liberty Laws" that gave accused runaways the right to a jury trial and also protected free blacks, many of whom had been abducted by bounty hunters and sold into slavery.

Did you know? The passage of the Fugitive Slave Acts resulted in many free blacks being illegally captured and sold into slavery. One famous case concerned Solomon Northup, a freeborn black musician who was kidnapped in Washington, D.C. in 1841. Northup would spend 12 years enslaved in Louisiana before winning back his freedom in 1853.

Prigg v. Pennsylvania

The legality of Personal Liberty Laws was eventually challenged in the 1842 Supreme Court case Prigg v. Pennsylvania. The case concerned Edward Prigg, a Maryland man who was convicted of kidnapping after he captured a suspected slave in Pennsylvania.

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Prigg, setting the precedent that federal law superseded any state measures that attempted to interfere with the Fugitive Slave Act.

Despite decisions like Prigg v. Pennsylvania, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 remained largely unenforced. By the mid-1800s, thousands of enslaved people had poured into free states via networks like the Underground Railroad.

Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

Following increased pressure from Southern politicians, Congress passed a revised Fugitive Slave Act in 1850.

Part of Henry Clay 's famed Compromise of 1850-a group of bills that helped quiet early calls for Southern secession-this new law forcibly compelled citizens to assist in the capture of runaways. It also denied enslaved people the right to a jury trial and increased the penalty for interfering with the rendition process to $1,000 and six months in jail.

In order to ensure the statute was enforced, the 1850 law also placed control of individual cases in the hands of federal commissioners. These agents were paid more for returning a suspected runaway than for freeing them, leading many to argue the law was biased in favor of Southern slaveholders.

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was met with even more impassioned criticism and resistance than the earlier measure. States like Vermont and Wisconsin passed new measures intended to bypass and even nullify the law, and abolitionists redoubled their efforts to assist runaways.

The Underground Railroad reached its peak in the 1850s, with many enslaved people fleeing to Canada to escape U.S. jurisdiction.

Resistance also occasionally boiled over into riots and revolts. In 1851 a mob of antislavery activists rushed a Boston courthouse and forcibly liberated an escapee named Shadrach Minkins from federal custody. Similar rescues were later made in New York, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Repeal of the Fugitive Slave Acts

Widespread opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 saw the law become virtually unenforceable in certain Northern states, and by 1860 only around 330 enslaved people had been successfully returned to their Southern masters.

Republican and Free Soil congressmen regularly introduced bills and resolutions related to repealing the Fugitive Slave Act, but the law persisted until after the beginning of the Civil War. It wasn't until June 28, 1864, that both of the Fugitive Slave Acts were repealed by an act of Congress.

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Fugitive Slave Acts - Definition, 1793 & 1850 | HISTORY

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The Fugitive Slave Acts, passed in 1793 and 1850, were federal laws that allowed for the capture and return of runaway enslaved people within the United States.

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Industrial Revolution (before American Civil War)

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Industrial Revolution (before American Civil War)

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The Industrial Revolution was a time of great change in the 18th century with many scientific & technological advances being made. One of those advancements was the cotton gin invented by Eli Whitney. His cotton gin made the process of removing seeds from cotton fiber faster. Another advancement of the Industrial Revolution was the reaper. The reaper sped up harvesting. Steam was a huge advancement in the Industrial Revolution. Once a steam engine prototype was made by Thomas Newcomen, steam boats were invented. Shortly after steam boats were a mode of transportation, Richard Trevithick invented the steam locomotive.

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When Was the Industrial Revolution?

Though a few innovations were developed as early as the 1700s, the Industrial Revolution began in earnest by the 1830s and 1840s in Britain, and soon spread to the rest of the world, including the United States.

Modern historians often refer to this period as the First Industrial Revolution, to set it apart from a second period of industrialization that took place from the late 19th to early 20th centuries and saw rapid advances in the steel, electric and automobile industries.

Spinning Jenny

Thanks in part to its damp climate, ideal for raising sheep, Britain had a long history of producing textiles like wool, linen and cotton. But prior to the Industrial Revolution, the British textile business was a true "cottage industry," with the work performed in small workshops or even homes by individual spinners, weavers and dyers.

Starting in the mid-18th century, innovations like the spinning jenny (a wooden frame with multiple spindles), the flying shuttle, the water frame and the power loom made weaving cloth and spinning yarn and thread much easier. Producing cloth became faster and required less time and far less human labor.

More efficient, mechanized production meant Britain's new textile factories could meet the growing demand for cloth both at home and abroad, where the British Empire's many overseas colonies provided a captive market for its goods. In addition to textiles, the British iron industry also adopted new innovations.

Chief among the new techniques was the smelting of iron ore with coke (a material made by heating coal) instead of the traditional charcoal. This method was both cheaper and produced higher-quality material, enabling Britain's iron and steel production to expand in response to demand created by the Napoleonic Wars (1803-15) and the later growth of the railroad industry.

Impact of Steam Power

An icon of the Industrial Revolution broke onto the scene in the early 1700s, when Thomas Newcomen designed the prototype for the first modern steam engine. Called the "atmospheric steam engine," Newcomen's invention was originally applied to power the machines used to pump water out of mine shafts.

In the 1760s, Scottish engineer James Watt began tinkering with one of Newcomen's models, adding a separate water condenser that made it far more efficient. Watt later collaborated with Matthew Boulton to invent a steam engine with a rotary motion, a key innovation that would allow steam power to spread across British industries, including flour, paper, and cotton mills, iron works, distilleries, waterworks and canals.

Just as steam engines needed coal, steam power allowed miners to go deeper and extract more of this relatively cheap energy source. The demand for coal skyrocketed throughout the Industrial Revolution and beyond, as it would be needed to run not only the factories used to produce manufactured goods, but also the railroads and steamships used for transporting them.

Transportation During the Industrial Revolution

Britain's road network, which had been relatively primitive prior to industrialization, soon saw substantial improvements, and more than 2,000 miles of canals were in use across Britain by 1815.

In the early 1800s, Richard Trevithick debuted a steam-powered locomotive, and in 1830 similar locomotives started transporting freight (and passengers) between the industrial hubs of Manchester and Liverpool. By that time, steam-powered boats and ships were already in wide use, carrying goods along Britain's rivers and canals as well as across the Atlantic.

Banking and Communication in the Industrial Revolution

In 1776, Scottish social philosopher Adam Smith, who is regarded as the founder of modern economics, published The Wealth of Nations. In it, Smith promoted an economic system based on free enterprise, the private ownership of means of production, and lack of government interference.

Banks and industrial financiers soon rose to new prominence during this period, as well as a factory system dependent on owners and managers. A stock exchange was established in London in the 1770s; the New York Stock Exchange was founded in the early 1790s.

The latter part of the Industrial Revolution also saw key advances in communication methods, as people increasingly saw the need to communicate efficiently over long distances. In 1837, British inventors William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone patented the first commercial telegraphy system, even as Samuel Morse and other inventors worked on their own versions in the United States.

Cooke and Wheatstone's system would be used for railroad signaling, as the speed of the new steam-powered trains created a need for more sophisticated means of communication.

Labor Movement

Though many people in Britain had begun moving to the cities from rural areas before the Industrial Revolution, this process accelerated dramatically with industrialization, as the rise of large factories turned smaller towns into major cities over the span of decades. This rapid urbanization brought significant challenges, as overcrowded cities suffered from pollution, inadequate sanitation, miserable housing conditions and a lack of safe drinking water.

Meanwhile, even as industrialization increased economic output overall and improved the standard of living for the middle and upper classes, poor and working class people continued to struggle. The mechanization of labor created by technological innovation had made working in factories increasingly tedious (and sometimes dangerous), and many workers-including children-were forced to work long hours for pitifully low wages.

Such dramatic changes and abuses fueled opposition to industrialization worldwide, including the " Luddites," known for their violent resistance to changes in Britain's textile industry.

Did you know? The word "luddite" refers to a person who is opposed to technological change. The term is derived from a group of early 19th century English workers who attacked factories and destroyed machinery as a means of protest. They were supposedly led by a man named Ned Ludd, though he may have been an apocryphal figure.

In the decades to come, outrage over substandard working and living conditions would fuel the formation of labor unions, as well as the passage of new child labor laws and public health regulations in both Britain and the United States, all aimed at improving life for working class and poor citizens who had been negatively impacted by industrialization.

The Industrial Revolution in the United States

The beginning of industrialization in the United States is usually pegged to the opening of a textile mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in 1793 by the recent English immigrant Samuel Slater. Slater had worked at one of the mills opened by Richard Arkwright (inventor of the water frame) mills, and despite laws prohibiting the emigration of textile workers, he brought Arkwright's designs across the Atlantic. He later built several other cotton mills in New England, and became known as the "Father of the American Industrial Revolution."

The United States followed its own path to industrialization, spurred by innovations "borrowed" from Britain as well as by homegrown inventors like Eli Whitney. Whitney's 1793 invention of the cotton gin (short for "engine") revolutionized the nation's cotton industry (and strengthened the hold of slavery over the cotton-producing South).

By the end of the 19th century, with the so-called Second Industrial Revolution underway, the United States would also transition from a largely agrarian society to an increasingly urbanized one, with all the attendant problems.

By the mid-19th century, industrialization was well-established throughout the western part of Europe and America's northeastern region. By the early 20th century, the U.S. had become the world's leading industrial nation.

Effects of the Industrial Revolution

Historians continue to debate many aspects of industrialization, including its exact timeline, why it began in Britain as opposed to other parts of the world and the idea that it was actually more of a gradual evolution than a revolution. The positives and negatives of the Industrial Revolution are complex.

On one hand, unsafe working conditions were rife and environmental pollution from coal and gas are legacies we still struggle with today. On the other, the move to cities and ingenious inventions that made clothing, communication and transportation more affordable and accessible to the masses changed the course of world history.

Regardless of these questions, the Industrial Revolution had a transformative economic, social and cultural impact, and played an integral role in laying the foundations for modern society.

Photo Galleries

Sources

Robert C. Allen, The Industrial Revolution: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007
Claire Hopley, "A History of the British Cotton Industry." British Heritage Travel, July 29, 2006
William Rosen, The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention. New York: Random House, 2010
Gavin Weightman, The Industrial Revolutionaries: The Making of the Modern World, 1776-1914. New York: Grove Press, 2007
Matthew White, "Georgian Britain: The Industrial Revolution." British Library, October 14, 2009

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Industrial Revolution: Definition, Inventions & Dates - HISTORY

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Though a few innovations were developed as early as the 1700s, the Industrial Revolution began in earnest by the 1830s and 1840s in Britain, and soon spread to the rest of the world, including the United States.

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In the late 1800's, a high amount of people wanted to leave their homelands and immigrated to the United States.  They came to the U.S. because they believed there was more economic opportunities here in the United States.  Some of the reasons for leaving their homelands included crop failure, land and job shortages, rising taxes, famine, and freedom from political and religious persecution.
Life was not always easy when they settled here in the United States. Immigrants were taken advantage of by employers when it came to their wages. Social tensions were also a part of the hardships.

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Group of Immigrants Cabinet of American Illustration

In the late 1800s, people in many parts of the world decided to leave their homes and immigrate to the United States. Fleeing crop failure, land and job shortages, rising taxes, and famine, many came to the U. S. because it was perceived as the land of economic opportunity. Others came seeking personal freedom or relief from political and religious persecution, and nearly 12 million immigrants arrived in the United States between 1870 and 1900. During the 1870s and 1880s, the vast majority of these people were from Germany, Ireland, and England - the principal sources of immigration before the Civil War. Even so, a relatively large group of Chinese immigrated to the United States between the start of the California gold rush in 1849 and 1882, when federal law stopped their immigration.

With the onset of hard economic times in the 1870s, European immigrants and Americans began to compete for the jobs traditionally reserved for the Chinese. With economic competition came dislike and even racial suspicion and hatred. Such feelings were accompanied by anti-Chinese riots and pressure, especially in California, for the exclusion of Chinese immigrants from the United States. The result of this pressure was the Chinese Exclusion Act, passed by Congress in 1882. This Act virtually ended Chinese immigration for nearly a century.

Immigrants entered the United States through several ports. Those from Europe generally came through East Coast facilities, while those from Asia generally entered through West Coast centers. More than 70 percent of all immigrants, however, entered through New York City, which came to be known as the "Golden Door." Throughout the late 1800s, most immigrants arriving in New York entered at the Castle Garden depot near the tip of Manhattan. In 1892, the federal government opened a new immigration processing center on Ellis Island in New York harbor.

Although immigrants often settled near ports of entry, a large number did find their way inland. Many states, especially those with sparse populations, actively sought to attract immigrants by offering jobs or land for farming. Many immigrants wanted to move to communities established by previous settlers from their homelands.

Once settled, immigrants looked for work. There were never enough jobs, and employers often took advantage of the immigrants. Men were generally paid less than other workers, and women less than men. Social tensions were also part of the immigrant experience. Often stereotyped and discriminated against, many immigrants suffered verbal and physical abuse because they were "different." While large-scale immigration created many social tensions, it also produced a new vitality in the cities and states in which the immigrants settled. The newcomers helped transform American society and culture, demonstrating that diversity, as well as unity, is a source of national strength.

To find other documents in Loc.gov relating to this topic, use such key words as immigration or immigrants, or include the names of specific immigrant or ethnic groups, such as German, Irish, Scandinavian, Swedish, Norwegian, or Chinese.

Documents

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Immigration to the United States, 1851-1900 | Rise of Industrial America, 1876-1900 | U.S. History Primary Source Timeline | Classroom Materials at the Library of Congress | Library of Congress

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In the late 1800s, people in many parts of the world decided to leave their homes and immigrate to the United States.

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Thomas Jefferson signed a treaty with France for the Louisiana territory covering 828,000 square miles of land west of the Mississippi River, the Louisiana Purchase. With this new land, the size of the U.S. was doubled. Thomas Jefferson then sent Meriwether Lewis & William Clark on a journey to explore the newly added land.

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Westward expansion began in earnest in 1803. Thomas Jefferson negotiated a treaty with France in which the United States paid France $15 million for the Louisiana Territory - 828,000 square miles of land west of the Mississippi River - effectively doubling the size of the young nation.

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Thomas Jefferson was a Founding Father and the 3rd president of the United States. He drafted the Declaration of Independence which is the founding document of the United States.

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The U.S. Constitution granted American women the right to vote, women's suffrage, and ratified on August 18, 1920. The movement for women's rights began on a national level with the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 and came to the 19th Amendment after almost a century of protest.

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The second Industrial Revolution led the American population shifted from rural areas to more populated urban areas, leading to the growth of urban centers or cities. The urbanization rate rapidly accelerated during the Gilded Age, which is the time period from the end of the Civil War to the turn of the 20th century. The pattern of urbanization has continued since the early 20th century, as rural areas decline in population and urban and suburban areas grow, due to migrating Americans and increases in immigration.

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The industrial boom of the late nineteenth century led Americans and immigrants from the world over to leave farming life and head to the city.

Americans increasingly moved into cities over the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a movement motivated in large measure by industrialization.

Eleven million people migrated from rural to urban areas between 1870 and 1920, and a majority of the twenty-five million immigrants who came to the United States in these same years moved into the nation's cities.

By 1920, more Americans lived in cities than in rural areas for the first time in US history.

From farm to city

Today most Americans live in cities or suburbs, but from colonial times into the early twentieth century a majority of Americans lived in the countryside and worked on farms. Only two percent of Americans live on farms or ranches today, but in 1790 ninety percent of the population did. What caused this shift?

The movement of populations from rural to urban areas is called urbanization. Urbanization in the United States increased gradually in the early 1800s and then accelerated in the years after the Civil War. By 1890, twenty-eight percent of Americans lived in urban areas, and by 1920 more Americans lived in towns and cities than in rural areas.

The Second Industrial Revolution and urbanization

The principal force driving America's move into cities was the Second Industrial Revolution.

In the United States the industrial revolution came in two waves. The first saw the rise of factories and mechanized production in the late 1700s and early 1800s and included steam-powered spinning and weaving machines, the cotton gin, steamboats, locomotives, and the telegraph. The Second Industrial Revolution took off following the Civil War with the introduction of interchangeable parts, assembly-line production, and new technologies, including the telephone, automobile, electrification of homes and businesses, and more.

The businesses and factories behind the industrial revolution were located in the nation's towns and cities. Eleven million Americans migrated from the countryside to cities in the fifty years between 1870 and 1920. During these same years an additional 25 million immigrants, most from Europe, moved to the United States-one of the largest mass migrations in human history-and while some settled on farms, most moved into the nation's growing towns and cities.

Cities in the Gilded Age were studies in contrasts. The wealthy lived in urban mansions while the poor crowded into tenement houses, apartment buildings with tiny rooms, no ventilation, and poor sanitation. Not until journalist and reformer Jacob Riis published his eye-opening photoessay How the Other Half Lives in 1890 did cities begin passing ordinances to make tenement housing safer.

The Second Industrial Revolution also changed the physical composition of cities. The invention in the 1850s of the Otis elevator and Bessemer steelmaking process (an inexpensive process for the mass production of steel) created the material means for the rise of tall city buildings, some so tall they were said to scrape the sky- skyscrapers. The advent of trolleys and subways also allowed city dwellers to move about with ease on public transportation, encouraging developers to build new suburbs, allowing people to live outside the city center and commute to work.

Late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American cities were energetic centers of culture and community, rich with ethnic enclaves such as "Little Italy," places in which people of different backgrounds and worldviews lived and worked in close proximity. With museums and public libraries, colleges and universities, churches and synagogues, clubs and organizations, saloons and dance halls, shops and street life, cities were vibrant and diverse places. But America's cities could also be geographically concentrated areas of poverty, disease, and violence.

New York City in the Gilded Age

The diversity of the nation's cities was nowhere more on display than in the nation's largest city, New York. At the turn of the twentieth century, New York City was the national capital of finance, industry, shipping and trade, publishing, the arts, and immigration, a magnet that drew to it much of the best and most avant-garde in art and literature. With a population of more than three million in 1900 and 4.7 million by 1910, New York was more than twice as populous than Chicago, the nation's second-ranked city, three times as large as third-ranked Philadelphia, and six to nine times as large as St. Louis, Boston, Baltimore, and Cleveland, all urban centers of immigrants.

By 1910, New York's millionaires had built palatial mansions along much of Fifth Avenue, while, at the same time, many New Yorkers lived in poverty. The Lower East Side was the most crowded neighborhood on earth, housing tens of thousands in ill-lighted, overcrowded tenements, many without running water, flush toilets, or electricity. An 1893 observer in this section of the city wrote of the "fermenting garbage in the gutter and the smell of stale beer" and the sight of exhausted sweatshop workers toiling away, sewing clothes for the garment industry.

What do you think?

What drew Americans and immigrants to move into the nation's cities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? Do you think the city offered them a better life?

What were some of the contrasts in life between the rich and the poor in cities such as New York at the turn of the twentieth century?

Historians reach for words like "revolution" and "world-historical" in describing big historical changes. Would you consider the movement from farms to cities, from colonial times to today, to be revolutionary? Why or why not?

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America moves to the city (article) | Khan Academy

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Learn for free about math, art, computer programming, economics, physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, finance, history, and more. Khan Academy is a nonprofit with the mission of providing a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere.

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This is the Supreme Court decision over the case of 1892 that African American train passenger Homer Plessy refused to sit in a car for Black people and was arrested. In 1896, U.S. Supreme Court delivered the verdict in Plessy v. Ferguson and ruled that the protections of 14th Amendment applied only to political and civic rights such as voting and jury service, not social rights. Its decision upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation, “equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races."

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Transcript

(Transcription of the Judgement of the Supreme Court of the United States in Plessy v. Ferguson.)

Supreme Court of the United States,
No. 210, October Term, 1895.
Homer Adolph Plessy,
Plaintiff in Error,
vs.
J.H. Ferguson, Judge of Section "A"
Criminal District Court for the Parish of Orleans
In Error to the Supreme Court of the State of Louisiana

This cause came on to be heard on the transcript of the record from the Supreme Court of the State of Louisiana, and was argued by counsel.

On consideration whereof, It is now here ordered and adjudged by this Court that the judgement of the said Supreme Court, in this cause, be and the the same is hereby, affirmed with costs.

per Mr. Justice Brown,
May 18, 1896.

Dissenting:
Mr. Justice Harlan

(Transcription of Opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States in Plessy v. Ferguson.)
U.S. Supreme Court
PLESSY v. FERGUSON, 163 U.S. 537 (1896)
May 18, 1896.
This was a petition for writs of prohibition and certiorari originally filed in the supreme court of the state by Plessy, the plaintiff in error, against the Hon. John H. Ferguson, judge of the criminal district court for the parish of Orleans, and setting forth, in substance, the following facts:

That petitioner was a citizen of the United States and a resident of the state of Louisiana, of mixed descent, in the proportion of seven-eighths Caucasian and one-eighth African blood; that the mixture of colored blood was not discernible in him, and that he was entitled to every recognition, right, privilege, and immunity secured to the citizens of the United States of the white race by its constitution and laws; that on June 7, 1892, he engaged and paid for a first-class passage on the East Louisiana Railway, from New Orleans to Covington, in the same state, and thereupon entered a passenger train, and took possession of a vacant seat in a coach where passengers of the white race were accommodated; that such railroad company was incorporated by the laws of Louisiana as a common carrier, and was not authorized to distinguish between citizens according to their race, but, notwithstanding this, petitioner was required by the conductor, under penalty of ejection from said train and imprisonment, to vacate said coach, and occupy another seat, in a coach assigned by said company for persons not of the white race, and for no other reason than that petitioner was of the colored race; that, upon petitioner's refusal to comply with such order, he was, with the aid of a police officer, forcibly ejected from said coach, and hurried off to, and imprisoned in, the parish jail of New Orleans, and there held to answer a charge made by such officer to the effect that he was guilty of having criminally violated an act of the general assembly of the state, approved July 10, 1890, in such case made and provided.

The petitioner was subsequently brought before the recorder of the city for preliminary examination, and committed for trial to the criminal district court for the parish of Orleans, where an information was filed against him in the matter above set forth, for a violation of the above act, which act the petitioner affirmed to be null and void, because in conflict with the constitution of the United States; that petitioner interposed a plea to such information, based upon the unconstitutionality of the act of the general assembly, to which the district attorney, on behalf of the state, filed a demurrer; that, upon issue being joined upon such demurrer and plea, the court sustained the demurrer, overruled the plea, and ordered petitioner to plead over to the facts set forth in the information, and that, unless the judge of the said court be enjoined by a writ of prohibition from further proceeding in such case, the court will proceed to fine and sentence petitioner to imprisonment, and thus deprive him of his constitutional rights set forth in his said plea, notwithstanding the unconstitutionality of the act under which he was being prosecuted; that no appeal lay from such sentence, and petitioner was without relief or remedy except by writs of prohibition and certiorari. Copies of the information and other proceedings in the criminal district court were annexed to the petition as an exhibit.

Upon the filing of this petition, an order was issued upon the respondent to show cause why a writ of prohibition should not issue, and be made perpetual, and a further order that the record of the proceedings had in the criminal cause be certified and transmitted to the supreme court.

To this order the respondent made answer, transmitting a certified copy of the proceedings, asserting the constitutionality of the law, and averring that, instead of pleading or admitting that he belonged to the colored race, the said Plessy declined and refused, either by pleading or otherwise, to admit that he was in any sense or in any proportion a colored man.

The case coming on for hearing before the supreme court, that court was of opinion that the law under which the prosecution was had was constitutional and denied the relief prayed for by the petitioner (Ex parte Plessy, 45 La. Ann. 80, 11 South. 948); whereupon petitioner prayed for a writ of error from this court, which was allowed by the chief justice of the supreme court of Louisiana.

Mr. Justice Harlan dissenting.

A. W. Tourgee and S. F. Phillips, for plaintiff in error.

Alex. Porter Morse, for defendant in error.

Mr. Justice BROWN, after stating the facts in the foregoing language, delivered the opinion of the court.

This case turns upon the constitutionality of an act of the general assembly of the state of Louisiana, passed in 1890, providing for separate railway carriages for the white and colored races. Acts 1890, No. 111, p. 152.

The first section of the statute enacts 'that all railway companies carrying passengers in their coaches in this state, shall provide equal but separate accommodations for the white, and colored races, by providing two or more passenger coaches for each passenger train, or by dividing the passenger coaches by a partition so as to secure separate accommodations: provided, that this section shall not be construed to apply to street railroads. No person or persons shall be permitted to occupy seats in coaches, other than the ones assigned to them, on account of the race they belong to.'

By the second section it was enacted 'that the officers of such passenger trains shall have power and are hereby required to assign each passenger to the coach or compartment used for the race to which such passenger belongs; any passenger insisting on going into a coach or compartment to which by race he does not belong, shall be liable to a fine of twenty-five dollars, or in lieu thereof to imprisonment for a period of not more than twenty days in the parish prison, and any officer of any railroad insisting on assigning a passenger to a coach or compartment other than the one set aside for the race to which said passenger belongs, shall be liable to a fine of twenty-five dollars, or in lieu thereof to imprisonment for a period of not more than twenty days in the parish prison; and should any passenger refuse to occupy the coach or compartment to which he or she is assigned by the officer of such railway, said officer shall have power to refuse to carry such passenger on his train, and for such refusal neither he nor the railway company which he represents shall be liable for damages in any of the courts of this state.'

The third section provides penalties for the refusal or neglect of the officers, directors, conductors, and employees of railway companies to comply with the act, with a proviso that 'nothing in this act shall be construed as applying to nurses attending children of the other race.' The fourth section is immaterial.

The information filed in the criminal district court charged, in substance, that Plessy, being a passenger between two stations within the state of Louisiana, was assigned by officers of the company to the coach used for the race to which he belonged, but he insisted upon going into a coach used by the race to which he did not belong. Neither in the information nor plea was his particular race or color averred.

The petition for the writ of prohibition averred that petitioner was seven-eights Caucasian and one-eighth African blood; that the mixture of colored blood was not discernible in him; and that he was entitled to every right, privilege, and immunity secured to citizens of the United States of the white race; and that, upon such theory, he took possession of a vacant seat in a coach where passengers of the white race were accommodated, and was ordered by the conductor to vacate said coach, and take a seat in another, assigned to persons of the colored race, and, having refused to comply with such demand, he was forcibly ejected, with the aid of a police officer, and imprisoned in the parish jail to answer a charge of having violated the above act.

The constitutionality of this act is attacked upon the ground that it conflicts both with the thirteenth amendment of the constitution, abolishing slavery, and the fourteenth amendment, which prohibits certain restrictive legislation on the part of the states.

1. That it does not conflict with the thirteenth amendment, which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except a punishment for crime, is too clear for argument. Slavery implies involuntary servitude,-a state of bondage; the ownership of mankind as a chattel, or, at least, the control of the labor and services of one man for the benefit of another, and the absence of a legal right to the disposal of his own person, property, and services. This amendment was said in the Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall. 36, to have been intended primarily to abolish slavery, as it had been previously known in this country, and that it equally forbade Mexican peonage or the Chinese coolie trade, when they amounted to slavery or involuntary servitude, and that the use of the word 'servitude' was intended to prohibit the use of all forms of involuntary slavery, of whatever class or name. It was intimated, however, in that case, that this amendment was regarded by the statesmen of that day as insufficient to protect the colored race from certain laws which had been enacted in the Southern states, imposing upon the colored race onerous disabilities and burdens, and curtailing their rights in the pursuit of life, liberty, and property to such an extent that their freedom was of little value; and that the fourteenth amendment was devised to meet this exigency.

So, too, in the Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3, 3 Sup. Ct. 18, it was said that the act of a mere individual, the owner of an inn, a public conveyance or place of amusement, refusing accommodations to colored people, cannot be justly regarded as imposing any badge of slavery or servitude upon the applicant, but only as involving an ordinary civil injury, properly cognizable by the laws of the state, and presumably subject to redress by those laws until the contrary appears. 'It would be running the slavery question into the ground,' said Mr. Justice Bradley, 'to make it apply to every act of discrimination which a person may see fit to make as to the guests he will entertain, or as to the people he will take into his coach or cab or car, or admit to his concert or theater, or deal with in other matters of intercourse or business.'

A statute which implies merely a legal distinction between the white and colored races-a distinction which is founded in the color of the two races, and which must always exist so long as white men are distinguished from the other race by color-has no tendency to destroy the legal equality of the two races, or re-establish a state of involuntary servitude. Indeed, we do not understand that the thirteenth amendment is strenuously relied upon by the plaintiff in error in this connection.

2. By the fourteenth amendment, all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are made citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside; and the states are forbidden from making or enforcing any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, or shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or deny to any person within their jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The proper construction of this amendment was first called to the attention of this court in the Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall. 36, which involved, however, not a question of race, but one of exclusive privileges. The case did not call for any expression of opinion as to the exact rights it was intended to secure to the colored race, but it was said generally that its main purpose was to establish the citizenship of the negro, to give definitions of citizenship of the United States and of the states, and to protect from the hostile legislation of the states the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, as distinguished from those of citizens of the states. The object of the amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but, in the nature of things, it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguish d from political, equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either. Laws permitting, and even requiring, their separation, in places where they are liable to be brought into contact, do not necessarily imply the inferiority of either race to the other, and have been generally, if not universally, recognized as within the competency of the state legislatures in the exercise of their police power. The most common instance of this is connected with the establishment of separate schools for white and colored children, which have been held to be a valid exercise of the legislative power even by courts of states where the political rights of the colored race have been longest and most earnestly enforced.

One of the earliest of these cases is that of Roberts v. City of Boston, 5 Cush. 198, in which the supreme judicial court of Massachusetts held that the general school committee of Boston had power to make provision for the instruction of colored children in separate schools established exclusively for them, and to prohibit their attendance upon the other schools. 'The great principle,' said Chief Justice Shaw, 'advanced by the learned and eloquent advocate for the plaintiff [Mr. Charles Sumner], is that, by the constitution and laws of Massachusetts, all persons, without distinction of age or sex, birth or color, origin or condition, are equal before the law. ... But, when this great principle comes to be applied to the actual and various conditions of persons in society, it will not warrant the assertion that men and women are legally clothed with the same civil and political powers, and that children and adults are legally to have the same functions and be subject to the same treatment; but only that the rights of all, as they are settled and regulated by law, are equally entitled to the paternal consideration and protection of the law for their maintenance and security.' It was held that the powers of the committee extended to the establish- ment of separate schools for children of different ages, sexes and colors, and that they might also establish special schools for poor and neglected children, who have become too old to attend the primary school, and yet have not acquired the rudiments of learning, to enable them to enter the ordinary schools. Similar laws have been enacted by congress under its general power of legislation over the District of Columbia (sections 281- 283, 310, 319, Rev. St. D. C.), as well as by the legislatures of many of the states, and have been generally, if not uniformly, sustained by the courts. State v. McCann, 21 Ohio St. 210; Lehew v. Brummell (Mo. Sup.) 15 S. W. 765; Ward v. Flood, 48 Cal. 36; Bertonneau v. Directors of City Schools, 3 Woods, 177, Fed. Cas. No. 1,361; People v. Gallagher, 93 N. Y. 438; Cory v. Carter, 48 Ind. 337; Dawson v. Lee, 83 Ky. 49.

Laws forbidding the intermarriage of the two races may be said in a technical sense to interfere with the freedom of contract, and yet have been universally recognized as within the police power of the state. State v. Gibson, 36 Ind. 389.

The distinction between laws interfering with the political equality of the negro and those requiring the separation of the two races in schools, theaters, and railway carriages has been frequently drawn by this court. Thus, in Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303, it was held that a law of West Virginia limiting to white male persons 21 years of age, and citizens of the state, the right to sit upon juries, was a discrimination which implied a legal inferiority in civil society, which lessened the security of the right of the colored race, and was a step towards reducing them to a condition of servility. Indeed, the right of a colored man that, in the selection of jurors to pass upon his life, liberty, and property, there shall be no exclusion of his race, and no discrimination against them because of color, has been asserted in a number of cases. Virginia v. Rivers, 100 U.S. 313 ; Neal v. Delaware, 103 U.S. 370 ; ush v. Com., 107 U.S. 110 , 1 Sup. Ct. 625; Gibson v. Mississippi, 162 U.S. 565 , 16 Sup. Ct. 904. So, where the laws of a particular locality or the charter of a particular railway corporation has provided that no person shall be excluded from the cars on account of color, we have held that this meant that persons of color should travel in the same car as white ones, and that the enactment was not satisfied by the company providing cars assigned exclusively to people of color, though they were as good as those which they assigned exclusively to white persons. Railroad Co. v. Brown, 17 Wall. 445.

Upon the other hand, where a statute of Louisiana required those engaged in the transportation of passengers among the states to give to all persons traveling within that state, upon vessels employed in that business, equal rights and privileges in all parts of the vessel, without distinction on account of race or color, and subjected to an action for damages the owner of such a vessel who excluded colored passengers on account of their color from the cabin set aside by him for the use of whites, it was held to be, so far as it applied to interstate commerce, unconstitutional and void. Hall v. De Cuir, 95 U.S. 485 . The court in this case, however, expressly disclaimed that it had anything whatever to do with the statute as a regulation of internal commerce, or affecting anything else than commerce among the states.

In the Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 , 3 Sup. Ct. 18, it was held that an act of congress entitling all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances, on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement, and made applicable to citizens of every race and color, regardless of any previous condition of servitude, was unconstitutional and void, upon the ground that the fourteenth amendment was prohibitory upon the states only, and the legislation authorized to be adopted by congress for enforcing it was not direct legislation on matters respecting which the states were prohibited from making or enforcing certain laws, or doing certain acts, but was corrective legislation, such as might be necessary or proper for counter-acting and redressing the effect of such laws or acts. In delivering the opinion of the court, Mr. Justice Bradley observed that the fourteenth amendment 'does not invest congress with power to legislate upon subjects that are within the domain of state legislation, but to provide modes of relief against state legislation or state action of the kind referred to. It does not authorize congress to create a code of municipal law for the regulation of private rights, but to provide modes of redress against the operation of state laws, and the action of state officers, executive or judicial, when these are subversive of the fundamental rights specified in the amendment. Positive rights and privileges are undoubtedly secured by the fourteenth amendment; but they are secured by way of prohibition against state laws and state proceedings affecting those rights and privileges, and by power given to congress to legislate for the purpose of carrying such prohibition into effect; and such legislation must necessarily be predicated upon such supposed state laws or state proceedings, and be directed to the correction of their operation and effect.'

Much nearer, and, indeed, almost directly in point, is the case of the Louisville, N. O. & T. Ry. Co. v. State, 133 U.S. 587 , 10 Sup. Ct. 348, wherein the railway company was indicted for a violation of a statute of Mississippi, enacting that all railroads carrying passengers should provide equal, but separate, accommodations for the white and colored races, by providing two or more passenger cars for each passenger train, or by dividing the passenger cars by a partition, so as to secure separate accommodations. The case was presented in a different aspe t from the one under consideration, inasmuch as it was an indictment against the railway company for failing to provide the separate accommodations, but the question considered was the constitutionality of the law. In that case, the supreme court of Mississippi (66 Miss. 662, 6 South. 203) had held that the statute applied solely to commerce within the state, and, that being the construction of the state statute by its highest court, was accepted as conclusive. 'If it be a matter,' said the court (page 591, 133 U. S., and page 348, 10 Sup. Ct.), 'respecting commerce wholly within a state, and not interfering with commerce between the states, then, obviously, there is no violation of the commerce clause of the federal constitution. ... No question arises under this section as to the power of the state to separate in different compartments interstate pas- sengers, or affect, in any manner, the privileges and rights of such passengers. All that we can consider is whether the state has the power to require that railroad trains within her limits shall have separate accommodations for the two races. That affecting only commerce within the state is no invasion of the power given to congress by the commerce clause.'

A like course of reasoning applies to the case under consideration, since the supreme court of Louisiana, in the case of State v. Judge, 44 La. Ann. 770, 11 South. 74, held that the statute in question did not apply to interstate passengers, but was confined in its application to passengers traveling exclusively within the borders of the state. The case was decided largely upon the authority of Louisville, N. O. & T. Ry. Co. v. State, 66 Miss. 662, 6 South, 203, and affirmed by this court in 133 U.S. 587 , 10 Sup. Ct. 348. In the present case no question of interference with interstate commerce can possibly arise, since the East Louisiana Railway appears to have been purely a local line, with both its termini within the state of Louisiana. Similar statutes for the separation of the two races upon public conveyances were held to be constitutional in Railroad v. Miles, 55 Pa. St. 209; Day v. Owen 5 Mich. 520; Railway Co. v. Williams, 55 Ill. 185; Railroad Co. v. Wells, 85 Tenn. 613; 4 S. W. 5; Railroad Co. v. Benson, 85 Tenn. 627, 4 S. W. 5; The Sue, 22 Fed. 843; Logwood v. Railroad Co., 23 Fed. 318; McGuinn v. Forbes, 37 Fed. 639; People v. King ( N. Y. App.) 18 N. E. 245; Houck v. Railway Co., 38 Fed. 226; Heard v. Railroad Co., 3 Inter St. Commerce Com. R. 111, 1 Inter St. Commerce Com. R. 428.

While we think the enforced separation of the races, as applied to the internal commerce of the state, neither abridges the privileges or immunities of the colored man, deprives him of his property without due process of law, nor denies him the equal protection of the laws, within the meaning of the fourteenth amendment, we are not prepared to say that the conductor, in assigning passengers to the coaches according to their race, does not act at his peril, or that the provision of the second section of the act that denies to the passenger compensation in damages for a refusal to receive him into the coach in which he properly belongs is a valid exercise of the legislative power. Indeed, we understand it to be conceded by the state's attorney that such part of the act as exempts from liability the railway company and its officers is unconstitutional. The power to assign to a particular coach obviously implies the power to determine to which race the passenger belongs, as well as the power to determine who, under the laws of the particular state, is to be deemed a white, and who a colored, person. This question, though indicated in the brief of the plaintiff in error, does not properly arise upon the record in this case, since the only issue made is as to the unconstitutionality of the act, so far as it requires the railway to provide separate accommodations, and the conductor to assign passengers according to their race.

It is claimed by the plaintiff in error that, in an mixed community, the reputation of belonging to the dominant race, in this instance the white race, is 'property,' in the same sense that a right of action or of inheritance is property. Conceding this to be so, for the purposes of this case, we are unable to see how this statute deprives him of, or in any way affects his right to, such property. If he be a white man, and assigned to a colored coach, he may have his action for damages against the company for being deprived of his so-called 'property.' Upon the other hand, if he be a colored man, and be so assigned, he has been deprived of no property, since he is not lawfully entitled to the reputation of being a white man.

In this connection, it is also suggested by the learned counsel for the plaintiff in error that the same argument that will justify the state legislature in requiring railways to provide separate accommodations for the two races will also authorize them to require separate cars to be provided for people whose hair is of a certain color, or who are aliens, or who belong to certain nationalities, or to enact laws requiring colored people to walk upon one side of the street, and white people upon the other, or requiring white men's houses to be painted white, and colored men's black, or their vehicles or business signs to be of different colors, upon the theory that one side of the street is as good as the other, or that a house or vehicle of one color is as good as one of another color. The reply to all this is that every exercise of the police power must be reasonable, and extend only to such laws as are enacted in good faith for the promotion of the public good, and not for the annoyance or oppression of a particular class. Thus, in Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356 , 6 Sup. Ct. 1064, it was held by this court that a municipal ordinance of the city of San Francisco, to regulate the carrying on of public laundries within the limits of the municipality, violated the provisions of the constitution of the United States, if it conferred upon the municipal authorities arbitrary power, at their own will, and without regard to discretion, in the legal sense of the term, to give or withhold consent as to persons or places, without regard to the competency of the persons applying or the propriety of the places selected for the carrying on of the business. It was held to be a covert attempt on the part of the municipality to make an arbitrary and unjust discrimination against the Chinese race. While this was the case of a municipal ordinance, a like principle has been held to apply to acts of a state legislature passed in the exercise of the police power. Railroad Co. v. Husen, 95 U.S. 465 ; Louisville & N. R. Co. v. Kentucky, 161 U.S. 677 , 16 Sup. Ct. 714, and cases cited on page 700, 161 U. S., and page 714, 16 Sup. Ct.; Daggett v. Hudson, 43 Ohio St. 548, 3 N. E. 538; Capen v. Foster, 12 Pick. 485; State v. Baker, 38 Wis. 71; Monroe v. Collins, 17 Ohio St. 665; Hulseman v. Rems, 41 Pa. St. 396; Osman v. Riley, 15 Cal. 48.

So far, then, as a conflict with the fourteenth amendment is concerned, the case reduces itself to the question whether the statute of Louisiana is a reasonable regulation, and with respect to this there must necessarily be a large discretion on the part of the legislature. In determining the question of reasonableness, it is at liberty to act with reference to the established usages, customs, and traditions of the people, and with a view to the promotion of their comfort, and the preservation of the public peace and good order. Gauged by this standard, we cannot say that a law which authorizes or even requires the separation of the two races in public conveyances is unreasonable, or more obnoxious to the fourteenth amendment than the acts of congress requiring separate schools for colored children in the District of Columbia, the constitutionality of which does not seem to have been questioned, or the corresponding acts of state legislatures.

We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff's argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it. The argument necessarily assumes that if, as has been more than once the case, and is not unlikely to be so again, the colored race should become the dominant power in the state legislature, and should enact a law in precisely similar terms, it would thereby relegate the white race to an inferior position. We imagine that the white race, at least, would not acquiesce in this assumption. The argument also assumes that social prejudices may be overcome by legislation, and that equal rights cannot be secured to the negro except by an enforced commingling of the two races. We cannot accept this proposition. If the two races are to meet upon terms of social equality, it must be the result of natural affinities, a mutual appreciation of each other's merits, and a voluntary consent of individuals. As was said by the court of appeals of New York in People v. Gallagher, 93 N. Y. 438, 448: 'This end can neither be accomplished nor promoted by laws which conflict with the general sentiment of the community upon whom they are designed to operate. When the government, therefore, has secured to each of its citizens equal rights before the law, and equal opportunities for improvement and progress, it has accomplished the end for which it was organized, and performed all of the functions respecting social advantages with which it is endowed.' Legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts, or to abolish distinctions based upon physical differences, and the attempt to do so can only result in accentuating the difficulties of the present situation. If the civil and political rights of both races be equal, one cannot be inferior to the other civilly or politically. If one race be inferior to the other socially, the constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane.

It is true that the question of the proportion of colored blood necessary to constitute a colored person, as distinguished from a white person, is one upon which there is a difference of opinion in the different states; some holding that any visible admixture of black blood stamps the person as belonging to the colored race (State v. Chavers, 5 Jones [N. C.] 1); others, that it depends upon the preponderance of blood ( Gray v. State, 4 Ohio, 354; Monroe v. Collins, 17 Ohio St. 665); and still others, that the predominance of white blood must only be in the proportion of three-fourths (People v. Dean, 14 Mich. 406; Jones v. Com., 80 Va. 544). But these are questions to be determined under the laws of each state, and are not properly put in issue in this case. Under the allegations of his petition, it may undoubtedly become a question of importance whether, under the laws of Louisiana, the petitioner belongs to the white or colored race.

The judgment of the court below is therefore affirmed.

Mr. Justice BREWER did not hear the argument or participate in the decision of this case.

Mr. Justice HARLAN dissenting.

By the Louisiana statute the validity of which is here involved, all railway companies (other than street-railroad companies) carry passengers in that state are required to have separate but equal accommodations for white and colored persons, 'by providing two or more passenger coaches for each passenger train, or by dividing the passenger coaches by a partition so as to secure separate accommodations.' Under this statute, no colored person is permitted to occupy a seat in a coach assigned to white persons; nor any white person to occupy a seat in a coach assigned to colored persons. The managers of the railroad are not allowed to exercise any discretion in the premises, but are required to assign each passenger to some coach or compartment set apart for the exclusive use of is race. If a passenger insists upon going into a coach or compartment not set apart for persons of his race, he is subject to be fined, or to be imprisoned in the parish jail. Penalties are prescribed for the refusal or neglect of the officers, directors, conductors, and employees of railroad companies to comply with the provisions of the act.

Only 'nurses attending children of the other race' are excepted from the operation of the statute. No exception is made of colored attendants traveling with adults. A white man is not permitted to have his colored servant with him in the same coach, even if his condition of health requires the constant personal assistance of such servant. If a colored maid insists upon riding in the same coach with a white woman whom she has been employed to serve, and who may need her personal attention while traveling, she is subject to be fined or imprisoned for such an exhibition of zeal in the discharge of duty.

While there may be in Louisiana persons of different races who are not citizens of the United States, the words in the act 'white and colored races' necessarily include all citizens of the United States of both races residing in that state. So that we have before us a state enactment that compels, under penalties, the separation of the two races in railroad passenger coaches, and makes it a crime for a citizen of either race to enter a coach that has been assigned to citizens of the other race.

Thus, the state regulates the use of a public highway by citizens of the United States solely upon the basis of race.

However apparent the injustice of such legislation may be, we have only to consider whether it is consistent with the constitution of the United States.

That a railroad is a public highway, and that the corporation which owns or operates it is in the exercise of public functions, is not, at this day, to be disputed. Mr. Justice Nelson, speaking for this court in New Jersey Steam Nav. Co. v. Merchants' Bank, 6 How. 344, 382, said that a common carrier was in the exercise 'of a sort of public office, and has public duties to perform, from which he should not be permitted to exonerate himself without the assent of the parties concerned.' Mr. Justice Strong, delivering the judgment of this court in Olcott v. Supervisors, 16 Wall. 678, 694, said: 'That railroads, though constructed by private corporations, and owned by them, are public highways, has been the doctrine of nearly all the courts ever since such conveniences for passage and transportation have had any existence. Very early the question arose whether a state's right of eminent domain could be exercised by a private corporation created for the purpose of constructing a railroad. Clearly, it could not, unless taking land for such a purpose by such an agency is taking land for public use. The right of eminent domain nowhere justifies taking property for a private use. Yet it is a doctrine universally accepted that a state legislature may authorize a private corporation to take land for the construction of such a road, making compensation to the owner. What else does this doctrine mean if not that building a railroad, though it be built by a private corporation, is an act done for a public use?' So, in Township of Pine Grove v. Talcott, 19 Wall. 666, 676: 'Though the corporation [a railroad company] was private, its work was public, as much so as if it were to be constructed by the state.' So, in Inhabitants of Worcester v. Western R. Corp., 4 Metc. (Mass.) 564: 'The establishment of that great thoroughfare is regarded as a public work, established by public authority, intended for the public use and benefit, the use of which is secured to the whole community, and constitutes, therefore, like a canal, turnpike, or highway, a public easement.' 'It is true that the real and personal property, necessary to the establishment and management of the railroad, is vested in the corporation; but it is in trust for the public.'

In respect of civil rights, common to all citizens, the constitution of the United States does not, I think, permit any public authority to know the race of those entitled to be protected in the enjoyment of such rights. Every true man has pride of race, and under appropriate circumstances, when the rights of others, his equals before the law, are not to be affected, it is his privilege to express such pride and to take such action based upon it as to him seems proper. But I deny that any legislative body or judicial tribunal may have regard to the race of citizens when the civil rights of those citizens are involved. Indeed, such legislation as that here in question is inconsistent not only with that equality of rights which pertains to citizenship, national and state, but with the personal liberty enjoyed by every one within the United States.

The thirteenth amendment does not permit the withholding or the deprivation of any right necessarily inhering in freedom. It not only struck down the institution of slavery as previously existing in the United States, but it prevents the imposition of any burdens or disabilities that constitute badges of slavery or servitude. It decreed universal civil freedom in this country. This court has so adjudged. But, that amendment having been found inadequate to the protection of the rights of those who had been in slavery, it was followed by the fourteenth amendment, which added greatly to the dignity and glory of American citizenship, and to the security of personal liberty, by declaring that '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,' and that '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.' These two amendments, if enforced according to their true intent and meaning, will protect all the civil rights that pertain to freedom and citizenship. Finally, and to the end that no citizen should be denied, on account of his race, the privilege of participating in the political control of his country, it was declared by the fifteenth amendment that '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.'

These notable additions to the fundamental law were welcomed by the friends of liberty throughout the world. They removed the race line from our governmental systems. They had, as this court has said, a common purpose, namely, to secure 'to a race recently emancipated, a race that through many generations have been held in slavery, all the civil rights that the superior race enjoy.' They declared, in legal effect, this court has further said, 'that the law in the states shall be the same for the black as for the white; that all persons, whether colored or white, shall stand equal before the laws of the states; and in regard to the colored race, for whose protection the amendment was primarily designed, that no discrimination shall be made against them by law because of their color.' We also said: 'The words of the amendment, it is true, are prohibitory, but they contain a necessary implication of a positive immunity or right, most valuable to the colored race,-the right to exemption from unfriendly legislation against them distinctively as colored; exemption from legal discriminations, implying inferiority in civil society, lessening the security of their enjoyment of the rights which others enjoy; and discriminations which are steps towards reducing them to the condition of a subject race.' It was, consequently, adjudged that a state law that excluded citizens of the colored race from juries, because of their race, however well qualified in other respects to discharge the duties of jurymen, was repugnant to the fourteenth amendment. Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303, 306 , 307 S.; Virginia v. Rives, Id. 313; Ex parte Virginia, Id. 339; Neal v. Delaware, 103 U.S. 370 , 386; Bush v. Com., 107 U.S. 110, 116 , 1 S. Sup. Ct. 625. At the present term, referring to the previous adjudications, this court declared that 'underlying all of those decisions is the principle that the constitution of the United States, in its present form, forbids, so far as civil and political rights are concerned, discrimination by the general government or the states against any citizen because of his race. All citizens are equal before the law.' Gibson v. State, 162 U.S. 565 , 16 Sup. Ct. 904.

The decisions referred to show the scope of the recent amendments of the constitution. They also show that it is not within the power of a state to prohibit colored citizens, because of their race, from participating as jurors in the administration of justice.

It was said in argument that the statute of Louisiana does not discriminate against either race, but prescribes a rule applicable alike to white and colored citizens. But this argument does not meet the difficulty. Every one knows that the statute in question had its origin in the purpose, not so much to exclude white persons from railroad cars occupied by blacks, as to exclude colored people from coaches occupied by or assigned to white persons. Railroad corporations of Louisiana did not make discrimination among whites in the matter of accommodation for travelers. The thing to accomplish was, under the guise of giving equal accommodation for whites and blacks, to compel the latter to keep to themselves while traveling in railroad passenger coaches. No one would be so wanting in candor as to assert the contrary. The fundamental objection, therefore, to the statute, is that it interferes with the personal freedom of citizens. 'Personal liberty,' it has been well said, 'consists in the power of locomotion, of changing situation, or removing one's person to whatsoever places one's own inclination may direct, without imprisonment or restraint, unless by due course of law.' 1 Bl. Comm. *134. If a white man and a black man choose to occupy the same public conveyance on a public highway, it is their right to do so; and no government, proceeding alone on grounds of race, can prevent it without infringing the personal liberty of each.

It is one thing for railroad carriers to furnish, or to be required by law to furnish, equal accommodations for all whom they are under a legal duty to carry. It is quite another thing for government to forbid citizens of the white and black races from traveling in the same public conveyance, and to punish officers of railroad companies for permitting persons of the two races to occupy the same passenger coach. If a state can prescribe, as a rule of civil conduct, that whites and blacks shall not travel as passengers in the same railroad coach, why may it not so regulate the use of the streets of its cities and towns as to compel white citizens to keep on one side of a street, and black citizens to keep on the other? Why may it not, upon like grounds, punish whites and blacks who ride together in street cars or in open vehicles on a public road or street? Why may it not require sheriffs to assign whites to one side of a court room, and blacks to the other? And why may it not also prohibit the commingling of the two races in the galleries of legislative halls or in public assemblages convened for the consideration of the political questions of the day? Further, if this statute of Louisiana is consistent with the personal liberty of citizens, why may not the state require the separation in railroad coaches of native and naturalized citizens of the United States, or of Protestants and Roman Catholics?

The answer given at the argument to these questions was that regulations of the kind they suggest would be unreasonable, and could not, therefore, stand before the la . Is it meant that the determination of questions of legislative power depends upon the inquiry whether the statute whose validity is questioned is, in the judgment of the courts, a reasonable one, taking all the circumstances into consideration? A statute may be unreasonable merely because a sound public policy forbade its enactment. But I do not understand that the courts have anything to do with the policy or expediency of legislation. A statute may be valid, and yet, upon grounds of public policy, may well be characterized as unreasonable. Mr. Sedgwick correctly states the rule when he says that, the legislative intention being clearly ascertained, 'the courts have no other duty to perform than to execute the legislative will, without any regard to their views as to the wisdom or justice of the particular enactment.' Sedg. St. & Const. Law, 324. There is a dangerous tendency in these latter days to enlarge the functions of the courts, by means of judicial interference with the will of the people as expressed by the legislature. Our institutions have the distinguishing characteristic that the three departments of government are co-ordinate and separate. Each much keep within the limits defined by the constitution. And the courts best discharge their duty by executing the will of the law-making power, constitutionally expressed, leaving the results of legislation to be dealt with by the people through their representatives. Statutes must always have a reasonable construction. Sometimes they are to be construed strictly, sometimes literally, in order to carry out the legislative will. But, however construed, the intent of the legislature is to be respected if the particular statute in question is valid, although the courts, looking at the public interests, may conceive the statute to be both unreasonable and impolitic. If the power exists to enact a statute, that ends the matter so far as the courts are concerned. The adjudged cases in which statutes have been held to be void, because unreasonable, are those in which the means employed by the legislature were not at all germane to the end to which the legislature was competent.

The white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country. And so it is, in prestige, in achievements, in education, in wealth, and in power. So, I doubt not, it will continue to be for all time, if it remains true to its great heritage, and holds fast to the principles of constitutional liberty. But in view of the constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guarantied by the supreme law of the land are involved. It is therefore to be regretted that this high tribunal, the final expositor of the fundamental law of the land, has reached the conclusion that it is competent for a state to regulate the enjoyment by citizens of their civil rights solely upon the basis of race.

In my opinion, the judgment this day rendered will, in time, prove to be quite as pernicious as the decision made by this tribunal in the Dred Scott Case.

It was adjudged in that case that the descendants of Africans who were imported into this country, and sold as slaves, were not included nor intended to be included under the word 'citizens' in the constitution, and could not claim any of the rights and privileges which that instrument provided for and secured to citizens of the United States; that, at time of the adoption of the constitution, they were 'considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the government might choose to grant them.' 17 How. 393, 404. The recent amendments of the constitution, it was supposed, had eradicated these principles from our institutions. But it seems that we have yet, in some of the states, a dominant race,-a superior class of citizens,-which assumes to regulate the enjoyment of civil rights, common to all citizens, upon the basis of race. The present decision, it may well be apprehended, will not only stimulate aggressions, more or less brutal and irritating, upon the admitted rights of colored citizens, but will encourage the belief that it is possible, by means of state enactments, to defeat the beneficent purposes which the people of the United States had in view when they adopted the recent amendments of the constitution, by one of which the blacks of this country were made citizens of the United States and of the states in which they respectively reside, and whose privileges and immunities, as citizens, the states are forbidden to abridge. Sixty millions of whites are in no danger from the presence here of eight millions of blacks. The destinies of the two races, in this country, are indissolubly linked together, and the interests of both require that the common government of all shall not permit the seeds of race hate to be planted under the sanction of law. What can more certainly arouse race hate, what more certainly create and perpetuate a feeling of distrust between these races, than state enactments which, in fact, proceed on the ground that colored citizens are so inferior and degraded that they cannot be allowed to sit in public coaches occupied by white citizens? That, as all will admit, is the real meaning of such legislation as was enacted in Louisiana.

The sure guaranty of the peace and security of each race is the clear, distinct, unconditional recognition by our governments, national and state, of every right that inheres in civil freedom, and of the equality before the law of all citizens of the United States, without regard to race. State enactments regulating the enjoyment of civil rights upon the basis of race, and cunningly devised to defeat legitimate results of the war, under the pretense of recognizing equality of rights, can have no other result than to render permanent peace impossible, and to keep alive a conflict of races, the continuance of which must do harm to all concerned. This question is not met by the suggestion that social equality cannot exist between the white and black races in this country. That argument, if it can be properly regarded as one, is scarcely worthy of consideration; for social equality no more exists between two races when traveling in a passenger coach or a public highway than when members of the same races sit by each other in a street car or in the jury box, or stand or sit with each other in a political assembly, or when they use in common the streets of a city or town, or when they are in the same room for the purpose of having their names placed on the registry of voters, or when they approach the ballot box in order to exercise the high privilege of voting.

There is a race so different from our own that we do not permit those belonging to it to become citizens of the United States. Persons belonging to it are, with few exceptions, absolutely excluded from our country. I allude to the Chinese race. But, by the statute in question, a Chinaman can ride in the same passenger coach with white citizens of the United States, while citizens of the black race in Louisiana, many of whom, perhaps, risked their lives for the preservation of the Union, who are entitled, by law, to participate in the political control of the state and nation, who are not excluded, by law or by reason of their race, from public stations of any kind, and who have all the legal rights that belong to white citizens, are yet declared to be criminals, liable to imprisonment, if they ride in a public coach occupied by citizens of the white race. It is scarcely just to say that a colored citizen should not object to occupying a public coach assigned to his own race. He does not object, nor, perhaps, would he object to separate coaches for his race if his rights under the law were recognized. But he does object, and he ought never to cease objecting, that citizens of the white and black races can be adjudged criminals because they sit, or claim the right to sit, in the same public coach on a public highway. The arbitrary separation of citizens, on the basis of race, while they are on a public highway, is a badge of servitude wholly inconsistent with the civil freedom and the equality before the law established by the constitution. It cannot be justified upon any legal grounds.

If evils will result from the commingling of the two races upon public highways established for the benefit of all, they will be infinitely less than those that will surely come from state legislation regulating the enjoyment of civil rights upon the basis of race. We boast of the freedom enjoyed by our people above all other peoples. But it is difficult to reconcile that boast with a state of the law which, practically, puts the brand of servitude and degradation upon a large class of our fellow citizens,-our equals before the law. The thin disguise of 'equal' accommodations for passengers in railroad coaches will not mislead any one, nor atone for the wrong this day done.

The result of the whole matter is that while this court has frequently adjudged, and at the present term has recognized the doctrine, that a state cannot, consistently with the constitution of the United States, prevent white and black citizens, having the required qualifications for jury service, from sitting in the same jury box, it is now solemnly held that a state may prohibit white and black citizens from sitting in the same passenger coach on a public highway, or may require that they be separated by a 'partition' when in the same passenger coach. May it not now be reasonably expected that astute men of the dominant race, who affect to be disturbed at the possibility that the integrity of the white race may be corrupted, or that its supremacy will be imperiled, by contact on public highways with black people, will endeavor to procure statutes requiring white and black jurors to be separated in the jury box by a 'partition,' and that, upon retiring from the court room to consult as to their verdict, such partition, if it be a movable one, shall be taken to their consultation room, and set up in such way as to prevent black jurors from coming too close to their brother jurors of the white race. If the 'partition' used in the court room happens to be stationary, provision could be made for screens with openings through which jurors of the two races could confer as to their verdict without coming into personal contact with each other. I cannot see but that, according to the principles this day announced, such state legislation, although conceived in hostility to, and enacted for the purpose of humiliating, citizens of the United States of a particular race, would be held to be consistent with the constitution.

I do not deem it necessary to review the decisions of state courts to which reference was made in argument. Some, and the most important, of them, are wholly inapplicable, because rendered prior to the adoption of the last amendments of the constitution, when colored people had very few rights which the dominant race felt obliged to respect. Others were made at a time when public opinion, in many localities, was dominated by the institution of slavery; when it would not have been safe to do justice to the black man; and when, so far as the rights of blacks were concerned, race prejudice was, practically, the supreme law of the land. Those decisions cannot be guides in the era introduced by the recent amendments of the supreme law, which established universal civil freedom, gave citizenship to all born or naturalized in the United States, and residing ere, obliterated the race line from our systems of governments, national and state, and placed our free institutions upon the broad and sure foundation of the equality of all men before the law.

I am of opinion that the state of Louisiana is inconsistent with the personal liberty of citizens, white and black, in that state, and hostile to both the spirit and letter of the constitution of the United States. If laws of like character should be enacted in the several states of the Union, the effect would be in the highest degree mischievous. Slavery, as an institution tolerated by law, would, it is true, have disappeared from our country; but there would remain a power in the states, by sinister legislation, to interfere with the full enjoyment of the blessings of freedom, to regulate civil rights, common to all citizens, upon the basis of race, and to place in a condition of legal inferiority a large body of American citizens, now constituting a part of the political community, called the 'People of the United States,' for whom, and by whom through representatives, our government is administered. Such a system is inconsistent with the guaranty given by the constitution to each state of a republican form of government, and may be stricken down by congressional action, or by the courts in the discharge of their solemn duty to maintain the supreme law of the land, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.

For the reason stated, I am constrained to withhold my assent from the opinion and judgment of the majority.

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EnlargeDownload Link Citation: Plessy vs. Ferguson, Judgement, Decided May 18, 1896; Records of the Supreme Court of the United States; Record Group 267; Plessy v. Ferguson, 163, #15248, National Archives. View All Pages in the National Archives Catalog View Transcript The ruling in this Supreme Court case upheld a Louisiana state law that allowed for "equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races."

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Major Characteristics of the Thirteen Colonies

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Major Characteristics of the Thirteen Colonies

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The thirteen colonies are recognized into three groups based on where and why they were founded, i.e., Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire as New England colonies, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey as Middle colonies, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia as Southern colonies.
In New England colonies, people founded to keep their family together and practice their own religion. They had farming and fishing communities and grew much of their own food. Boston was the major New England port to receive some foods shipped from England.
Middle colonies founders were looking for their own religion or to make money without bringing their families from England. They developed part agriculture and part industrial, such as wheat, grains, iron, paper, and textiles.
The founders of the Southern colonies brought their families and tried to make money in the new American market. Their economy was supported by agriculture in the plantation. Southern plantation had enslaved African people as their workforce and grew tobacco, rice, and indigo.

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English Colonial Expansion

Sixteenth-century England was a tumultuous place. Because they could make more money from selling wool than from selling food, many of the nation's landowners were converting farmers' fields into pastures for sheep. This led to a food shortage; at the same time, many agricultural workers lost their jobs.

Did you know? Virginia Dare, the first American-born child of English parents, was born in Roanoke in 1587.

The 16th century was also the age of mercantilism, an extremely competitive economic philosophy that pushed European nations to acquire as many colonies as they could. As a result, for the most part, the English colonies in North America were business ventures. They provided an outlet for England's surplus population and (in some cases) more religious freedom than England did, but their primary purpose was to make money for their sponsors.

The Tobacco Colonies

In 1606, King James I divided the Atlantic seaboard in two, giving the southern half to the London Company (later the Virginia Company) and the northern half to the Plymouth Company.

The first English settlement in North America had actually been established some 20 years before, in 1587, when a group of colonists (91 men, 17 women and nine children) led by Sir Walter Raleigh settled on the island of Roanoke. Mysteriously, by 1590 the Roanoke colony had vanished entirely. Historians still do not know what became of its inhabitants.

In 1606, just a few months after James I issued its charter, the London Company sent 144 men to Virginia on three ships: the Godspeed, the Discovery and the Susan Constant. They reached the Chesapeake Bay in the spring of 1607 and headed about 60 miles up the James River, where they built a settlement they called Jamestown.

The Jamestown colonists had a rough time of it: They were so busy looking for gold and other exportable resources that they could barely feed themselves. It was not until 1616, when Virginia's settlers learned how to grow tobacco, that it seemed the colony might survive. The first enslaved African arrived in Virginia in 1619.

In 1632, the English crown granted about 12 million acres of land at the top of the Chesapeake Bay to Cecilius Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore. This colony, named Maryland after the queen, was similar to Virginia in many ways. Its landowners produced tobacco on large plantations that depended on the labor of indentured servants and (later) enslaved workers.

But unlike Virginia's founders, Lord Baltimore was a Catholic, and he hoped that his colony would be a refuge for his persecuted coreligionists. Maryland became known for its policy of religious toleration for all.

The New England Colonies

The first English emigrants to what would become the New England colonies were a small group of Puritan separatists, later called the Pilgrims, who arrived in Plymouth in 1620 to found Plymouth Colony. Ten years later, a wealthy syndicate known as the Massachusetts Bay Company sent a much larger (and more liberal) group of Puritans to establish another Massachusetts settlement. With the help of local natives, the colonists soon got the hang of farming, fishing and hunting, and Massachusetts prospered.

As the Massachusetts settlements expanded, they formed new colonies in New England. Puritans who thought that Massachusetts was not pious enough formed the colonies of Connecticut and New Haven (the two combined in 1665). Meanwhile, Puritans who thought that Massachusetts was too restrictive formed the colony of Rhode Island, where everyone-including Jewish people-enjoyed complete "liberty in religious concernments." To the north of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, a handful of adventurous settlers formed the colony of New Hampshire.

The Middle Colonies

In 1664, King Charles II gave the territory between New England and Virginia, much of which was already occupied by Dutch traders and landowners called patroons, to his brother James, the Duke of York. The English soon absorbed Dutch New Netherland and renamed it New York.

Most of the Dutch people (as well as the Belgian Flemings and Walloons, French Huguenots, Scandinavians and Germans) who were living there stayed put. This made New York one of the most diverse and prosperous colonies in the New World.

In 1680, the king granted 45,000 square miles of land west of the Delaware River to William Penn, a Quaker who owned large swaths of land in Ireland. Penn's North American holdings became the colony of "Penn's Woods," or Pennsylvania.

Lured by the fertile soil and the religious toleration that Penn promised, people migrated there from all over Europe. Like their Puritan counterparts in New England, most of these emigrants paid their own way to the colonies and had enough money to establish themselves when they arrived. As a result, Pennsylvania soon became a prosperous and relatively egalitarian place.

The Southern Colonies

By contrast, the Carolina colony, a territory that stretched south from Virginia to Florida and west to the Pacific Ocean, was much less cosmopolitan. In its northern half, hardscrabble farmers eked out a living. In its southern half, planters presided over vast estates that produced corn, lumber, beef and pork, and-starting in the 1690s-rice.

These Carolinians had close ties to the English planter colony on the Caribbean island of Barbados, which relied heavily on African slave labor, and many were involved in the slave trade themselves. As a result, slavery played an important role in the development of the Carolina colony. (It split into North Carolina and South Carolina in 1729.)

In 1732, inspired by the need to build a buffer between South Carolina and the Spanish settlements in Florida, the Englishman James Oglethorpe established the Georgia colony. In many ways, Georgia's development mirrored South Carolina's.

The Revolutionary War and the Treaty of Paris

In 1700, there were about 250,000 European settlers and enslaved Africans in North America's English colonies. By 1775, on the eve of revolution, there were an estimated 2.5 million. The colonists did not have much in common, but they were able to band together and fight for their independence.

The American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) was sparked after American colonists chafed over issues like taxation without representation, embodied by laws like The Stamp Act and The Townshend Acts. Mounting tensions came to a head during the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, when the "shot heard round the world" was fired.

It was not without warning; the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770 and the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773 showed the colonists' increasing dissatisfaction with British rule in the colonies.

The Declaration of Independence, issued on July 4, 1776, enumerated the reasons the Founding Fathers felt compelled to break from the rule of King George III and parliament to start a new nation. In September of that year, the Continental Congress declared the "United Colonies" of America to be the "United States of America."

France joined the war on the side of the colonists in 1778, helping the Continental Army conquer the British at the Battle of Yorktown in 1781. The Treaty of Paris ending the American Revolution and granting the 13 original colonies independence was signed on September 3, 1783.

13 Colonies Flag

During the Revolutionary War, a flag featuring thirteen alternating red and white stripes and thirteen five-pointed stars arranged in a circle was adopted. This variant is also known as the " Betsy Ross Flag," as she was believed to have designed it. The stars and stripes represent the 13 colonies.

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The 13 Colonies: Map, Original States & Facts | HISTORY

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The 13 Colonies were a group of colonies of Great Britain that settled on the Atlantic coast of America in the 17th and 18th centuries. The colonies declared independence in 1776 to found the United States of America.

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Congress passed the Indian Removal Act signed by President Andrew Jackson in 1830, beginning to force thousands of Native Americans to relocate to "Indian territory", known as the Trail of Tears. It freed fertile farmland to mostly white settlements in Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas.

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Between 1830 to 1850, the federal government forced Native Americans to leave their homeland, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, and North Carolina, to walk hundreds of miles to a designated "Indian Territory" across the Mississippi River. This deadly forced displacement is called the Trail of Tears.

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The 'Indian Problem'

White Americans, particularly those who lived on the western frontier, often feared and resented the Native Americans they encountered: To them, American Indians seemed to be an unfamiliar, alien people who occupied land that white settlers wanted (and believed they deserved).

Some officials in the early years of the American republic, such as President George Washington, believed that the best way to solve this "Indian problem" was to simply "civilize" the Native Americans. The goal of this civilization campaign was to make Native Americans as much like white Americans as possible by encouraging them convert to Christianity, learn to speak and read English and adopt European-style economic practices such as the individual ownership of land and other property (including, in some instances in the South, enslaved persons).

In the southeastern United States, many Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, Creek and Cherokee people embraced these customs and became known as the "Five Civilized Tribes."

Did you know? Indian removal took place in the Northern states as well. In Illinois and Wisconsin, for example, the bloody Black Hawk War in 1832 opened to white settlement millions of acres of land that had belonged to the Sauk, Fox and other native nations.

But the Native Americans' land, located in parts of Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, Florida and Tennessee, was valuable, and it grew to be more coveted as white settlers flooded the region. Many of these whites yearned to make their fortunes by growing cotton, and often resorted to violent means to take land from their Indigenous neighbors. They stole livestock; burned and looted houses and towns; committed mass murder; and squatted on land that did not belong to them.

Worcester v. Georgia

State governments joined in this effort to drive Native Americans out of the South. Several states passed laws limiting Native American sovereignty and rights and encroaching on their territory.

In Worcester v. Georgia (1832), the U.S. Supreme Court objected to these practices and affirmed that native nations were sovereign nations "in which the laws of Georgia [and other states] can have no force."

Even so, the maltreatment continued. As President Andrew Jackson noted in 1832, if no one intended to enforce the Supreme Court's rulings (which he certainly did not), then the decisions would "[fall]...still born." Southern states were determined to take ownership of Indian lands and would go to great lengths to secure this territory.

Indian Removal Act

Andrew Jackson had long been an advocate of what he called "Indian removal." As an Army general, he had spent years leading brutal campaigns against the Creeks in Georgia and Alabama and the Seminoles in Florida-campaigns that resulted in the transfer of hundreds of thousands of acres of land from Indian nations to white farmers.

As president, he continued this crusade. In 1830, he signed the Indian Removal Act, which gave the federal government the power to exchange Native-held land in the cotton kingdom east of the Mississippi for land to the west, in the "Indian colonization zone" that the United States had acquired as part of the Louisiana Purchase. This "Indian territory" was located in present-day Oklahoma.

The law required the government to negotiate removal treaties fairly, voluntarily and peacefully: It did not permit the president or anyone else to coerce Native nations into giving up their ancestral lands. However, President Jackson and his government frequently ignored the letter of the law and forced Native Americans to vacate lands they had lived on for generations.

Trail of Tears

In the winter of 1831, under threat of invasion by the U.S. Army, the Choctaw became the first nation to be expelled from its land altogether. They made the journey to Indian Territory on foot (some "bound in chains and marched double file," one historian writes), and without any food, supplies or other help from the government.

Thousands of people died along the way. It was, one Choctaw leader told an Alabama newspaper, a "trail of tears and death."

The Indian-removal process continued. In 1836, the federal government drove the Creeks from their land for the last time: 3,500 of the 15,000 Creeks who set out for Oklahoma did not survive the trip.

Treaty of New Echota

The Cherokee people were divided: What was the best way to handle the government's determination to get its hands on their territory? Some wanted to stay and fight. Others thought it was more pragmatic to agree to leave in exchange for money and other concessions.

In 1835, a few self-appointed representatives of the Cherokee nation negotiated the Treaty of New Echota, which traded all Cherokee land east of the Mississippi - roughly 7 million acres - for $5 million, relocation assistance and compensation for lost property.

To the federal government, the treaty (signed in New Echota, Georgia) was a done deal, but a majority of the Cherokee felt betrayed. Importantly, the negotiators did not represent the tribal government or anyone else. Most Cherokee people considered the Treaty of New Echota fraudulent, and the Cherokee National Council voted in 1836 to reject it.

John Ross

"The instrument in question is not the act of our nation," wrote the nation's principal chief, John Ross, in a letter to the U.S. Senate protesting the Treaty of New Echota. "We are not parties to its covenants; it has not received the sanction of our people." Nearly 16,000 Cherokees signed Ross's petition, but Congress approved the treaty anyway.

By 1838, only about 2,000 Cherokees had left their Georgia homeland for Indian Territory. President Martin Van Buren sent General Winfield Scott and 7,000 soldiers to expedite the removal process. Scott and his troops forced the Cherokee into stockades at bayonet point while his men looted their homes and belongings.

Then, they marched the Indians more than 1,200 miles to Indian Territory. Whooping cough, typhus, dysentery, cholera and starvation were epidemic along the way. Historians estimate that more than 5,000 Cherokee died as a result of the journey.

Legacy of the Trail of Tears

By 1840, tens of thousands of Native Americans had been driven off of their land in the southeastern states and forced to move across the Mississippi to Indian Territory. The federal government promised that their new land would remain unmolested forever, but as the line of white settlement pushed westward, "Indian Country" shrank and shrank. In 1907, Oklahoma became a state and Indian Territory was considered lost.

A 2020 decision by the Supreme Court, however, highlighted ongoing interest in Native American territorial rights. In a 5-4 decision, the Court ruled that a huge area of Oklahoma is still considered an American Indian reservation.

This decision left the state of Oklahoma unable to prosecute Native Americans accused of crimes on those tribal lands - only federal and tribal law enforcement can prosecute such crimes. (A later 2022 Supreme Court decision rolled back some provisions of the 2020 court finding.)

The Trail of Tears - actually a network of different routes - is over 5,000 miles long and covers nine states: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Tennessee. Today, the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail is run by the National Park Service and portions of it are accessible on foot, by horse, by bicycle or by car.

Sources

Trail of Tears. NPS.gov.
Trail of Tears. Museum of the Cherokee Indian.
The Treaty of New Echota and the Trail of Tears. North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
The Treaty That Forced the Cherokee People from Their Homelands Goes on View. Smithsonian Magazine.
Justices rule swath of Oklahoma remains tribal reservation. Associated Press.
Justices limit 2020 ruling on tribal lands in Oklahoma. Associated Press.

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Trail of Tears: Definition, Date & Cherokee Nation - HISTORY

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The Trail of Tears was the deadly route Native Americans were forced to follow when they were pushed off their ancestral lands and into Oklahoma by the Indian Removal Act of 1830.

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Ancient Egyptians made huge contributions with the essential elements for development of society, such as inventing mathematics, geometry, surveying, metallurgy, astronomy, accounting, writing, paper, medicine. They also developed ways to measure time and distance, then applied the knowledge to the historical monumental architecture.

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Political factions or parties began to form during the struggle over ratification of the federal Constitution of 1787, and in the 1790s and early 1800s, senators divided into two rival parties based on the support of and opposition to the policies of presidents, George Washinton and John Adams. The supporters of presidents became known as the label Federalists which largely represented New England and Mid-Atlantic states, whereas the opposition led by Thomas Jefferson became Republicans which represented the South. After the elections of 1800 and Thomas Jefferson took his presidency, Republicans gained the majority in the Senate.

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In the 1790s and early 1800s, senators divided into rival parties based on support of and opposition to the policies of presidents George Washington and John Adams, especially regarding foreign relations with Great Britain and France and the role of the federal government. Party labels were very fluid at this time, but for the most part supporters of Washington and Adams adopted the label Federalists, while the opposition, led by Thomas Jefferson, became known as Democratic Republicans (many preferred the one-word label, Republicans). The Federalists largely represented New England and Mid-Atlantic states, while the Democratic Republicans were dominant in the South. Although senators tended to vote along these party lines, they did not establish formal party organizations in the Senate. The most visible role of parties in Congress at this time came in presidential election years, when party members from both the House of Representatives and the Senate gathered to nominate presidential candidates. After the elections of 1800, which put Thomas Jefferson in the presidency, Democratic Republicans gained the majority in the Senate, with Federalists holding only a small number of seats.

Beginning in the 1820s, Democratic Republicans in Congress divided over questions about the powers of the federal government, which set the stage for two new political parties. Republicans who favored a national bank as well as federal funding of internal improvements-roads, canals, and bridges-became known as National Republicans. So called Old Republicans continued to support states' rights and a smaller federal government. After the controversial presidential election of 1824-in which the contest was decided in favor of John Quincy Adams by the House of Representatives-Democratic Republicans split over whether to support or oppose the defeated candidate Andrew Jackson in the 1828 election. When Jackson won the presidency in 1828, he was backed by a new coalition party with national reach and a popular base of state and local support-the Democratic Party. In the Senate, Kentucky's Henry Clay led a coalition of anti-Jackson forces who called themselves Whigs. The Democratic and Whig Parties soon became competitive in states throughout the country.

The Democrats and Whigs gradually adopted the first party-based customs in the Senate. In the 1830s, for example, members of the two parties began sitting on opposite sides of the Senate Chamber, with the Democrats gathering to the right of the presiding officer and the Whigs to the left. The party in the majority controlled the chairmanships and a majority of seats on most, if not all, of the standing committees. In the 1840s, each party began determining committee assignments of their members and submitted lists of assignments to be approved by the full Senate. Throughout this time, senators representing the two parties clashed over a number of issues such as the Bank of the United States, import tariffs, and federal funding of infrastructure.

Until the 1850s, even as parties became more organized, senators of the two parties did not meet regularly during sessions to coordinate policy agendas, and members were still frequently divided along sectional or other lines. The Senate of this era was dominated by a powerful triumvirate of senators-Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, Henry Clay of Kentucky, and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina-who represented the regional interests of the northeast, south, and west. Chief among those issues was the institution of slavery.

When the Whig Party dissolved over the issue of slavery in the 1850s, it was replaced by a new Republican Party, a coalition dedicated to blocking the spread of slavery into the nation's western territories. The Democratic Party also split over the issue of slavery in the years leading to the Civil War, with some Northern Democrats adopting anti-slavery ("free soil") positions that differed from pro-slavery Southern Democrats, who ultimately opted to leave the Senate in support of secession. By the time the Southern Democrats returned to the Senate during Reconstruction, the modern two-party system was firmly in place.

The Senate of the late 19th century often was closely divided between the Democratic and Republican Parties, and each party took steps to strengthen party cohesion and empower leadership. When Republicans were first elected to the Senate in large numbers in the late 1850s, they organized a party conference and elected New Hampshire senator John P. Hale as chair. When Democrats increased their numbers in the Senate in the 1870s, they also formed a party conference and elected John W. Stevenson of Kentucky as their first conference chair. The chair presided over conference meetings, which typically took place at the start of each Congress to discuss the legislative agenda, but the chair lacked the power to manage Senate floor business or set policy priorities. Over the next several decades, the conference chair would gain that power as the position gradually evolved into that of modern floor leader.

In the 1890s, each conference established steering committees to coordinate legislative action, and these quickly became an effective tool of party power. Democrat Arthur Pue Gorman of Maryland was elected chair of the Democratic Conference in 1890, and beginning in 1892, he also served as chair of the party's steering committee, whose members he appointed. In 1893 Iowa's William B. Allison chaired the Republican steering committee to which he assigned key allies, including Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island. In 1897 Republicans elected Allison to serve as conference chair as well. Allison and his allies also led major committees-Allison chaired Appropriations, for example, while Aldrich led the Finance Committee-and exercised enormous power over the Senate's legislative agenda. Working closely with fellow Republicans John Spooner of Wisconsin and Orville Platt of Connecticut, they became known as the Senate Four. Soon, Aldrich was largely acknowledged as the unofficial leader of the Republicans.

Although in the minority for all but two years between 1881 and 1913, the Democrats took a major step towards establishing formal leadership positions by pioneering the election of what became known as party leader or floor leader. When conference chairman Arthur Gorman took the lead in organizing a months-long filibuster of a Republican-sponsored elections bill in 1890, news accounts frequently identified Gorman as the "Democratic leader." When Gorman left the Senate in 1899, the Democrats elected James K. Jones of Arkansas to chair the conference, and many observers referred to him as the "leader of the minority on the floor of the Senate." Gorman returned to the Senate in 1903 and was reelected as conference chair, again being identified as party leader. Gorman died in office in 1906, and the Democrats unanimously elected Joseph Blackburn of Kentucky to succeed him. The conference marked Blackburn's election with a resolution identifying him as "their chosen official leader in the great forum of the Senate." When the Democrats retook the majority in 1913, John W. Kern of Indiana became conference chair. Kern met frequently with President Woodrow Wilson to shape the party's legislative agenda, and was widely regarded as the "majority leader," the first to be referred to by that title. In 1913 the Democrats also appointed the Senate's first "party whip" to assist the leader and keep track of members' positions on particular measures.

By 1913 the Republican old guard of the Senate Four had left office. For the first time in a generation, the party was in the minority. The Republican Conference began following the example of the Democrats and placed more power in the hands of the conference chair. The chair, who by custom was the most senior senator, was now frequently referred to as the "Republican leader" or "minority leader." In 1913 that position fell to Jacob Gallinger of New Hampshire, who was replaced by Massachusetts senator Henry Cabot Lodge in 1918. In 1925, for the first time, the Republicans elected a leader based not on seniority but on capacity for effective leadership-Charles Curtis of Kansas.

Although the label of "party leader" for conference chairs had been established by the 1920s, the leaders still struggled to bring unity to their respective conferences. In 1903 the Democrats approved a resolution introduced by Blackburn that all members of the party would be bound to vote for or against a measure if two-thirds of the conference called for it. Members bristled at the prospect of being bound by the party, however, and persuaded Blackburn to add a host of exceptions to that binding rule. Throughout the 1910s, Democrats periodically debated whether they would be bound by party conference, and many Republicans voiced similar concerns. In 1925 the Republican Conference adopted a resolution stating emphatically that its members were not bound "in any way" by action taken by the conference. The daunting task of building unity within a party conference continued to challenge every party leader that followed.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the increasing strength of party floor leaders became institutionalized through Senate procedures and traditions. Soon after becoming Democratic leader in 1919, Alabama senator Oscar Underwood moved from the back row of the Senate Chamber to the first-row seat on the center aisle-and he held onto that spot even after he resigned as leader in 1923. When Underwood retired four years later, the new Democratic leader, Joseph T. Robinson of Arkansas, quickly grabbed the seat, a position held by every subsequent Democratic leader. In January 1937 Republican leader Charles McNary of Oregon took the front-row desk across the aisle from Robinson, the space still occupied by the Republican leader today. Beginning in the 1930s, the presiding officer also adopted the practice of giving the two party leaders priority of recognition over all other members, thus giving the leaders the power to control the agenda of the floor.

Both parties reorganized throughout the 1920s, '30s, and '40s to assist members in pursuing electoral and policy goals. The parties established senatorial campaign committees to share fundraising operations and support members in close electoral campaigns. Both parties hired staff assistants, including the appointment of party secretaries starting in 1929. As part of the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946, both parties established a policy committee to develop expertise on the problems facing the country, inform the drafting of legislation, and plan legislative agendas. The policy committees empowered the Senate to counter the executive branch's dominance over policy development, which it had enjoyed since the 1930s. For the Democrats, the Policy Committee also was a source of power for leadership since, until 2000, the Democratic floor leader also served as Policy Committee chair.

The extent to which party leaders centralized power in their offices varied throughout the 20th century. Democratic Leader Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas rarely called meetings of the party conference, preferring to take firm control over the party's agenda and using tools like committee assignments, legislative logrolling, unanimous consent agreements, and his own powers of persuasion to rally support of the often-divided Democratic Conference. His successor, Mike Mansfield of Montana, believed in giving individual senators and standing committees greater authority to pursue legislative goals. Republican Leader Everett M. Dirksen of Illinois, whose party was in the minority during his tenure in the 1960s, was known for his ability to grasp the goals of his colleagues and for his pragmatism in helping them shape legislation.

Over the past few decades, party leaders have become even more important to the daily operations of the Senate. Consequently, the visibility of leaders has grown, additional leadership posts have been established, and leadership staff has expanded to include experts in various policy fields. Whereas leaders in the 20th century often struggled to unite parties that were internally divided by region and ideology, today's leaders preside over conferences that are more cohesive and vote together far more frequently. While the majority leader is charged with determining the legislative agenda, and frequently uses unanimous consent agreements to manage daily floor business, majority and minority leaders, along with party secretaries and key leadership staff, work together to ensure the orderly operation of the Senate.

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U.S. Senate: About Parties and Leadership | Historical Overview

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In the 1790s and early 1800s, senators divided into rival parties based on support of and opposition to the policies of presidents George Washington and John Adams, especially regarding foreign relations with Great Britain and France and the role of the federal government. Party labels were very flu…

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The Bill of Rights is the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution which guarantee civil rights and liberties to the individual, such as freedom of speech, press and religion. It sets rules for due process of law and reserves all powers not delegated to the Federal Government to the people or the States.

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Español Accordion [accordion classes="" id="59774" expand_first="true"][/accordion] Back to Main Page How Did it Happen?

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Major Ideas of the Declaration of Independence

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Major Ideas of the Declaration of Independence

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Three major ideas are 1. all men are created equal, and people have certain inalienable rights including life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, 2. the main business of government is to protect and guarantee these rights, 3. if a government tries to withhold these rights, the people are free to revolt and to set up a new government.