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Homo sapiens evolved from their early hominid predecessors between 200,000 and 300,000 years ago and developed a capacity for language about 50,000 years ago.

Homo sapiens, the first modern humans, evolved from their early hominid predecessors between 200,000 and 300,000 years ago. They developed a capacity for language about 50,000 years ago.

The first modern humans began moving outside of Africa starting about 70,000-100,000 years ago.

Humans are the only known species to have successfully populated, adapted to, and significantly altered a wide variety of land regions across the world, resulting in profound historical and environmental impacts.

Where do we begin?

Before we tell the stories that make up world history, it is useful to ask: where do we begin? Where did our human stories start?

Homo sapiens is part of a group called hominids, which were the earliest humanlike creatures. Based on archaeological and anthropological evidence, we think that hominids diverged from other primates somewhere between 2.5 and 4 million years ago in eastern and southern Africa. Though there was a degree of diversity among the hominid family, they all shared the trait of bipedalism, or the ability to walk upright on two legs.

Scientists have several theories about why early hominids evolved. One, the aridity hypothesis, suggests that early hominids were more suited to dry climates and evolved as the Africa's dry savannah regions expanded.

Hominids continued to evolve and develop unique characteristics. Their brain capacities increased, and approximately 2.3 million years ago, a hominid known as Homo habilis began to make and use simple tools. By a million years ago, some hominid species, particularly Homo erectus, began to migrate out of Africa and into Eurasia, where they began to make other advances like controlling fire.

Though there were once many kinds of hominids, only one remains: Homo sapiens. Extinction is a normal part of evolution, and scientists continue to theorize why other hominid species didn't survive. We do have some clues as to why some species were less successful at surviving than others, such as an inability to cope with competition for food, changes in climate, and volcanic eruptions.

Migration and the Peopling of the Earth

Between 70,000 and 100,000 years ago, Homo sapiens began migrating from the African continent and populating parts of Europe and Asia. They reached the Australian continent in canoes sometime between 35,000 and 65,000 years ago.

Adaptation and effects on nature

When humans migrated from Africa to colder climates, they made clothing out of animal skins and constructed fires to keep themselves warm; often, they burned fires continuously through the winter. Sophisticated weapons, such as spears and bows and arrows, allowed them to kill large mammals efficiently. Along with changing climates, these hunting methods contributed to the extinction of giant land mammals such as mammoths, giant kangaroos, and mastodons. Fewer giant mammals, in turn, limited hunters' available prey.

What do you think?

Why do you think Homo sapiens is the only surviving human species?

What effects do you think the environment had on human evolution? What effects did human evolution have on the environment?

What skills were needed for human species to populate the Earth?

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First humans: Homo sapiens & early human migration (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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The Great Migration:
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/world-history/world-history-beginnings/origin-humans-early-societies/a/where-did-humans-come-from

The Earliest Native American Societies:
http://www.sps186.org/downloads/basic/734078/ch16_1.pdf

Native American Culture Areas:
http://www.native-languages.org/culture-areas3.gif

European Renaissance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7XWiGflkQ8

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A school project about the Italian/European Renaissance in the 14th century. Produced by: Felix G Written by: Matthew Y Felix G Amber N Bowen T Timothy N Editor: Matthew Y Audio Mastered by: Felix G

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The Vikings:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G_Z7p6hyxc

1492: Voyages of Christopher Columbus:
https://cdn.britannica.com/56/89956-004-9851B885.gif

Spanish Empire in North America:
https://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h438.html

Race for Empires in North America:
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-ushistory/chapter/the-exploration-and-conquest-of-the-new-world/

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Exploration and Conquest of the New World

Initial voyages to the New World by Columbus spurred an era of exploration and invasion by other European empires.

Learning Objectives

Examine the causes and consequences of European exploration and expansion

Key Takeaways

Key Points

Spanish exploration of the New World was led by Christopher Columbus and Juan Ponce de Leon, who invaded and colonized great parts of what would become South, Central, and North America.

The French Empire, led by Jacques Cartier and Giovanni da Verrazano, focused predominantly on North America.

The Dutch in New Netherland confined their operations to Manhattan Island, Long Island, the Hudson River Valley, and what later became New Jersey.

British explorations of the New World were led by John Cabot and Sir Walter Raleigh. Trading companies, such as the Plymouth and London companies, were granted charters to develop and expand British settlements.

The course of New World explorations was deeply affected by the settlers' interactions with indigenous groups-interactions that, through a combination of violence and disease, resulted in massive declines in indigenous populations.

Key Terms

British Empire: The United Kingdom, together with its dominions, colonies, dependencies, trust territories, and protectorates became the Commonwealth of Nations following the independence of many of its constituent countries.

New World: The continents of North America and South America combined.

In 1492, Christopher Columbus, supported by the Spanish government, undertook a voyage to find a new route to Asia and inadvertently encountered "new" lands in the Americas full of long established communities and cultures. Other European countries quickly followed suit and began to explore and invade the New World. Jacques Cartier undertook a voyage to present-day Canada for the French government, where they began the settlement of New France, developing the fur industry and fostering a more respectful relationship with many of the inhabitants. The Spanish conquistadors invaded areas of Central and South America looking for riches, ultimately destroying the powerful Aztec and Inca cultures. The course of New World explorations was deeply affected by the invaders' interactions with indigenous groups-interactions that, through a combination of violence and disease, resulted in massive declines in indigenous populations.

The Spanish Empire

Colonial expansion under the Spanish Empire was initiated by the Spanish conquistadors and developed by the Monarchy of Spain through its administrators and missionaries. The motivations for colonial expansion were trade and the spread of the Christian faith through indigenous conversions.

The Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de Leon was an early invader of the Americas, traveling to the New World on Columbus' second voyage. He became the first governor of Puerto Rico in 1509. Upon the death of Christopher Columbus, the Spanish did not allow Christopher's son, who like his father had committed atrocities upon the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, to succeed him. Instead, the governors were replaced with successors from Spain. Leon found a peninsula on the coast of North America and called the new land Florida, chartering a colonizing expedition. His presence there was brief, however, as he was attacked by American Indian forces and subsequently died in nearby Cuba.

By 1565, Spanish forces looked to expand their influence and Catholic religion in the New World by attacking the French settlement of Fort Caroline. The Spanish navy overwhelmed 200 French Huguenot settlers and slaughtered them, even as they surrendered to Spain's superior military. Spain formed the settlement of St. Augustine as an outpost to ensure that French Huguenots were no longer welcome in the area. St. Augustine is the oldest continuously occupied European-established city in North America.

The French Empire

Major French exploration of North America began under the rule of Francis I, King of France. In 1524, Francis sent Italian-born Giovanni da Verrazano to explore the region between Florida and Newfoundland for a route to the Pacific Ocean. Verrazano gave the names Francesca and Nova Gallia to that land between New Spain and English Newfoundland, thus promoting French interests.

From the middle of the 16th century forward, France tried to establish several colonies throughout North America that failed due to weather, disease, or conflict with other European powers. A major French settlement lay on the island of Hispaniola, where France established the colony of Saint-Domingue on the western third of the island in 1664. Nicknamed the "Pearl of the Antilles," Saint-Domingue became the richest colony in the Caribbean at that time. This colonial era ended with a slave revolt in 1791, which began the Haitian Revolution and led to freedom for the colony's slaves in 1794 and complete independence for the country a decade later. France also briefly ruled the eastern portion of the island, which is now the Dominican Republic.

French habitants, or farmer-settlers, eked out an existence along the St. Lawrence River. French fur traders and missionaries, however, ranged far into the interior of North America, exploring the Great Lakes region and the Mississippi River. These pioneers gave France somewhat inflated imperial claims to lands that nonetheless remained firmly under the dominion of indigenous peoples.

The Dutch Empire

Seventeenth-century French and Dutch colonies in North America were modest in comparison to Spain's colossal global empire. New France and New Netherland remained small commercial operations focused on the fur trade and did not attract an influx of migrants. The Dutch in New Netherland confined their operations to Manhattan Island, Long Island, the Hudson River Valley, and what later became New Jersey. Dutch trade goods circulated widely among the native peoples in these areas and also traveled well into the interior of the continent along pre-existing native trade routes.

The British Empire

Shortly after Columbus' first voyage to the New World, the British Empire funded an exploratory mission of its own led by John Cabot. Cabot explored the North American continent, correctly deducing that the spherical shape of the earth made the north-where the longitudes are much shorter-a quicker route to the New World than a trip to the South Islands where Columbus was exploring. Encouraged, he asked the English monarchy for a more substantial expedition to further explore and settle the lands. He was successful in obtaining the expedition and the ships departed, never to be seen again.

England also took over the Dutch colony of New Netherland (including the New Amsterdam settlement), which was renamed the Province of New York in 1664. With New Netherland, the English also came to control New Sweden (now Delaware), which the Dutch had conquered earlier. In the north, the Hudson Bay Company actively traded for fur with the indigenous peoples, bringing them into competition with French, Aboriginal, and Metis fur traders. The company came to control the entire drainage basin of Hudson Bay, which they called Rupert's Land.

At the start of the 17th century, the English had not established a permanent settlement in the Americas. Over the next century, however, they outpaced their rivals. The English encouraged emigration far more than the Spanish, French, or Dutch. They established nearly a dozen colonies, sending swarms of immigrants to populate the land. England had experienced a dramatic rise in population in the 16th century, and the colonies appeared a welcoming place for those who faced overcrowding and grinding poverty at home. Thousands of English migrants arrived in the Chesapeake Bay colonies of Virginia and Maryland to work in the tobacco fields. Another stream, this one of pious Puritan families, sought to live as they believed scripture demanded and established the Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, New Haven, Connecticut, and Rhode Island colonies of New England.

Disease in the New World

European exploration and invasion of the Americas brought with them many foreign diseases, causing widespread depopulation among indigenous cultures.

Learning Objectives

Evaluate the consequences of the European and Native American encounter

Key Takeaways

Key Points

As Europeans and African slaves began to arrive in the New World, they brought with them the infectious diseases of Europe and Africa.

Rampant epidemic disease, to which the natives had no prior exposure or resistance, was one of the main causes of the massive population decline of the indigenous populations of the Americas.

Diseases like smallpox, typhus, measles, and influenza were responsible for the destruction of large segments of the Caribs, Arawaks, Beothuks, and Mesoamerican and other indigenous empires.

The scope of the epidemics over the years was tremendous, killing millions of people possibly in excess of 90% of the population in the hardest hit areas.

Key Terms

epidemic disease: A widespread illness that affects many individuals in a population.

depopulation: The act of reducing a population; the destruction or expulsion of inhabitants.

Infectious Diseases in the New World

Different European colonial settlements in the New World exposed indigenous populations to Christianity, forced labor, expulsion from their lands, and foreign diseases. Rampant epidemic disease, to which the natives had no prior exposure or resistance, was one of the main causes of the massive population decline of the indigenous populations of the Americas. As Europeans and African slaves began to arrive in the New World, they brought with them the infectious diseases of Europe and Africa. Soon after, observers noted that immense numbers of indigenous Americans began to die from these diseases. The scope of the epidemics over the years was tremendous, killing millions of people-possibly in excess of 90% of the population in the hardest hit areas.

This death toll was initially overlooked or downplayed because once introduced, the diseases raced ahead of European invasion in many areas. Disease killed off a sizable portion of the populations before European observations and written records were made. After the epidemics had already killed massive numbers of indigenous Americans, many newer European immigrants assumed that there had always been relatively few indigenous peoples.

One of the most devastating diseases was smallpox; other deadly diseases included typhus, measles, influenza, bubonic plague, cholera, malaria, mumps, yellow fever, and pertussis (whooping cough). The indigenous Americas also had a number of endemic diseases, such as tuberculosis (although once believed to have been brought from Europe, skeletal remains found in South America have since provided evidence of tuberculosis before the Spanish arrival) and an unusually virulent type of syphilis, which became rampant when brought back to the Old World. The transfer of disease between the Old World and New World was part of the phenomenon known as the Columbian Exchange.

The diseases brought to the New World proved to be exceptionally deadly to the indigenous populations, and the epidemics had very different effects in different regions of the Americas. The most vulnerable groups were those with a relatively small population and little built-up immunity. Many island-based groups were annihilated: the Caribs and Arawaks of the Caribbean nearly ceased to exist, as did the Beothuks of Newfoundland. While disease swept swiftly through the densely populated empires of Mesoamerica, the more scattered populations of North America saw a slower spread.

Population Decline

Estimates of the pre-Columbian population have ranged from 8.4 million to 112.5 million persons, while estimates of indigenous deaths generally range from 2 to 15 million. Before the arrival of Columbus in Hispaniola, the indigenous Taíno pre-contact population of several hundred thousand declined to 60,000 by 1509. The population of the indigenous peoples in Mexico declined by an estimated 90% (reduced to 1-2.5 million people) by the early 17th century. In Peru, the indigenous pre-contact population of approximately 6.5 million declined to 1 million by the early 17th century.

European Empires in North America

From the 15th century onward, European nations invaded the New World and began establishing empires throughout the continent.

Learning Objectives

Evaluate the goals of Spanish, British, and French exploration in the Americas

Key Takeaways

Key Points

The Spanish Empire between 1492 and 1892, expanded across most of Central America, the Caribbean, Mexico, and much of North America. In its conquest of the New World, the Spanish subdued and defeated the Inca civilization of Peru, the Aztecs of Central America, and the Maya civilization of the Yucatan.

England's forays into the New World began in 1497 with John Cabot's journey to North America. British exploration of the New World centered on searching for a Northwest Passage through the continent.

Sir Walter Raleigh and Henry Hudson were notable British explorers who established early settlements in Virginia and New York.

The search for a northwest passage to Asia and the burgeoning fur trade in Europe drove the French to explore and settle North America.

Samuel de Champlain began the first permanent settlement of New France and Quebec City in present-day Canada and created a prosperous trade with the American Indians for beaver pelts and other animal hides.

Key Terms

conquistador: A conqueror, but especially one of the Spanish soldiers that invaded Central and South America in the 16th century and defeated the Incas and Aztecs.

Inca civilization: The Andean population made up a loose patchwork of different cultures that developed from the highlands of Colombia to the Atacama Desert.

Maya civilization: A Mesoamerican culture noted for the only known, fully developed, written language of the pre-Columbian Americas, as well as for their art, architecture, and mathematical and astronomical systems.

While the Americas remained firmly under the control of indigenous peoples in the first decades of European invasion, conflict increased as colonization spread and Europeans placed greater demands upon the indigenous populations, including expecting them to convert to Christianity (either Catholicism or Protestantism). The Spanish, English, and French were the most powerful nations to establish empires in the new lands.

Conquest of Latin America by the Spanish Empire

Beginning with the 1492 arrival of Christopher Columbus, the Spanish Empire expanded for four centuries (1492-1892) across most of present-day Central America, the Caribbean islands, Mexico, and much of the rest of North America. The empire also claimed territory in present-day British Columbia; the states of Alaska, Washington, and Oregon; and the western half of South America. Colonial expansion under the Spanish Empire was initiated by the Spanish conquistadors and developed by the Monarchy of Spain through its administrators and missionaries. The motivations for colonial expansion were trade and the spread of the Christian faith through indigenous conversions.

Columbus' initial landing and first mainland explorations were followed by a phase of inland expeditions and conquests in the Caribbean and South America, where the first European settlements occurred in the New World. After the forming of Nueva Cádiz in Venezuela and Santa Cruz on the present-day Guajira peninsula, explorers led by Vasco Núez de Balboa conquered areas on the coast of present-day Colombia in 1502. This area was inhabited by the Chibchan speaking nations, including the indigenous Muisca and Tairona people. The Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de Leon traveled to the New World on Columbus' second voyage. He explored areas to the north, looking for a Fountain of Youth, and landed on a peninsula on the coast of North America, which he named Florida.

Attack on the Aztecs and Mayas

The conquistadors, believing they held considerable military and technological superiority over the native cultures, attacked and destroyed the Aztecs in 1521. This campaign was led by Hernán Cortés and featured the Tlaxcala and other indigenous peoples allied against the Mexica/Aztec Empire. The Spanish conquest of the Maya civilization-based in the Yucatán Peninsula of present-day Mexico and northern Central America-was a much longer campaign, lasting from 1551 to 1697. The day Hernán Cortés landed ashore at present-day Veracruz, April 22, 1519, marked the beginning of 300 years of Spanish hegemony over the region.

By the early 16th century, Spanish conquistadors had penetrated deep into Central and South America. European explorers arrived at Río de la Plata in 1516. Buenos Aires, a permanent colony, was established in 1536, and in 1537, Asunción was established in the area that is now Paraguay. Buenos Aires suffered attacks by the indigenous peoples that forced the settlers away, and in 1541, the site was abandoned. A second and permanent settlement was established in 1580, by Juan de Garay.

Attack on the Incas

In 1532, at the Battle of Cajamarca, a group of Spanish soldiers under Francisco Pizarro and their indigenous Andean Indian allies, ambushed and captured the Emperor Atahualpa of the Inca Empire. It was the first step in a long campaign-which took advantage of a recent civil war and the enmity of indigenous nations the Incas had subjugated-that required decades of fighting to subdue the mightiest empire in the Americas. In the following years, the conquistadors and indigenous allies extended their control over the greater Andes region, leading to the establishment of the Viceroyalty of Perú in 1542.

The brutal practices of the conquistadors (known as the Black Legend), as recorded by the Spanish themselves, were applied through the encomienda, a system ostensibly set up to protect people from warring tribes as well as to teach them the Spanish language and the Catholic religion. In practice, though, it was tantamount to slavery.

The British Empire

John Cabot

England's forays into the New World began in 1497 (just a few years after Columbus' initial voyage) with John Cabot's journey to North America. British exploration of the New World centered on searching for a northwest passage through the continent. Cabot explored the North American coast and correctly deduced that the spherical shape of the earth made the north-where the longitudes are much shorter-a quicker route to the New World than a trip to the islands in the south, where Columbus was exploring. Encouraged, he asked the English monarchy for a more substantial expedition to further explore and settle the lands that he found. Cabot's ships departed, never to be seen again.

England remained preoccupied with internal affairs for much of the 16th century. Cabot's adventures failed to spark much interest, and England's break with the Catholic church in 1533 led to decades of religious turmoil. However, by the beginning of the 17th century, under the rule of Elizabeth I, the empire had consolidated much of the British Isles and was becoming a much more formidable force on the world stage. With the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, England replaced Spain as the dominant world power. This led to the gradual decline of Spanish influence in the New World and the widening of English imperial interests.

Sir Walter Raleigh

Sir Walter Raleigh sought to establish an empire in the New World after having gained considerable favor from Queen Elizabeth I by suppressing rebellions in Ireland. On March 25, 1584, the Queen granted Raleigh a charter for the colonization of the area of North America known as Virginia. Raleigh and Elizabeth I intended that the venture should provide riches from the New World and a base from which to send privateers on raids against the treasure fleets of Spain. Raleigh himself never visited North America, although he led expeditions in 1595 and 1617 to South America's Orinoco River basin in search of the legendary golden city of El Dorado. Supplying the colonists became troublesome due to continuing war with Spain. The end of the colony in 1587 is unrecorded; as a result, the Roanoke settlement is referred to as the "Lost Colony." There are multiple hypotheses as to the fate of the colonists, including integration into local indigenous tribes.

Henry Hudson

Henry Hudson was an English sea explorer and navigator in the early 17th century. Hudson made two attempts on behalf of English merchants to find a prospective northwest passage via a route above the Arctic Circle. He explored the region around the modern-day New York metropolitan area and is known for exploring the river which eventually was named for him, thereby laying the foundation for Dutch colonization of the region. In 1611, Hudson discovered a strait and immense bay on his final expedition while searching for the Northwest Passage. After wintering on the shore of James Bay, Hudson wanted to press on to the west, but most of his crew mutinied. The mutineers cast Hudson, his son, and seven others adrift, and they were never seen again.

French Exploration

Giovanni da Verrazzano

The search for a northwest passage to Asia and the burgeoning fur trade in Europe drove the French to explore and settle North America. Major French exploration of North America began under the rule of Francis I. In 1524, Francis sent Italian-born Giovanni da Verrazzano to explore the region between Florida and Newfoundland for a route to the Pacific Ocean. Verrazzano gave the names Francesca and Nova Gallia to that land between New Spain and English Newfoundland, thus promoting French interests.

Jacques Cartier

Later, in 1534, Francis sent Jacques Cartier on the first of three voyages to explore the coast of Newfoundland and the St. Lawrence River, to investigate whether Asian lands could be reached from the north. His journey in 1534 retraced many of the voyages of the Vikings and established contacts with American Indians in modern-day Canada. He explored some of northern Canada, established friendly relations with the American Indians, and discovered that the St. Lawrence River region had neither abundant gold nor a northwest passage to Asia. Cartier attempted to create the first permanent European settlement in North America at Cap-Rouge (Quebec City) in 1541 with 400 settlers, but the settlement was abandoned the next year after bad weather and native attacks.

Champlain and New France

During the 16th century, the taming of the Siberian wilderness by the Russians had brought about a thriving fur trade, which created a great demand for fur throughout Europe. France was quick to realize that North America held great potential as a provider of fur. Samuel de Champlain began the first permanent settlement of New France and Quebec City in present-day Canada and created a prosperous trade with the American Indians for beaver pelts and other animal hides. Meanwhile, further to the south, French Protestants, called Huguenots, had the opportunity to leave hostile European lands while advancing French claims to the New World. Settlements in present-day Florida and Georgia created tension with Spanish conquistadors, who after conquering Caribbean lands, would begin to expand northwards in search of new territory. From the middle of the 15th century forward, France tried to establish several other colonies throughout North America that failed due to weather, disease, or conflict with other European powers.

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Initial voyages to the New World by Columbus spurred an era of exploration and invasion by other European empires. Examine the causes and consequences of European exploration and expansion Key Points Spanish exploration of the New World was led by Christopher Columbus and Juan Ponce de Leon, who invaded and colonized great parts of what would become South, Central, and North America.

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English Settlement in North America:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNnBCf-8hMk

Colonists Effected by the Great Awakening and Enlightenment:
https://prezi.com/op8kac4k3kuk/the-great-awakening-vs-the-enlightenment/
Acts Passed Against Colonists:
https://slideplayer.com/slide/2553686/9/images/10/British+Acts+against+the+Colonies.jpg

Colonists Response to the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party:
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/road-to-revolution/the-american-revolution/a/the-boston-massacre
(there is also the Boston Tea Party article, you just have to click on it)

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Early European Settlement of North America Explained

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Colonists Effected by the Great Awakening and Enlightenment

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Colonists Effected by the Great Awakening and Enlightenment

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The Great Awakening vs the Enlightenment

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Colonists Response to the Boston Massacre and The Boston Tea Party

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Colonists Response to the Boston Massacre and The Boston Tea Party

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On March 5, 1770 an angry altercation between British soldiers and American colonists inflamed passions that would eventually lead to revolution.

Boston, Massachusetts was a hotbed of radical revolutionary thought and activity leading up to 1770.

In March 1770, British soldiers stationed in Boston opened fire on a crowd, killing five townspeople and infuriating locals.

What became known as the Boston Massacre intensified anti-British sentiment and proved a pivotal event leading up to the American Revolution.

Boston, cradle of revolution

Even before the event that went down in history as the Boston Massacre, Boston, Massachusetts was a center of radical revolutionary ideas and sentiment. The colonists had endured years of conflict with British officials, and the number of people living in poverty and/or unemployed was growing in the city. With so many idle young men competing for work, there was bound to be trouble as British rule became more onerous.

After the Seven Years' War had drained Britain's coffers, the royal government imposed tighter controls over its North American colonies in order to raise revenues. When customs officials complained about the difficulties of collecting from disobedient colonists, Britain sent troops to impose order. The arrival of British soldiers in October 1768 heightened tensions in a city already on the edge of an uprising.

Over the next two years, Boston existed in a state of virtual British military occupation-one out of three men in the city was a Redcoat, a common nickname for British soldiers due to the color of their uniforms. Radical townspeople and idle young men harassed the soldiers, leading to numerous skirmishes and scuffles.

The Boston Massacre

In March 1770, British officials ordered the removal of all occupants of the Boston Manufactory House-a halfway house for people living in poverty, those who were ill, and those who were homeless-so that a regiment of British soldiers could be garrisoned there. The Manufactory House's homeless occupants put up a resistance, and the British backed down, but other confrontations ensued.

On March 5th, one such confrontation turned violent. As a mob of angry townspeople encircled a British sentry shouting insults and throwing rocks and sticks, nervous Redcoats opened fire into the crowd, killing five Bostonians and wounding several others. One of the victims was Crispus Attucks, a free sailor of African and Native American descent who has gone down in history as the first casualty of the American Revolution.

Local newspapers eulogized Attucks and the others as martyrs to British tyranny. Paul Revere and Samuel Adams, two of Boston's most influential revolutionaries, proved adept propagandists. Revere is known for producing the most famous depiction of the incident-though in reality he merely copied the original engraving by young Boston-area artist Henry Pelham. The image was published in the Boston Gazette and circulated widely, stoking the flames of anti-British anger and revolutionary righteousness. Pro-British Loyalists promoted an alternate narrative, accusing agitators in the crowd of deliberately provoking the incident. Nevertheless, the radical narrative proved far more influential.

The colonists did not want to give the British a pretext for retaliation, and so preparations were made to ensure a fair trial. A young lawyer named John Adams, despite his commitment to the revolutionary cause, agreed to defend the Redcoats, all but two of whom were acquitted.

Even though British troops were recalled from Boston, the incident inflamed hostilities and intensified revolutionary sentiment among the colonists. For the revolutionaries, the so-called massacre demonstrated the corrupting influence of standing armies and the tyranny of the British. It was a major signpost on the road to revolution; indeed, John Adams later claimed that the "foundation of American independence was laid" that fateful day of March 5, 1770.

What do you think?

Why do you think the incident in March 1770 happened in Boston and not somewhere else?

In your opinion, was the Boston Massacre truly a massacre? Who do you think was at fault for the incident?

How important was the Boston Massacre in the events leading up to the American Revolution?

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The Boston Massacre (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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The Spanish claim to territories that are today the United States rested upon the 16th century exploits of Ponce de Leon, Hernando De Soto, and Francisco Vázquez de Coronado.

St. Augustine in Florida was established as a Spanish fort in 1565, the first permanent settlement in what would become the United States. The impact of this settlement was slight, however, since it served primarily as a base camp for other exploratory ventures and also as the center of efforts to convert the area's natives to Roman Catholicism. A handful of Spanish settlements was established in outlying areas, but they soon fell prey to Indian attacks or economic insufficiency.

Greater progress was made by Spanish colonizers on the other side of the continent. In 1598, Don Juan Oñante led 500 men from Mexico northward into Pueblo lands in present-day New Mexico. The invaders brought with them a labor system known as the encomienda, which had originally developed in Spain.

Under this scheme, large New World land grants were made by the Crown to favored Spanish individuals. The grantees were responsible for the protection and Christian instruction of inhabitants of the lands, and those natives were required to pay tribute - often in the form of crops and labor - to the grantee.

Understandably, the Pueblo deeply resented the entire system - invasion of their lands, suppression of their religion, payment of tribute, and enforced loyalty to a foreign monarch.

The encomienda was used throughout Spanish America. Its application differed sharply from one area to another, being relatively benign in some regions, but virtually enslaving in others. Reform of the system was sought by a Spanish missionary, Bartolomé de Las Casas.

Oñante, fired by a passion for precious metals, launched a series of explorations eastward into present-day Kansas and Oklahoma, and westward to the Gulf of California. In some instances, he retraced Coronado's steps and was equally unsuccessful in discovering gold and silver.

New settlements were erected at Santa Fe in 1609 and nearby Taos in 1615.

Relationships between the colonists and the Pueblo improved as they cooperated in livestock raising (mostly cattle and sheep), but an undercurrent of resentment remained strong. In 1680, a major revolt broke out under native leader Papé. Hundreds were killed on both sides in the fighting and order was not restored until 1692.

As the 17th century drew to a close, Spanish colonial administrators finally realized that, given their minority status in so many parts of New Spain, policy reform was necessary. In the coming years, the Pueblo were allowed to resume the practice of their religion, own land, and be free from forced labor.

From a material standpoint, the Spanish ventures in the northern portions of their realm were far less successful than those to the south.

- - - Books You May Like Include: ----

Commanches by T.R. Fehrenbach.
Authoritative and immediate, this is the classic account of the most powerful of the American Indian tribes. T.R. Fehrenbach traces the Comanches' ris...
The Comanche Empire by Pekka Hamalainen.
In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, at the high tide of imperial struggles in North America, an indigenous empire rose to dominate the f...
The Birth of America: From Before Columbus to the Revolution by William R. Polk.
In this provocative account of colonial America, William R. Polk explores the key events, individuals, and themes of this critical period. With vivid ...

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The Spanish claim to territories that are today the United States rested upon the 16th century exploits of Ponce de Leon, Hernando De Soto, and Francisco Vázquez de Coronado. St. Augustine in Florida was established as a Spanish fort in 1565, the first permanent settlement in what would become the United States.

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Paul Revere's Ride/Lexington and Concord

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Paul Revere's Ride/Lexington and Concord

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Battle of Quebec

After a failed Canadian invasion known as the Battle of Quebec (December 1775 - May 1776) left much of the Continental Army beaten, sick and in retreat, the British hoped to quash rebellion once and for all by isolating the New England colonies from the other American colonies.

They also hoped to discourage potential American allies such as France from joining the fight. To accomplish this, the British Redcoats needed to take upstate New York and control the Hudson River.

In the spring of 1777, the British ordered three of their armies to merge in Albany, New York. Only one army, however, commanded by General John Burgoyne, made the final push to its destination. Waiting for them was the heavily-fortified Northern Department of the Continental Army, commanded by General Horatio Gates.

Did you know? To celebrate the American victory at Saratoga, the Continental Congress issued a proclamation for a national day "for solemn Thanksgiving and praise," the first official holiday observance with that name.

First Battle of Saratoga: Freeman's Farm

The opposing armies came face to face on September 19 on the abandoned farm of Loyalist John Freeman near Saratoga, New York. Known as the Battle of Freeman's Farm or the First Battle of Saratoga, the fierce fighting lasted for several hours.

Momentum changed sides several times, but neither side gained significant ground until Burgoyne ordered his column of German troops to support the faltering British line and forced the Americans to pull back. Still, the British suffered twice the number of casualties than the Americans and couldn't continue their drive to Albany.

Battle of Bemis Heights

Burgoyne decided to stay put and wait for reinforcements from New York City. In the meantime, the number of Gates' American troops increased to over 13,000 and continued to grow.

By October 7, with supplies dwindling fast, Burgoyne realized waiting for backup was in vain. He sent out a reconnaissance force to attack the American's left flank in the wooded area of Bemis Heights, south of Saratoga. The Americans got wind of the movement, however, and forced the British to withdraw.

Burgoyne decided to take his army north to safety, but heavy rain and frigid temperatures slowed their retreat. Within two days, Gates' soldiers surrounded what remained of Burgoyne's army. Supporting the Patriot cause was Colonel Thaddeus Kosciusko, a Polish engineer who built strong field fortifications on Bemis Heights overlooking the Hudson River.

Out of supplies and out of options, Burgoyne surrendered his army to Gates on October 17. The battle became known as the Battle of Bemis Heights or the Second Battle of Saratoga.

Benedict Arnold

Benedict Arnold is infamous for betraying his country to the British, but he also played a heroic patriot's role during the American Revolution, including the Battle of Saratoga. Despite being wounded in the leg in the Battle of Quebec and then helping delay a British invasion of New York in late 1776, Arnold was passed up for promotions.

Frustrated, he resigned his commission in July 1777, but General George Washington, commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, refused his request and ordered him north to serve under General Gates.

At best, Arnold and Gates strongly disliked each other and often argued. After the Battle of Freeman's Farm, Gates relieved Arnold of his command. During the Battle of Bemis Heights, however, Arnold supposedly defied Gates' order and led an assault on horseback which helped the Americans win the battle. He severely wounded his leg again during the attack.

Arnold never felt appreciated by his country and eventually became a traitor, threatening everything he'd fought for during his time with the Continental Army. Yet his heroics at the Battle of Saratoga complicate his legacy.

Saratoga National Historical Park

The Saratoga Monument in Saratoga National Historical Park honors key players of the Battle of Saratoga. Its southern niche is empty in recognition of Arnold's conflicting roles of top general and turncoat.

A memorial statue of a lone boot, also located in Saratoga National Historical Park, represents Arnold's actions and leg wound at Saratoga. Neither the Boot Monument nor the southern niche bears Arnold's name.

Who Won the Battle of Saratoga?

Despite being overcome during the Battle of Freeman's Farm, the Continental Army persevered and won a decisive victory at the Battle of Saratoga. They decimated Burgoyne's troops, cut off supply routes, and Burgoyne never received his promised and desperately needed reinforcements.

The Redcoats had planned a divide-and-conquer attack against the Americans in upstate New York. However, a series of British mishaps and delays, as well as offensive actions taken by the Continental Army, forced Burgoyne's troops to fight Gates' fast-growing army alone, greatly diminishing any possibility of British success.

Significance of the Battle of Saratoga

The Battle of Saratoga was a turning point in the American Revolution. It gave the Patriots a major morale boost and persuaded the French, Spanish and Dutch to join their cause against a mutual rival.

France's naval support eventually helped the Continental Army win the final Battle of Yorktown, leading to the end of the American Revolution.

Sources

Benedict Arnold. Mountvernon.org.
Saratoga: Freeman's Farm/Bemis Heights. American Battlefield Trust.
Saratoga National Historic Park New York: Saratoga Monument. National Park Service.
Saratoga National Historic Park New York: History and Culture. National Park Service.
The Battle of Freeman's Farm. Alabama Sons of the American Revolution.
The Battle of Saratoga. Saratoga.org.
The Battle of Saratoga. The Saratoga County Chamber.

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Battle of Saratoga - Definition, Significance & Date

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The Battle of Saratoga occurred in 1777 during the Revolutionary War. It was a decisive victory for the Continental Army and a crucial turning point in the war.

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Yorktown and the Treaty of Paris [ushistory.org]

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Paul Revere's Ride/ Lexington and Concord:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjnEC76NvIM
The Declaration of Independence: https://encrypted tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTNBpZHr1iuNXL9YxQLXJMRURo59Kzh05UqttQxRGJ-p-SYuiyv:www.ushistory.org/us/images/00000308.jpg
Battle of Saratoga: https://www.history.com/topics/american-revolution/battle-of-saratoga
The Battle of Yorktown and the Treaty of Paris:
http://www.ushistory.org/us/11i.asp

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The Articles of Confederation (video) | Khan Academy

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Before the United States had the Constitution, it had the Articles of Confederation, a much weaker government that lasted from 1777 to 1789. In this video, Kim and Leah discuss the pros and cons of the Articles, and the reasons they were discarded in favor of a new Constitution.

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The Articles of Confederation:
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/road-to-revolution/creating-a-nation/v/the-articles-of-confederation
The Great Compromise:
http://www.government-and-constitution.org/us-constitution/great-compromise.htm
Federalism:
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ap-us-government-and-politics/foundations-of-american-democracy/relationship-between-states-and-the-federal-government/v/federalism-in-the-united-states
Separation of Powers:
https://slideplayer.com/slide/7227089/24/images/1/Separation+of+Powers+Three+Branches+of+Government.jpg
The Constitution:
https://www.history.com/topics/united-states-constitution/constitution
The Bill of Rights:
https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights/what-does-it-say

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Events leading to the Great Compromise of 1787: The Virginia Plan (Large State Plan) The events leading to the Great Compromise of 1787 arose at the Constitutional Congress (aka the Philadelphia Congress) related to the plans submitted containing ideas for the power and structure of the United States system of government. Fifteen resolutions were made in the Virginia Plan (also called the Large State Plan) that was written by James Madison and proposed by Edmund J. Randolph. The Virginia Plan was strongly supported by the large states because of the resolution suggesting proportional representation. Proportional representation meant that the more people a state had, the more representatives it would get in the legislature (government).

Events leading to the Great Compromise of 1787: The New Jersey Plan (Small State Plan)
The small states fiercely opposed the Virginia Plan because the resolution for proportional representation would mean that the small states would have less say in government than the large states. If the Virginia Plan was agreed each state would have a different number of representatives based on the population of the state. The small states, consisting of New Jersey, Connecticut, New York, and Delaware therefore proposed the New Jersey Plan. The New Jersey Plan consisted of eleven resolutions, drafted by New Jersey delegate William Paterson, was collectively proposed by delegates from the small states. The New Jersey Plan detailed a legislature of only one house and featured equal representation, in which each state had the same number of representatives. The aim was for the small states to have the same level of power in the legislature as the large states.

Great Compromise of 1787: The Deadlock
The two opposing sides could not agree, their views were extreme opposites. The Constitutional Convention reached a complete deadlock over the thorny issue of representation. It required the opposing sides to make concessions enabling a breakthrough to the deadlock over representation for the convention to continue.

Great Compromise of 1787: The Great Compromise on Representation
Connecticut delegates Oliver Ellsworth and Roger Sherman then proposed a compromise to resolve the subject of Representation in the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Great Compromise cleverly included elements from both the Virginia and New Jersey plans. The 'Great Compromise' basically consisted of proportional representation in the lower house (House of Representatives) and equal representation of the states in the upper house (the Senate).

It was also decided that the House of Representatives was the only house of Congress that could write bills to create taxes.

Importance of the Great Compromise
The importance of the Great Compromise cannot be underestimated. The issue of representation threatened to destroy the convention. The merits of the Great Compromise was discussed and debated and on July 23 the issue over representation was finally settled.

The Significance of the Great Compromise
The Significance of the Great Compromise was that:

Two other major compromises were reached at the Constitutional Convention: the Three Fifths Compromise and the Commerce and Slave Trade Compromise.

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Events leading to the Great Compromise of 1787: The Virginia Plan (Large State Plan) The events leading to the Great Compromise of 1787 arose at the Constitutional Congress (aka the Philadelphia Congress) related to the plans submitted containing ideas for the power and structure of the United States system of government.

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Federalism in the United States. Exclusive and concurrent federal and state powers.

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(3 Branches of Government)

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The Preamble to the U.S. Constitution

The Preamble outlines the Constitution's purpose and guiding principles. It reads:

The Bill of Rights were 10 amendments guaranteeing basic individual protections, such as freedom of speech and religion, that became part of the Constitution in 1791. To date, there are 27 constitutional amendments.

Articles of Confederation

America's first constitution, the Articles of Confederation, was ratified in 1781, a time when the nation was a loose confederation of states, each operating like independent countries. The national government was comprised of a single legislature, the Congress of the Confederation; there was no president or judicial branch.

The Articles of Confederation gave Congress the power to govern foreign affairs, conduct war and regulate currency; however, in reality these powers were sharply limited because Congress had no authority to enforce its requests to the states for money or troops.

Did you know? George Washington was initially reluctant to attend the Constitutional Convention. Although he saw the need for a stronger national government, he was busy managing his estate at Mount Vernon, suffering from rheumatism and worried that the convention wouldn't be successful in achieving its goals.

Soon after America won its independence from Great Britain with its 1783 victory in the American Revolution, it became increasingly evident that the young republic needed a stronger central government in order to remain stable.

In 1786, Alexander Hamilton, a lawyer and politician from New York, called for a constitutional convention to discuss the matter. The Confederation Congress, which in February 1787 endorsed the idea, invited all 13 states to send delegates to a meeting in Philadelphia.

Forming a More Perfect Union

On May 25, 1787, the Constitutional Convention opened in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania State House, now known as Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence had been adopted 11 years earlier. There were 55 delegates in attendance, representing all 13 states except Rhode Island, which refused to send representatives because it did not want a powerful central government interfering in its economic business. George Washington, who'd become a national hero after leading the Continental Army to victory during the American Revolution, was selected as president of the convention by unanimous vote.

The delegates (who also became known as the "framers" of the Constitution) were a well-educated group that included merchants, farmers, bankers and lawyers. Many had served in the Continental Army, colonial legislatures or the Continental Congress (known as the Congress of the Confederation as of 1781). In terms of religious affiliation, most were Protestants. Eight delegates were signers of the Declaration of Independence, while six had signed the Articles of Confederation.

At age 81, Pennsylvania's Benjamin Franklin (1706-90) was the oldest delegate, while the majority of the delegates were in their 30s and 40s. Political leaders not in attendance at the convention included Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) and John Adams (1735-1826), who were serving as U.S. ambassadors in Europe. John Jay (1745-1829), Samuel Adams (1722-1803) and John Hancock (1737-93) were also absent from the convention. Virginia's Patrick Henry (1736-99) was chosen to be a delegate but refused to attend the convention because he didn't want to give the central government more power, fearing it would endanger the rights of states and individuals.

Reporters and other visitors were barred from the convention sessions, which were held in secret to avoid outside pressures. However, Virginia's James Madison (1751-1836) kept a detailed account of what transpired behind closed doors. (In 1837, Madison's widow Dolley sold some of his papers, including his notes from the convention debates, to the federal government for $30,000.)

Debating the Constitution

The delegates had been tasked by Congress with amending the Articles of Confederation; however, they soon began deliberating proposals for an entirely new form of government. After intensive debate, which continued throughout the summer of 1787 and at times threatened to derail the proceedings, they developed a plan that established three branches of national government-executive, legislative and judicial. A system of checks and balances was put into place so that no single branch would have too much authority. The specific powers and responsibilities of each branch were also laid out.

Among the more contentious issues was the question of state representation in the national legislature. Delegates from larger states wanted population to determine how many representatives a state could send to Congress, while small states called for equal representation. The issue was resolved by the Connecticut Compromise, which proposed a bicameral legislature with proportional representation of the states in the lower house ( House of Representatives) and equal representation in the upper house (Senate).

Another controversial topic was slavery. Although some northern states had already started to outlaw the practice, they went along with the southern states' insistence that slavery was an issue for individual states to decide and should be kept out of the Constitution. Many northern delegates believed that without agreeing to this, the South wouldn't join the Union. For the purposes of taxation and determining how many representatives a state could send to Congress, it was decided that enslaved people would be counted as three-fifths of a person. Additionally, it was agreed that Congress wouldn't be allowed to prohibit the slave trade before 1808, and states were required to return fugitive enslaved people to their owners.

Ratifying the Constitution

By September 1787, the convention's five-member Committee of Style (Hamilton, Madison, William Samuel Johnson of Connecticut, Gouverneur Morris of New York, Rufus King of Massachusetts) had drafted the final text of the Constitution, which consisted of some 4,200 words. On September 17, George Washington was the first to sign the document. Of the 55 delegates, a total of 39 signed; some had already left Philadelphia, and three-George Mason (1725-92) and Edmund Randolph (1753-1813) of Virginia, and Elbridge Gerry (1744-1813) of Massachusetts-refused to approve the document. In order for the Constitution to become law, it then had to be ratified by nine of the 13 states.

James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, with assistance from John Jay, wrote a series of essays to persuade people to ratify the Constitution. The 85 essays, known collectively as "The Federalist" (or "The Federalist Papers"), detailed how the new government would work, and were published under the pseudonym Publius (Latin for "public") in newspapers across the states starting in the fall of 1787. (People who supported the Constitution became known as Federalists, while those opposed it because they thought it gave too much power to the national government were called Anti-Federalists.)

Beginning on December 7, 1787, five states- Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia and Connecticut-ratified the Constitution in quick succession. However, other states, especially Massachusetts, opposed the document, as it failed to reserve un-delegated powers to the states and lacked constitutional protection of basic political rights, such as freedom of speech, religion and the press.

In February 1788, a compromise was reached under which Massachusetts and other states would agree to ratify the document with the assurance that amendments would be immediately proposed. The Constitution was thus narrowly ratified in Massachusetts, followed by Maryland and South Carolina. On June 21, 1788, New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the document, and it was subsequently agreed that government under the U.S. Constitution would begin on March 4, 1789. George Washington was inaugurated as America's first president on April 30, 1789. In June of that same year, Virginia ratified the Constitution, and New York followed in July. On February 2, 1790, the U.S. Supreme Court held its first session, marking the date when the government was fully operative.

Rhode Island, the last holdout of the original 13 states, finally ratified the Constitution on May 29, 1790.

The Bill of Rights

In 1789, Madison, then a member of the newly established U.S. House of Representatives, introduced 19 amendments to the Constitution. On September 25, 1789, Congress adopted 12 of the amendments and sent them to the states for ratification. Ten of these amendments, known collectively as the Bill of Rights, were ratified and became part of the Constitution on December 10, 1791. The Bill of Rights guarantees individuals certain basic protections as citizens, including freedom of speech, religion and the press; the right to bear and keep arms; the right to peaceably assemble; protection from unreasonable search and seizure; and the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury. For his contributions to the drafting of the Constitution, as well as its ratification, Madison became known as "Father of the Constitution."

To date, there have been thousands of proposed amendments to the Constitution. However, only 17 amendments have been ratified in addition to the Bill of Rights because the process isn't easy-after a proposed amendment makes it through Congress, it must be ratified by three-fourths of the states. The most recent amendment to the Constitution, Article XXVII, which deals with congressional pay raises, was proposed in 1789 and ratified in 1992.

The Constitution Today

In the more than 200 years since the Constitution was created, America has stretched across an entire continent and its population and economy have expanded more than the document's framers likely ever could have envisioned. Through all the changes, the Constitution has endured and adapted.

The framers knew it wasn't a perfect document. However, as Benjamin Franklin said on the closing day of the convention in 1787: "I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such, because I think a central government is necessary for us... I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain may be able to make a better Constitution." Today, the original Constitution is on display at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Constitution Day is observed on September 17, to commemorate the date the document was signed.

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U.S. Constitution: Articles, Ratifying & Summary

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The Preamble outlines the Constitution's purpose and guiding principles. It reads: The Bill of Rights were 10 amendments guaranteeing basic individual protections, such as freedom of speech and religion, that became part of the Constitution in 1791. To date, there are 27 constitutional amendments.

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1-10 amendments

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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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(Federalists and Republican)

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Political factions or parties began to form during the struggle over ratification of the federal Constitution of 1787. Friction between them increased as attention shifted from the creation of a new federal government to the question of how powerful that federal government would be. The Federalists, led by Secretary of Treasury Alexander Hamilton, wanted a strong central government, while the Anti-Federalists, led by Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, advocated states' rights instead of centralized power. Federalists coalesced around the commercial sector of the country while their opponents drew their strength from those favoring an agrarian society. The ensuing partisan battles led George Washington to warn of "the baneful effects of the spirit of party" in his Farewell Address as president of United States.

"Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally."

George Washington, Farewell Address, September 19, 1796
Amending the Constitution

Roger Sherman (1721-1793), a congressman from Connecticut, argued in a special congressional committee appointed on July 21, 1789, that any amendments should be appended to the Constitution. On August 19, 1789, the House of Representatives finally adopted Shermans argument that to insert them into the text would be too confusing and voted instead to add the amendments by way of a supplement.

This list of proposed amendments in Shermans writing is probably a draft of a report by a committee on which he served. It differs markedly from the amendments finally proposed and sent to the states. As such, it provides valuable insights into the creation of the Bill of Rights.

Republican Party Christened by James Madison

In September 1792, James Madison coined the term Republican Party in an essay, A Candid State of Parties, published in the National Gazette of Philadelphia. Although the Jeffersonian-Republican Party drew strength from the Anti-Federalists, no one had more claim to the authorship of the federal Constitution than did Madison, one of the founders of the Jeffersonian-Republican Party.

John Jay

John Jay (1745-1829), a prominent New York nationalist and former president of the Continental Congress, was among the first to call for a National Convention to replace or revise the Articles of Confederation. Jay was an outspoken advocate for the new Constitution and authored several of the Federalist essays. He served as first chief justice of the United States, 1789-1795. President Washington sent Jay to England in 1794 to negotiate a treaty, which became known as "Jay's Treaty."

Factional Fighting after Washington's Farewell

Despite George Washington's warning about the dangers of political factions or parties in his Farewell Address to the nation in 1796, the lack of a consensus candidate to assume the presidency only intensified party struggles. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson led partisan political factions or parties into the national elections of 1796. Washington even sought advice from two opposing partisan leaders, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. Displayed here is a draft of Washington's Farewell Address, which Hamilton helped write.

Seeking Women's Rights

American women, such as Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren, hoped the American Revolution would lead to more legal and political rights for women. During the post- Revolutionary period, periodicals aimed directly at women emerged. The best known was The Lady's Magazine and Repository of Entertaining Knowledge, founded in Philadelphia in 1792. In this engraving, a copy of A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), the cornerstone feminist document, by Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) is presented to Lady Liberty.

Political Rights of Women Asserted

In a letter to her sister, Elizabeth Smith Shaw Peabody (1750-1815) of Aktinson, New Hampshire, Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams, asserted the rights of women to judge the conduct of government, even if a woman does not hold the Reigns of government.

Ongoing, Undeclared Naval War

During the administration of President John Adams, the United States was engaged in an ongoing, undeclared naval war with France over neutral shipping rights. French naval vessels and privateers seized hundreds of American vessels, like the frigate Philadelphia pictured here, while the United States struggled to build a navy capable of defending its commerce.

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Creating the United States Formation of Political Parties

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Political factions or parties began to form during the struggle over ratification of the federal Constitution of 1787. Friction between them increased as attention shifted from the creation of a new federal government to the question of how powerful that federal government would be.

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(Why it still matters)

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On the bicentennial of America's declaration of war against the United Kingdom, the BBC's Joan Soley says the War of 1812 still resonates today.

If someone stopped you on the street at this exact moment and asked you to explain what the War of 1812 was about, could you explain?

You would not be alone if you couldn't. When asked, my father said: "I have a hunch it involved men in red coats, American Indians and Daniel Day-Lewis." (He had two out of three.)

While generally being relegated to history books and classrooms, the War of 1812, also known as America's second war for independence, was important - and it still matters.

An audacious declaration

Two hundred years ago this Monday, American President James Madison signed a declaration of war against Great Britain.

The first time the United States had declared war against another nation, it was not an action that enjoyed unanimous support in Congress.

The reasons for war included the British habit of forcing American merchant sailors into the Royal Navy, as well as trade restrictions on the US as a side-effect of Britain's seemingly endless war with France. Another factor was British support for Native Americans as they fought against the US government's westward expansion.

In short, the United States had had enough of British meddling in North America - and for the young nation, national pride was at stake.

So the US went to war, and over the course of the two-and-a-half-year conflict, they fought Canadian colonists, Native American tribes, and the British - an audacious move against the world's largest navy at the time.

From a US perspective, what made the war "important" is readily visible today.

Internally, the American national anthem and flag got their beginnings from the attack on Fort McHenry during the Battle of Baltimore in 1814.

Externally, the mutually beneficial "special relationship" that has grown between Great Britain and the United States since that period developed in the aftermath of the war that pitted those nations against one another.

Star-spangled story

The Battle of Baltimore stands out as a turning point during the War of 1812. Weeks before the attack, the British had burned most of the buildings in Washington, DC - including the White House and the Capitol building.

At Fort McHenry, a few miles to the north, about 1,000 soldiers under the command of Major George Armistead prepared for a British naval attack.

As part of their preparation, they sank some of their own merchant ships near Baltimore Harbour to limit the sailing abilities of their attackers. Once underway, the British naval attack on the fort lasted 25 hours.

But the fort held.

This was an enormous accomplishment, as Alexandra Deutsch from the Maryland Historical Society told me this past week.

Not only was it a crucial military victory, it also helped develop an American anthem: the flag above the fort inspired a lawyer by the name of Francis Scott Key to write a poem in tribute. Set to the tune of an old drinking song, his words became an anthem - The Star-Spangled Banner.

In Baltimore, the War of 1812 still has a special meaning. This year, international ships travelled to the city's port as part of an event called the "Sailabration", which marked Baltimore's place in the war.

During the singing of the national anthem, Martha, an 82-year-old from outside of Baltimore, was visibly moved.

"I feel it every time. I have lived here all my life and I am proud of where I'm from," she says.

"When I see the news and think about everything I've seen in my lifetime, the world is so complicated. But I'm part of something big and bold, and we may not always agree but we are all Americans."

Friendship forged in fire

Speaking volumes about the modern relationship between the US and Great Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron and his wife made their first official foreign trip this year in March, and it was to the United States.

As President Barack Obama joked during his public welcoming remarks: "It's now been 200 years since the British came here to the White House under somewhat different circumstances. They made quite an impression, they really lit up the place!"

Jokes aside, the two countries have come a long way from the War of 1812. Even after the conflict ended, tensions continued between the two nations in the 19th Century, but by the 20th Century they had established a valuable partnership of trust and support.

From the occupation of Europe during World War II to today in Afghanistan, Great Britain and the US tend to globally present a united front.

As Martha from Baltimore said as she watched the anniversary "Sailabration", the world is complicated. Simply put, the importance of an international friendship such as this looks as vital now as it ever was.

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On the bicentennial of America's declaration of war against the United Kingdom, the BBC's Joan Soley says the War of 1812 still resonates today. If someone stopped you on the street at this exact moment and asked you to explain what the War of 1812 was about, could you explain?

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To print the story please do so via the link in the story toolbar.

Read through the timeline and answer the questions in your notebook.

Henry Clay, a representative from Kentucky, was a strong nationalist. He presented a plan to President Madison to strengthen the country and unify its different regions. The plan was to help the country prosper and grow by itself, without foreign products.

The plan, known as the American System, included 3 main actions:

1. Establish a protective tariff - a tax on imported goods. It made European goods more expensive than American goods. It encouraged Americans to buy cheaper American-made products.

2. Establish a national bank - This would promote a single currency, making trade easier. In 1816, Congress set up the Second Bank of the United States.

3. Improve the country's transportation systems - Poor roads made transportation slow and costly.

Water transportation improved as well. The period of 1825-1850 is often called the Age of Canals. Completed in 1825 was the massive Erie Canal. This canal created a water route between New York City and Buffalo, New York. The canal opened the upper Ohio Valley and the Great Lakes region to settlement and trade. It also helped nationalism by bringing these two sections of the country together.

Trade stimulated by the canal helped New York City become the nation's largest city.

The nationalist spirit also made U.S. leaders want to expand the country's borders. To get this done, they would have to reach agreements with Britain and Spain.

One agreement with Britain, set the 49th parallel as the U.S.-Canadian border as far west as the Rocky Mountains.

U.S. relations with Spain were tense. The two nations disagreed on the boundaries of the Louisiana Purchase and who owned West Florida. In 1817, President Monroe ordered General Andrew Jackson to stop Seminole raids on white settlements in Georgia, but do not confront the Spanish. Jackson followed the Seminoles into Spanish territory and claimed Florida for the U.S.

Monroe then ordered Jackson to withdraw but gave Spain a choice. They could police Florida or turn it over to the U.S. Spain decided to hand Florida over to the U.S. and also gave up claims to the Oregon Country.

Sectionalism became a major issue when Missouri applied for statehood in 1817. People living in Missouri wanted to allow slavery in their state. At the time, the U.S. had 11 slave states and 11 free states. Adding Missouri would upset the balance of power in Congress.

For months the country argued over admitting Missouri as a slave state or free state. At the same time, Maine, which had been part of Massachusetts, also wanted statehood.

Henry Clay suggested that Missouri be admitted as a slave state and Maine as a free state. Congress passed Clay's plan, known as the Missouri Compromise. It kept the balance of power in Senate between slave and free states. It also called for slavery to be banned from the Louisiana Territory north of the parallel 36/30, Missouri's southern border.

The nation felt threatened not only by sectionalism, but be events elsewhere in the Americas. Latin America had won their independence from Spain and Portugal. Some European monarchies planned to help Spain and Portugal regain their colonies. U.S. leaders feared that if this happened, their own government would be in danger.

In December 1823, President Monroe issued a statement that became known as the Monroe Doctrine. Monroe said that the Americas were closed to further colonization. He also warned that European efforts to reestablish colonies would be considered "dangerous to our peace and safety." Finally, he promised that the U.S. would stay out of European affairs.

The Monroe Doctrine showed that the U.S. saw itself as a world power and a protector of Latin America.

Henry Clay, a representative from Kentucky, was a strong nationalist. He presented a plan to President Madison to strengthen the country and unify its different regions. The plan was to help the country prosper and grow by itself, without foreign products.

The plan, known as the American System, included 3 main actions:

1. Establish a protective tariff - a tax on imported goods. It made European goods more expensive than American goods. It encouraged Americans to buy cheaper American-made products.

2. Establish a national bank - This would promote a single currency, making trade easier. In 1816, Congress set up the Second Bank of the United States.

3. Improve the country's transportation systems - Poor roads made transportation slow and costly.

Water transportation improved as well. The period of 1825-1850 is often called the Age of Canals. Completed in 1825 was the massive Erie Canal. This canal created a water route between New York City and Buffalo, New York. The canal opened the upper Ohio Valley and the Great Lakes region to settlement and trade. It also helped nationalism by bringing these two sections of the country together.

Trade stimulated by the canal helped New York City become the nation's largest city.

The nationalist spirit also made U.S. leaders want to expand the country's borders. To get this done, they would have to reach agreements with Britain and Spain.

One agreement with Britain, set the 49th parallel as the U.S.-Canadian border as far west as the Rocky Mountains.

U.S. relations with Spain were tense. The two nations disagreed on the boundaries of the Louisiana Purchase and who owned West Florida. In 1817, President Monroe ordered General Andrew Jackson to stop Seminole raids on white settlements in Georgia, but do not confront the Spanish. Jackson followed the Seminoles into Spanish territory and claimed Florida for the U.S.

Monroe then ordered Jackson to withdraw but gave Spain a choice. They could police Florida or turn it over to the U.S. Spain decided to hand Florida over to the U.S. and also gave up claims to the Oregon Country.

Sectionalism became a major issue when Missouri applied for statehood in 1817. People living in Missouri wanted to allow slavery in their state. At the time, the U.S. had 11 slave states and 11 free states. Adding Missouri would upset the balance of power in Congress.

For months the country argued over admitting Missouri as a slave state or free state. At the same time, Maine, which had been part of Massachusetts, also wanted statehood.

Henry Clay suggested that Missouri be admitted as a slave state and Maine as a free state. Congress passed Clay's plan, known as the Missouri Compromise. It kept the balance of power in Senate between slave and free states. It also called for slavery to be banned from the Louisiana Territory north of the parallel 36/30, Missouri's southern border.

The nation felt threatened not only by sectionalism, but be events elsewhere in the Americas. Latin America had won their independence from Spain and Portugal. Some European monarchies planned to help Spain and Portugal regain their colonies. U.S. leaders feared that if this happened, their own government would be in danger.

In December 1823, President Monroe issued a statement that became known as the Monroe Doctrine. Monroe said that the Americas were closed to further colonization. He also warned that European efforts to reestablish colonies would be considered "dangerous to our peace and safety." Finally, he promised that the U.S. would stay out of European affairs.

The Monroe Doctrine showed that the U.S. saw itself as a world power and a protector of Latin America.

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Read through the timeline and answer the questions in your notebook. Question #4: what was the main message of the Monroe Doctrine and who was it directed towards? Question #3: Why was it so important to Southerners to admit Missouri as a slave state? Sectionalism became a major issue when Missouri applied for statehood in 1817.

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The Rise of Political Parties:
https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/creating-the-united-states/formation-of-political-parties.html
The Louisiana Purchase:
https://www.history.com/.image/t_share/MTU3ODc5MDgzNzQ2MDEwODQ3/louisiana-purchase-2.jpg
The Corps of Discovery:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrdo7i9LOXM
The War of 1812:
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-18481542
The Monroe Doctrine:
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/the-early-republic/politics-society-early-19th-c/v/the-monroe-doctrine
Sectionalism vs. Nationalism:
https://www.sutori.com/story/nationalism-and-sectionalism--S6cvMqKbbDnb3hJ7d6mumxS5

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Jacksonian Democracy:
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/the-early-republic/age-of-jackson/v/jacksonian-democracy-part-1
Native American Removal Act:
https://guides.loc.gov/indian-removal-act
Trails West:
https://unitedstateswestwardexpansion.weebly.com/uploads/1/6/9/2/16929308/986163417_orig.jpg
Texas Becomes a Nation:
https://www.tsl.texas.gov/treasures/republic/index.html
Manifest Destiny:
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/civil-war-era/sectional-tension-1850s/v/manifest-destiny
Mexican-American War:
https://www.history.com/topics/mexican-american-war/mexican-american-war

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(What was it and why did it matter?)

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Jacksonian Democracy - background and introduction

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Modern American political culture began to emerge in the early nineteenth century. In this video, Kim discusses the transition from the United States' earlier aristocratic political culture to a more democratic one as the right to vote was extended to a broader segment of American citizens.

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Research Guides: Indian Removal Act: Primary Documents in American History: Introduction

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This guide contains digital materials at the Library of Congress related to the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and its after-effects, as well as links to external websites and a selected print bibliography.

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(The Santa Fe Trail and Oregon Trail)

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By 1835, Antonio López de Santa Anna had established himself as a dictator in Mexico. Among Anglo-American colonists and Tejanos alike, the call for Texas independence grew louder. On March 2, 1836, a delegation at Washington-on-the-Brazos adopted the Texas Declaration of Independence, and thus was born the Republic of Texas.

Santa Anna had brought his army to Texas to put down the rebellion, and events followed in quick succession. At the time the Declaration was issued, many Texans were fleeing their homes eastward ahead of Santa Anna's army, in what became known as the Runaway Scrape. The Alamo fell to Santa Anna on March 6, and over 300 unarmed Texan prisoners were massacred at Goliad on March 27. Sam Houston's revolutionary army was also retreating eastward as Santa Anna drove for the coast to capture Texas seaports. On April 21, the Texan army took a stand in the bayou country near present-day Houston at a site called San Jacinto. They attacked Santa Anna's army while it was sleeping, and, in a battle lasting only 18 minutes, routed the Mexican army and captured Santa Anna.

Many Texans favored immediate annexation by the United States. However, the proposals went nowhere, because of the risk of continued war with Mexico and Texas' shaky financial status. Even after San Jacinto, Mexico refused to recognize Texas's independence and continued to raid the Texas border. The new government had neither money nor credit, and no governmental structures were in place. Rebuffed by the United States, Texans went about the business of slowly forming a stable government and nation. Despite many difficulties and continued fighting both with Mexico and with Indian tribes, the Texas frontier continued to attract thousands of settlers each year.

In 1841, Santa Anna again became president of Mexico and renewed hostilities with Texas. By this time, sympathy for the Texan cause had grown in the United States, and in 1845, annexation was at last approved. Hostilities with Mexico and the Indians reached a settlement, and Texas was admitted as a state on December 29, 1845. The Republic of Texas, after nine years, eleven months, and seventeen days, was no more.

Subject categories and links in this Republic of Texas online exhibit:

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By 1835, Antonio López de Santa Anna had established himself as a dictator in Mexico. Among Anglo-American colonists and Tejanos alike, the call for Texas independence grew louder. On March 2, 1836, a delegation at Washington-on-the-Brazos adopted the Texas Declaration of Independence, and thus was born the Republic of Texas.

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WATCH: Coal, Steam, and the Industrial Revolution (video) | 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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Interchangeable parts | industrial engineering

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Interchangeable parts, identical components that can be substituted one for another, particularly important in the history of manufacturing. Mass production, which transformed the organization of work, came about by the development of the machine-tool industry by a series of 19th-century

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The typical factory worker in the late nineteenth century worked ten hours a day, six days a week. Unskilled workers were paid between $1.00 and $1.50 a day; skilled workers might make twice as much, while women (who became a significant percentage of the labor force after the Civil War), children, and African‐Americans were paid considerably less. Workplace accidents were common, and the idea of compensating workers injured on the job was unheard of at the time. To help each other through illness, injury, and deaths, workers formed mutual benefit societies (often organized along ethnic lines), but the assistance these groups provided was minimal. The most serious problem for factory workers was unemployment. It was common for a worker, particularly an unskilled one, to be out of a job at least part of the year.

Early labor unions. Skilled workers, such as cigarmakers, iron molders, and hat finishers formed the first labor unions before the Civil War. Several of these craft unions (so named because they organized workers within specific craft industries) joined together to form the National Labor Union (NLU) in 1866. Although the organization advocated an eight‐hour workday, it did not support strikes to achieve that goal. The NLU was also concerned with social reform, including equal rights for women, establishing worker cooperatives, and temperance. The union, along with organized labor in general, declined sharply in the wake of the depression of 1873 but not before influencing Congress to enact the eight‐hour day for federal employees (1868).

The Knights of Labor, organized in 1869, is considered to be the first industrial union, open to skilled and unskilled workers, women, and African‐Americans. This inclusive policy contributed to its growth, and the union boasted more than 700,000 members by the mid‐1880s. The program of the Knights of Labor was a combination of reform ideas and specific worker demands. Along with setting up cooperative workshops and calling for the regulation of the railroads, the union wanted an eight‐hour workday, legislation protecting the health and safety of workers, and an end to child labor (for children under the age of 14). To achieve these goals, political action and arbitration between employers and labor representatives were preferred over strikes. The decline of the Knights of Labor after 1886 was due to several factors: the failure of several unauthorized strikes, the growing dissatisfaction of craftsmen who felt the union favored the interests of unskilled workers, and the public perception in the wake of the Haymarket Square Riot (1886) that the Knights supported violence.

On May 4, 1886, a mass meeting of workers was called in Chicago's Haymarket Square to protest the death of a striker at the McCormick Harvester plant. When the police tried to disperse the crowd, someone threw a bomb that killed seven policemen and injured several more. The riot that followed resulted in additional deaths on both sides. Although it was one of the three unions on strike at McCormick, the Knights of Labor had nothing to do with the events in Haymarket Square. This fact did not prevent the union from becoming a victim of the antilabor sentiment that swept the country, and its membership declined rapidly over the next four years.

The American Federation of Labor. Founded in 1886 by Samuel Gompers, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) was a federation of skilled workers in national craft unions that maintained their autonomy while working together to promote labor legislation and support strikes. In contrast to its predecessors, the new union focused exclusively on basic labor issues - the eight‐hour workday, higher wages, better working conditions (particularly plant safety), and the right of workers to organize. To Gompers, who began his career in the cigarmakers union, only craftsmen that could not be easily replaced had the leverage necessary to either bargain effectively with employers or go on strike. The AFL had little more than disdain for unskilled workers or blacks, skilled or not, and did not seriously try to organize women. Although he was an immigrant himself, as were many local union men, Gompers nevertheless strongly supported restrictions on immigration to prevent new arrivals from competing with American workers for jobs. Even though it excluded most of the working class, the AFL became the largest single labor organization in the country by 1900 with over one million members.

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The typical factory worker in the late nineteenth century worked ten hours a day, six days a week. Unskilled workers were paid between $1.00 and $1.50 a day; skilled workers might make twice as much, while women (who became a significant percentage of the labor force after the Civil War), children, and African‐Americans were paid considerably less.

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Industrial Revolution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhL5DCizj5c
Interchangeable Parts:
https://www.britannica.com/technology/interchangeable-parts
The Rise of Organized Labor:
https://www.cliffsnotes.com/study-guides/history/us-history-ii/industrial-america/the-rise-of-organized-labor
Transportation Revolution:
https://images.slideplayer.com/31/9749668/slides/slide_1.jpg
Eli Whitney's Cotton Gin:
https://www.britannica.com/technology/cotton-gin
The Life of a Slave:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYqllZ3kdrc

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This article was most recently revised and updated by

cotton gin, machine for cleaning cotton of its seeds, invented in the United States by Eli Whitney in 1793. The cotton gin is an example of an invention directly called forth by an immediate demand; the mechanization of spinning in England had created a greatly expanded market for American cotton, whose production was inhibited by the slowness of manual removal of the seeds from the raw fibre. Whitney, a Massachusetts Yankee visiting a friend in the South, learned of the problem and quickly solved it. Inspired by manual brushes invented by enslaved workers, Whitney crafted a device that pulled the cotton through a set of wire teeth mounted on a revolving cylinder, the fibre passing through narrow slots in an iron breastwork too small to permit passage of the seed. The simplicity of the invention-which could be powered by people, animals, or water-caused it to be widely copied despite Whitney's patent; it is credited with fixing cotton cultivation, virtually to the exclusion of other crops, in the U.S. South and so institutionalizing slavery.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Melissa Petruzzello.

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Cotton gin | Definition, Inventor, Impact, & Facts

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Cotton gin, machine for cleaning cotton of its seeds, invented in the United States by Eli Whitney in 1793. It is credited with fixing cotton cultivation, virtually to the exclusion of other crops, in the U.S. South and so institutionalizing slavery.

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Immigration to the United States in the 1800s

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Immigration to the United States in the 1800s

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International Stock Food Factory, between 1900 and 1910
Detroit Publishing Company

In the decades following the Civil War, the United States emerged as an industrial giant. Old industries expanded and many new ones, including petroleum refining, steel manufacturing, and electrical power, emerged. Railroads expanded significantly, bringing even remote parts of the country into a national market economy.

Industrial growth transformed American society. It produced a new class of wealthy industrialists and a prosperous middle class. It also produced a vastly expanded blue collar working class. The labor force that made industrialization possible was made up of millions of newly arrived immigrants and even larger numbers of migrants from rural areas. American society became more diverse than ever before.

Not everyone shared in the economic prosperity of this period. Many workers were typically unemployed at least part of the year, and their wages were relatively low when they did work. This situation led many workers to support and join labor unions. Meanwhile, farmers also faced hard times as technology and increasing production led to more competition and falling prices for farm products. Hard times on farms led many young people to move to the city in search of better job opportunities.

Americans who were born in the 1840s and 1850s would experience enormous changes in their lifetimes. Some of these changes resulted from a sweeping technological revolution. Their major source of light, for example, would change from candles, to kerosene lamps, and then to electric light bulbs. They would see their transportation evolve from walking and horse power to steam-powered locomotives, to electric trolley cars, to gasoline-powered automobiles. Born into a society in which the vast majority of people were involved in agriculture, they experienced an industrial revolution that radically changed the ways millions of people worked and where they lived. They would experience the migration of millions of people from rural America to the nation's rapidly growing cities.

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Overview | 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 decades following the Civil War, the United States emerged as an industrial giant. Old industries expanded and many new ones, including petroleum refining, steel manufacturing, and electrical power, emerged. Railroads expanded significantly, bringing even remote parts of the country into a national market economy. Industrial growth transformed American society.

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Immigration to the Unites States in the 1800s:
http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/timeline/riseind/immgnts/

Second Great Awakening:
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/the-early-republic/culture-and-reform/v/the-second-great-awakening-part-3

Abolitionist Movement Prior to he Civil War:
https://www.civilwaracademy.com/abolitionist
Women's Rights Movement in the 1800s:
http://www.ushistory.org/us/26c.asp
Compromise of 1850:
https://doughfacesinamericanhistory.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/compromise-of-1850.jpg
Kansas/ Nebraska Act:
https://sites.google.com/a/oceanschools.org/the-railroad-express/_/rsrc/1472864828578/home/kansas-nebraska-act/Kansas-Nebraska.jpg
Lincoln/ Douglas Debate:
https://www.britannica.com/event/Lincoln-Douglas-debates
Election of 1860:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roNmeOOJCDY

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- [Instructor] Okay, so we've been talking about The Second Great Awakening and its context in early 19th century America. The Second Great Awakening was this period of religious revival that was kind of at its hot point in 1820 to 1840 and in the last couple of videos, we've been talking about just the nature of this society that produced The Second Great Awakening, particularly how they responded to changes in how people related to each other in business and also just broader social changes like the expansion of American democracy and the expansion of American territory west. So in this last video, I want to talk about some of the outgrowths of The Second Great Awakening. So why do we care so much that there was this period of religious revival? What did it lead to in American life? There are two major things that were directly related to The Second Great Awakening in this early 19th century. New religious movements in the United States, some of which are still with us today and even more importantly for the time period, major reform movements, including the Movement for Abolition, the end of slavery, which is going to lead to the outbreak of The Civil War. So let's look a little bit closer at these two things. So as we've talked about, The Second Great Awakening promoted both the idea that one should try to create heaven on earth and also, a more democratic approach to religion in general, that it didn't matter who you were. If you were a man, a woman, white, black, enslaved, free, you were still entitled to a personal relationship with God and a chance at salvation. So one of the things this meant in this time period is that there's just a lot of religious experimentation. A lot of new American religions emerge at this time period, some of which are still with us today, some of which are not. This here is a representation of the Shakers, which were a religious community of, they embrace kind of simplicity. They separated the sexes. They practiced celibacy. Just as kind of trying to make their daily lives more pure and unfortunately, the celibacy part meant that they more or less died out by the 1940s, although there are a handful of Shakers who are still alive today and they were called the Shakers because they would have these kind of ecstatic religious experiences, which you can see are kind of similar to what happened in the camp meetings. So even though they didn't have sex, they would kind of get out their ecstasy in this process of these big circle dances, which people looked at and they said they seemed like they were shaking, so they were the Shakers. On the other side of the spectrum, there was the Oneida community, which was led by a man named John Humphrey Noyes and they preached the idea that one should have no earthly attachments basically and that meant also to a spouse, so they believed in what was called complex marriage or what we would really call free love. There was no such thing as an individual marriage, that women and men could have sex with whomever they pleased. It's interesting that approaches to sex were very central to these religious movements. Probably the most important religious movement to come out of this time period was the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, also known as the Mormons, who were founded by Joseph Smith in Rochester, New York and Smith had a vision that he was visited by an angel who presented him with gold plates and on these gold plates was a new Scripture called The Book of Mormon and Smith's followers really continued to be devoted to the religion, even though they faced a lot of persecution, particularly over their early practice of polygamy until they continued to move west under the leadership of a second man, Brigham Young, who took over after Smith was murdered by an angry crowd in Illinois who then led the Mormons to Utah where they continue to be a major religious group to this day. Oh, and one other interesting thing about this is the Oneida community. Although, it itself did not survive, one of the ways that they made money as a community was by making silverware and so Oneida Silverware is actually the descendant company of this really interesting communal experiment and they lasted, I believe, until 2006, so if you ever had Oneida Silverware, you were looking at an artifact of a 19th century religious movement. So the last and probably the most important part of The Second Great Awakening that I wanna talk about is its influence on reform movements. So let me give myself a little bit more space to write here. There are several 19th century reform movements that are tied in to The Second Great Awakening. One of these would be The Temperance Movement, which hoped to reduce and or eliminate people's consumption of alcohol and you can kinda tie this back to the idea of heaven on earth, right? How can you have a stable family home, how can you have a godly society if everybody's drunk all the time? But I would say the most important reform movement associated with The Second Great Awakening was the Abolitionist Movement and remember that Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, which was one of the greatest abolition or anti-slavery advertisements in the world, was the daughter of Lyman Beecher, one of the greatest preachers of The Second Great Awakening and so as people came to believe that everyone's life was equally valuable, they became more and more involved in the idea that slavery should not exist, that people who were enslaved had souls that were just as worthy of salvation as anyone who was already free and so they also saw this as one of the perversions of God's word and a perversion of the family, which they saw as the central unit of American democracy and Republicanism. So slavery should not exist. People who were really motivated by their faith in God and their faith in trying to create heaven on earth and a better society campaigned really strenuously for the end of slavery and ultimately, were successful. So this is a really complex topic, The Second Great Awakening. If we look back at our web again, we can see that this wave of religious revival was connected in all sorts of interesting ways to the economic and political changes of the time period and in its way, led to all sorts of different social changes, so I think it's a good example of how it's sometimes really hard to separate things that happened in the past into really neat boxes, right? That, oh, there was politics. There was religion. There was culture. There were economics, but in many ways, they're all bound together in a larger culture, within which everyday individuals navigated their lives and it's also good to show us that sometimes we don't exactly know why things happened in the past. We know that people got really interested in religion in this time period, but historians have differing ideas about why that might have been. Some say that it was a form of trying to control people as it was more and more important to have a dutiful workforce for a factory-based industrial society and some people say that maybe, it was just about demographic and political shifts in who had power, who had money, and who got to vote, but we do know that The Second Great Awakening and these ideas of trying to improve America, to improve the world, and to create heaven on earth led to all sorts of interesting things that are still with us today, including religious movements and the end of slavery.

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The Second Great Awakening - reform and religious movements (video) | Khan Academy

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The Second Great Awakening played a role in major reform movements of the nineteenth century, including temperance and abolition. In the last video in this series, Kim discusses some of the new religious movements and reform movements that grew out of the Second Great Awakening.

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Abolitionist Movement Prior to the Civil War

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Abolitionist Movement Prior to the Civil War

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Abolitionist Definition

Leading up to the outbreak of the Civil War the definition of abolitionist was a person who opposed slavery. Their goal was to abolish slavery immediately. John Brown and Frederick Douglass are the most well known abolitionists.

Abolitionist Movement

The abolitionist movement began years before the Civil War broke out. Prior to the war in the 1850's Kansas was in it's own little war between abolitionists and slave holders. This was known as Bleeding Kansas.

Abraham Lincoln was opposed to slavery however he was not an abolitionist. The abolitionist definition was a fanatical belief that slavery should immediately cease and all slaves should be freed without delay. Lincoln wanted to end slavery gradually over a period of time.

The southern states felt extremely threatened by the abolitionist movement and by Abraham Lincoln. They knew that if he was elected in 1860 the institution of slavery would be under direct attack.

The entire economy of the south depended on agriculture and slavery, with the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 the south had no choice but to immediately secede and withdraw from the Union.

Abolitionist John Brown

John Brown is one of the most famous abolitionist. He was heavily involved with the fighting against the pro slavery groups in Kansas during the 1850's. On May 24th 1856 he and his abolitionist group were responsible for murdering five pro slavery men known as the Pottawatomie massacre.

If you'd like to read more about John Brown check out John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights

He is most famous for his raid against Harpers Ferry Virginia on October 16th 1859. The idea was that he and twenty-one of his followers would raid the town, capture the arsenal and recruit nearby slaves to rise up against their masters and join him in a revolution to end slavery. He would form a slave army that would be armed with weapons from the Harpers Ferry arsenal.

In reality the plan never had any hope of success. The group captured the town easily since there was little resistance however his slave army never materialized. There was no mass uprising to support his cause. As John Brown and his men waited in Harpers Ferry hoping slaves would come to their aid, they were instead greeted with local militia forces who had been alerted to the attack and quickly converged on the town.

After a small skirmish with the militia they were eventually trapped inside the firehouse where they were forced to eventually surrender. John Brown was later tried and executed for treason on December 2nd 1859.

While the raid failed it did bolster the anti-slavery movement in the north. Some northerners praised the raid and renewed their call for the end of slavery.

Abolitionist Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass is another well-known abolitionist from the Civil War.

He was born into slavery around 1818 but was able to escape when he was around twenty years old.

After his escape he began to get more involved in the abolitionists efforts to end slavery. He met another staunch abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison who offered to accept him into the Massachusetts Anti Slavery Society, Douglass soon began giving many speeches to northern crowds.

Frederick Douglass wrote three books about his life as a slave Frederick Douglass : Autobiographies : Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave / My Bondage and My Freedom / Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (Library of America) which offer a fascinating glimpse into Frederick Douglass through his own eyes.

During the Civil War he offered his counsel to President Lincoln and convinced him to begin to focus more on abolishing slavery everywhere and to make it clear the the north was fighting this war to end slavery.

Emancipation Proclamation

On January 1st 1863 the Emancipation Proclamation took effect. This made slavery illegal in all of the rebellious states, it did not change anything for the border states, however most of them decided to end slavery on their own before the Civil War ended in April 1865.

On December 16th 1865 the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified making slavery in the United States illegal. African Americans would go on to win the right to vote and receive full citizenship. With these things accomplished the abolitionist movement succeeded in fulfilling it's goals.

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Abolitionist Definition Leading up to the outbreak of the Civil War the definition of abolitionist was a person who opposed slavery. Their goal was to abolish slavery immediately. John Brown and Frederick Douglass are the most well known abolitionists. Abolitionist Movement The abolitionist movement began years before the Civil War broke out.

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In the mid 19th century, women in the US began demanding improved property rights, employment opportunities, and the vote. Closely allied with the anti-slavery movement, many of its key participants were active in both causes, including Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass

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Lincoln-Douglas debates, series of seven debates between the Democratic senator Stephen A. Douglas and Republican challenger Abraham Lincoln during the 1858 Illinois senatorial campaign, largely concerning the issue of slavery extension into the territories.

The slavery extension question had seemingly been settled by the Missouri Compromise nearly 40 years earlier. The Mexican War, however, had added new territories, and the issue flared up again in the 1840s. The Compromise of 1850 provided a temporary respite from sectional strife, but the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854-a measure Douglas sponsored-brought the slavery extension issue to the fore once again. Douglas's bill in effect repealed the Missouri Compromise by lifting the ban against slavery in territories north of the 36°30′ latitude. In place of the ban, Douglas offered popular sovereignty, the doctrine that the actual settlers in the territories and not Congress should decide the fate of slavery in their midst.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act spurred the creation of the Republican Party, formed largely to keep slavery out of the western territories. Both Douglas's doctrine of popular sovereignty and the Republican stand on free soil were seemingly invalidated by the Dred Scott decision of 1857, in which the Supreme Court said that neither Congress nor the territorial legislature could exclude slavery from a territory.

When Lincoln and Douglas debated the slavery extension issue in 1858, therefore, they were addressing the problem that had divided the nation into two hostile camps and that threatened the continued existence of the Union. Their contest, as a consequence, had repercussions far beyond determining who would win the senatorial seat at stake.

When Lincoln received the Republican nomination to run against Douglas, he said in his acceptance speech that "A house divided against itself cannot stand" and that "this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free." Douglas thereupon attacked Lincoln as a radical, threatening the continued stability of the Union. Lincoln then challenged Douglas to a series of debates, and the two eventually agreed to hold joint encounters in seven Illinois congressional districts.

The debates, each three hours long, were convened in Ottawa (August 21), Freeport (August 27), Jonesboro (September 15), Charleston (September 18), Galesburg (October 7), Quincy (October 13), and Alton (October 15). Douglas repeatedly tried to brand Lincoln as a dangerous radical who advocated racial equality and disruption of the Union. Lincoln emphasized the moral iniquity of slavery and attacked popular sovereignty for the bloody results it had produced in Kansas.

At Freeport Lincoln challenged Douglas to reconcile popular sovereignty with the Dred Scott decision. Douglas replied that settlers could circumvent the decision by not establishing the local police regulations-i.e., a slave code-that protected a master's property. Without such protection, no one would bring slaves into a territory. This became known as the " Freeport Doctrine."

Douglas's position, while acceptable to many Northern Democrats, angered the South and led to the division of the last remaining national political institution, the Democratic Party. Although he retained his seat in the Senate, narrowly defeating Lincoln when the state legislature (which then elected U.S. senators) voted 54 to 46 in his favour, Douglas's stature as a national leader of the Democratic Party was gravely diminished. Lincoln, on the other hand, lost the election but won acclaim as an eloquent spokesman for the Republican cause.

In 1860 the Lincoln-Douglas debates were printed as a book and used as an important campaign document in the presidential contest that year, which once again pitted Republican Lincoln against Democrat Douglas. This time, however, Douglas was running as the candidate of a divided party and finished a distant second in the popular vote to the triumphant Lincoln.

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Lincoln-Douglas debates | Summary, Dates, Significance, & Facts

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Lincoln-Douglas debates, series of seven debates between the Democratic senator Stephen A. Douglas and Republican challenger Abraham Lincoln during the 1858 Illinois senatorial campaign, largely concerning the issue of slavery extension into the territories. The slavery extension question had seemingly been settled by the Missouri Compromise nearly 40 years earlier.

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The Election of 1860 & the Road to Disunion: Crash Course US History #18

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The attack on Fort Sumter marked the official beginning of the American Civil War-a war that lasted four years, cost the lives of more than 620,000 Americans, and freed 3.9 million enslaved people from bondage.

How it ended

Confederate victory. With supplies nearly exhausted and his troops outnumbered, Union major Robert Anderson surrendered Fort Sumter to Brig. Gen. P.G.T Beauregard's Confederate forces. Major Anderson and his men were allowed to strike their colors, fire a 100-gun salute, and board a ship bound for New York, where they were greeted as heroes. Both the North and South immediately called for volunteers to mobilize for war.

In context

By 1861, the country had already experienced decades of short-lived but ultimately failed compromises concerning the expansion of slavery in the United States and its territories. The election of Abraham Lincoln as president of the United States in 1860-a man who declared "I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free"-threatened the culture and economy of southern slave states and served as a catalyst for secession. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina seceded from the United States, and by February 2, 1861, six more states followed suit. Southern delegates met on February 4, 1861, in Montgomery, AL., and established the Confederate States of America, with Mississippi senator Jefferson Davis elected as its provisional president. Confederate militia forces began seizing United States forts and property throughout the south. With a lame-duck president in office, and a controversial president-elect poised to succeed him, the crisis approached a boiling point and exploded at Fort Sumter.

Before the Battle

In Charleston, the birthplace of secession, tempers are on edge. A delegation from the state goes to Washington, D.C., demanding the surrender of the Federal military installations in the new "independent republic of South Carolina." President James Buchanan refuses to comply. Charleston is the Confederacy's most important port on the Southeast coast. The harbor is defended by three federal forts: Sumter; Castle Pinckney, one mile off the city's Battery; and heavily armed Fort Moultrie, on Sullivan's Island. Major Anderson's command is based at Fort Moultrie, but with its guns pointed out to sea, it cannot defend a land attack. On December 26, Charlestonians awake to discover that Anderson and his tiny garrison of 90 men have slipped away from Fort Moultrie to the more defensible Fort Sumter. For secessionists, Anderson's move is, as one Charlestonian wrote to a friend, "like casting a spark into a magazine,"

Adding to the major's concern is his dangerously dwindling store of supplies. On January 5, 1861, the Star of the West departs from New York with some 200 reinforcements and provisions for the Sumter garrison. As the ship approaches Charleston Harbor on January 9, cadets from the Citadel fire, forcing the crew to abandon its mission. On March 1, Jefferson Davis orders Brig. Gen P.G.T. Beauregard to take command of the growing southern forces in Charleston. On April 4, Lincoln informs southern delegates that he intends to attempt to resupply Fort Sumter, as its garrison is now critically in need. To South Carolinians, any attempt to reinforce Sumter means war. "Now the issue of battle is to be forced upon us," declared the Charleston Mercury. "We will meet the invader, and the God of Battles must decide the issue between the hostile hirelings of Abolition hate and Northern tyranny."

On April 9, Davis and the Confederate cabinet decide to "strike a blow!" Davis orders Beauregard to take Fort Sumter. The next day, three of Beauregard's aides sail to the fort and courteously demand the garrison's surrender. Anderson is equally courteous, but refuses: "I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your communication demanding the evacuation of this fort, and to say, in reply thereto, that it is a demand with which I regret that my sense of honor, and of my obligations to my Government, prevent my compliance." He also informs the delegation that the garrison's supplies will only last until April 15.

During the Battle

April 12. At 4:30 a.m., a flaming mortar shot arcs into the air and explodes over Fort Sumter. On this signal, Confederate guns from fortifications and floating batteries around Charleston Harbor roar to life. Outmanned, outgunned, undersupplied, and nearly surrounded by enemy batteries, Anderson waits until around 7:00 a.m. to respond. Captain Abner Doubleday volunteers to fire the first cannon at the Confederates, a 32-pound shot that bounces off the roof of the Iron Battery on Cummings Point.

For nearly 36 hours the two sides keep up this unequal contest. A shell strikes the flagpole of Fort Sumter, and the American colors fall to the earth, only to be hoisted back up the hastily repaired pole. Confederates fire hotshot from Fort Moultrie into Fort Sumter. Buildings begin to burn within the fort. With no more resources, Anderson surrenders Fort Sumter to Confederate forces.

April 13. At 2:30 p.m., Maj. Anderson and his men strike their colors and prepare to leave the fort. Sadly, the only casualties at Fort Sumter come during the 100-gun salute, when a round explodes prematurely, killing Pvt. Daniel Hough and mortally wounding another soldier. The attack is over, but the war had just begun.

Aftermath

Following the evacuation of Major Robert Anderson and his Federal garrison on the afternoon of April 14, 1861, Fort Sumter is occupied initially by Confederate troops of Company B of the First South Carolina Artillery Battalion and a volunteer company of the Palmetto Guard, a local militia unit. The fort remains in Confederate hands for the next four years until all Confederate forces evacuate Charleston on the evening of February 17, 1865.

Despite having surrendered, Anderson and his men are greeted as heroes when they disembark in New York. Capt. Abner Doubleday notes later that "all the passing steamers saluted us with their steam-whistles and bells, and cheer after cheer went up from the ferry boats and vessels in the harbor." Anderson's valor during the attack and commitment to duty are praised by the Union. Beauregard is also hailed for this first Confederate victory. He is later ordered to direct the troops at Bull Run.

Fort Sumter: Featured Resources

Related Battles

Charleston Harbor, SC | April 12, 1861

Result: Confederate Victory

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Early in the morning of April 12, 1861, Confederate guns around Charleston Harbor opened fire on Fort Sumter. The American Civil War was officially upon both the North and the South. A war that lasted four years and cost the lives of more than 620,000 Americans.

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President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free."

Despite this expansive wording, the Emancipation Proclamation was limited in many ways. It applied only to states that had seceded from the United States, leaving slavery untouched in the loyal border states. It also expressly exempted parts of the Confederacy (the Southern secessionist states) that had already come under Northern control. Most important, the freedom it promised depended upon Union (United States) military victory.

Although the Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery in the nation, it captured the hearts and imagination of millions of Americans and fundamentally transformed the character of the war. After January 1, 1863, every advance of federal troops expanded the domain of freedom. Moreover, the Proclamation announced the acceptance of black men into the Union Army and Navy, enabling the liberated to become liberators. By the end of the war, almost 200,000 black soldiers and sailors had fought for the Union and freedom.

From the first days of the Civil War, slaves had acted to secure their own liberty. The Emancipation Proclamation confirmed their insistence that the war for the Union must become a war for freedom. It added moral force to the Union cause and strengthened the Union both militarily and politically. As a milestone along the road to slavery's final destruction, the Emancipation Proclamation has assumed a place among the great documents of human freedom.

The original of the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, is in the National Archives in Washington, DC. With the text covering five pages the document was originally tied with narrow red and blue ribbons, which were attached to the signature page by a wafered impression of the seal of the United States. Most of the ribbon remains; parts of the seal are still decipherable, but other parts have worn off.

The document was bound with other proclamations in a large volume preserved for many years by the Department of State. When it was prepared for binding, it was reinforced with strips along the center folds and then mounted on a still larger sheet of heavy paper. Written in red ink on the upper right-hand corner of this large sheet is the number of the Proclamation, 95, given to it by the Department of State long after it was signed. With other records, the volume containing the Emancipation Proclamation was transferred in 1936 from the Department of State to the National Archives of the United States.

The Emancipation Proclamation

Select Resources

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Enlarge The Emancipation Proclamation (page 1) Record Group 11 General Records of the United States View in National Archives Catalog Español President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war.

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Clara Barton was an educator, nurse and founder of the American Red Cross.

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- [Voiceover] So we've been talking about the progress of the American Civil War which started in early 1861 after the 11 states of the South, which were slave states, seceded from the Union and tried to establish an independent nation known as the Confederate States of America. And in the first years of the Civil War things went relatively well for the South. They defeated the North at the Battle of Bull Run which was a great surprise to many people because they thought that this was going to be a pretty short war, that the South would be quickly defeated and scared away into returning to the Union. But the South had many advantages including very good leadership in the person of Robert E. Lee and also kind of a home court advantage at large since the vast majority of the war was fought in the South. So in this early stage the Confederacy does quite well until we get to Antietam. And Antietam was this first foray by Robert E. Lee in trying to attack the states of the North in Maryland. And after the Battle of Antietam which was the bloodiest day in U.S. history, more than 4,000 Americans died on that day, the South was defeated. And that was a major turning point in the war as we've talked about in previous videos in that it led to the Emancipation Proclamation and was kind of the moment at which the nations of Europe cease to consider intervening on the side of the South. So in the next few videos I want to talk about the later stages of the Civil War. So we get into 1863 and the South is doing relatively well here in Virginia, wins the Battle of Chancellorsville and now, nearly a year after Antietam in June and July of 1863, Robert E. Lee decides that he is going to try again to invade the North. Now he's several reasons for doing this. One, is that the war has been taking place largely in the South so it's summer, people are trying to harvest their crops and Lee wants to give the South a break so he wants to take the attention away from this area in Virginia where lots of fighting has happened and he wants to take the war up into the North. And if the North is distracted by having to defend its own territory then it can't go on the offensive elsewhere as easily. So Lee's plan is to take the war to the North and Lee has another reason in his sleeve which is that he is really hoping that in the Election of 1864 which is coming up not too long after this period in mid-1863, many people believe that Lincoln is going to be kicked out of office. Now remember, that not a single American President has been elected to a second term or reelected since Andrew Jackson in 1832. So there's been a 30 year drought of two term presidents. So Robert E. Lee has good reason to expect why Lincoln might not be reelected in 1864 and he thinks that maybe one of Lincoln's competitors in the Democratic Party, which will turn out to be one of his own former generals, George B. McClellan will actually want to end the war and make peace with the South. So there's kind of a morale aspect to this. You can see that many of the things done in the Civil War and especially as we get into the later stages are designed at making one side or the other tired of being at war. Now you may wonder why I'm spending so much time talking about battles because most American History courses do not emphasize military history whatsoever. But I think it's important to keep in mind in this war and in some earlier wars like the American Revolution the battles really determine the policy, right, because you can't make a decree like the way that Abraham Lincoln decreed the Emancipation Proclamation if you don't have the force of military power behind you. So winning battles, winning the war, those kind of victories give politicians the popular mandate they need to get things done. So that's why I think that it's important to talk, at least a little bit, about the battles of the Civil War. Now obviously, Bull Run, Antietam, Gettysburg, and Appomattox were not the only battles of the Civil War, there were hundreds of battles of the Civil War but I've chosen these as particular turning points just to kind of give you a very brief overview of the way that military victories and defeats were trending. Because along with those military victories and defeats went the policy of the United States and the policy of the South. And if you're interested in the Civil War it's one of the most written about topics in American history and there are many wonderful books that will go into great detail about the politics, society, and military history of the Civil War, and lots of great television shows, and miniseries that I definitely suggest that you check out. All right, well, with that said let's talk about Gettysburg. So Lee has brought his forces into the North and, again, he's interested in kind of distracting the North from attacking in the South by bringing the war to them. He's hoping to prolong the war so that perhaps another administration that's more favorable to allowing the South to go peacefully might be in office in the North. And the other thing that he's looking for is supplies so once again the vast majority of the Civil War has been fought in the South and it's been fought here in this sort of Shenandoah Valley, Tidewater region of Virginia which is really the breadbasket of the South. So when men are out fighting battles and when battles are being fought on fields instead of crops being grown on them, there's going to be a serious dearth of food in the South. You know I once heard it said that the most salient political fact of the 20th century was that the Americans speak English which means that the United States repeatedly allied with Britain in 20th century wars. But if I had to choose the most salient fact of the American Civil War it might be that you can't eat cotton. You know the South went to war to protect its system of labor so that it could continue to produce these cash crops like cotton or tobacco. And cash crops they may be which means that you can sell them for money but you can't eat cotton or tobacco. And when it comes down to it being able to feed your troops and feed your populace is something that's going to really help you when it comes to winning a war. So Lee is taking his troops up into the North and he takes them into Southern Pennsylvania which is very lovely farmland. It's a very beautiful place if you've never been there, I absolutely recommend you take a look, go to Gettysburg it's a very well preserved battlefield. And as Lee goes through Southern Pennsylvania his troops are taking horses, and grain supplies, and all sorts of things that the army needs to survive which are in short supply in Virginia. So this is like a run to the store for Lee going through Southern Pennsylvania. On the Northern side, General George Meade has been trying to catch up with Lee and cut him off from his invasion of the North. President Abraham Lincoln asks for many volunteers to try to stave off the invasion of the North by Lee and they end up meeting at Gettysburg. And Gettysburg is just a small farm town in Southern Pennsylvania, it's just where these two troops happen to meet as Lee was on his way to the capital of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg and Lee's forces and Meade's forces meet on July 1st, 1863. Now the Battle of Gettysburg goes on for three days so there's July 1st, July 2nd, and July 3rd. And the first day goes relatively well for the Confederates, they break some of the Union lines around the edges. The second day is kind of a stalemate where Northern forces and Southern forces, they sustain a lot of losses but don't make any real headway toward victory. And then the third day, Lee decides that he is going to try to break the center of the Union forces which means that he is going to try to hit the Union line, and remember this is in the era of military history where people are still kind of fighting in lines, right through the center, and win the day. Unfortunately for him that is not what happens so he tries all day to break the Union lines. There's a very famous sort of last hurrah for the Southern forces in this called Pickett's Charge when General George Pickett's units charge up this hill at Cemetery Ridge trying to break the line and they sustain over 50% casualties so it's kind of a bloodbath for Pickett's unit. And after Pickett's Charge does not succeed the Union forces have officially won the Battle of Gettysburg and Lee realizes that there's no way that he's going to be able to make anything out of his invasion of the North and so he turns around and starts heading back to the South. Now what's important about Gettysburg is that this was what many have called the High Water Mark of the Confederacy. And by that they mean this is as far as the Confederacy ever managed to get into the Northern part of the United States. This is a second attempt at an invasion by Lee and it failed and many people see this as a really important turning point in the Civil War on July 4th. And imagine the good news of receiving word that your troops had triumphed on July 4th, Independence Day. President Lincoln and the United States get another really good piece of news which is that Ulysses S. Grant who will be the future commander of U.S. forces has succeeded in his siege of Vicksburg which is a town on the Mississippi River. And when he takes the town on the Mississippi River Grant has complete control of the Mississippi which is sort of the major highway in the West. So July 3rd and July 4th are really good days for the United States and this is kind of the moment when it becomes clear that victory is going to be outside the reach of the Confederacy. And with an unsuccessful invasion of the North and the loss of the control of the Mississippi, the South's time is kind of coming to an end. The other important thing about the Battle of Gettysburg is that it is a tremendously destructive battle, about 50,000 casualties took place at Gettysburg which makes it the single bloodiest battle in American history which is different from the single bloodiest day which was at Antietam because it took place over three days. And this is not 50,000 people dying, just 50,000 casualties which means either deaths or injuries, those are men who can no longer fight on both sides. So the tremendous loss of life at Gettysburg is going to lead to the foundation of a cemetery at Gettysburg to bury these military dead. And it's going to be in November of 1863, just a couple of months after the Battle of Gettysburg, that Abraham Lincoln will visit the cemetery at Gettysburg and deliver the Gettysburg Address, one of the most famous orations in all of American history and we'll get to that in the next video.

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The battle of Gettysburg (video) | Khan Academy

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Voiceover] So we've been talking about the progress of the American Civil War which started in early 1861 after the 11 states of the South, which were slave states, seceded from the Union and tried to establish an independent nation known as the Confederate States of America.

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The Most Important Union Victory

No doubt, many people are familiar with the Battle of Gettysburg. A Union victory which culminated on July 3, 1863, Gettysburg has been described by historians as the turning point of the American Civil War. Yet, the following day, hundreds of miles to the west, there was an even more important Union victory. On July 4, 1863, Confederates surrendered at Vicksburg, a strategic location on the Mississippi River. Let's learn more about this crucial Union victory and how it happened.

The Campaign Begins

Starting in late December 1862, Union forces under the command of Major General Ulysses S. Grant began advancing deep into Mississippi to strike against the crucial city of Vicksburg. Sitting atop bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River, Vicksburg was vital to the Western Theater of the war. As Abraham Lincoln himself indicated, 'Vicksburg is the key.'

Union naval forces had attempted to take the city in 1862 by moving down the Mississippi (the river flows north to south) to Vicksburg, but land forces were clearly needed to accomplish the task. Having occupied New Orleans in early 1862, Union naval forces had a base from which to operate on the Mississippi, but Vicksburg still needed to be taken for complete control of the river.

Commanding the Confederate forces at Vicksburg was Lt. General John Pemberton. A Pennsylvania native, Pemberton had a rare distinction of being a northern-born officer who decided to fight for the Confederacy. While he was extremely outnumbered at the start of the campaign, Pemberton was determined to hold on to Vicksburg. There were roughly 30,000 Confederates in the region that could be used to defend the city.

In late December, Union forces attempted an overland advance against Vicksburg. On December 29, Major General William Tecumseh Sherman launched a frontal assault against fortified Confederates near the city. After suffering heavy losses, Sherman turned back. This influenced the struggle for Vicksburg greatly, as Grant would generally avoid such attacks for the rest of the campaign.

In early 1863, Grant undertook a series of measures, known as his Bayou Operations, to dig canals and ditches along the Mississippi to get closer to Vicksburg without exposing his men to the fire of the heavy guns protecting the city. While many of these were failures, Grant's perseverance prevented him from giving up on the task at hand.

1863

In April 1863, Grant resumed his offensive by marching Union troops down the western bank of the Mississippi along roads constructed through the Louisiana swamps. On April 16, several Union gunboats and supply boats passed Vicksburg at night to avoid the heavy guns; while Confederates did fire on them, they were largely unharmed. Grant's new plan was to move south of Vicksburg, cross the Mississippi, and advance on the city from the south. By this time, through reinforcements, his army had swelled to over 70,000 men; Pemberton had roughly 40,000 to stop the federal force, although the Confederates did have the advantage of using defensive terrain and fortifications.

During this approach to Vicksburg, there were several notable battles. On April 29, Federal gunboats were turned back when attacking Confederate positions at Grand Gulf on the Mississippi. After being stopped, this forced Grant to take a circuitous route, advancing on Port Gibson to the south. On May 1, the Battle of Port Gibson was fought. It was a Union victory that sent Confederates in retreat, giving Grant a firm foothold in Mississippi south of Vicksburg.

Following this, Grant began to set his sights to the north. Confederate reinforcements had begun arriving in Jackson, Mississippi, to the east. As Grant advanced north, he did so toward the middle of the state; he wanted to cut the rail lines leading to Vicksburg. This led to clashes with Confederates near Raymond, Mississippi, and at Jackson in mid-May. It was after defeating these forces that Grant could finally turn his attention on Vicksburg itself once again.

In mid-May, Confederate General Joseph Johnston was ordered to go to Mississippi to assist in the defense of Vicksburg. Johnston could not prevent the Confederate defeats near Jackson and thus was forced to watch from the outside as Grant made his final push on Vicksburg.

The Siege of Vicksburg

On May 19, the first Union assault against the Vicksburg fortifications occurred. Led by Sherman's men, the attack was focused on the northern defenses of the city. It was largely a failure, with Union forces losing nearly 1,000 men, while the Confederates sustained fewer than 100 casualties.

Three days later on May 22, Grant ordered another attack. Naval and land artillery hit the Confederate lines to prepare for the infantry attack, which saw several different waves of troops being sent forward throughout the day. On several places along the Confederate defenses, Union soldiers rushed forward, only to be repulsed. While there were a few gains made, the attack was generally unsuccessful once again. After these two attacks, Grant decided to begin a siege of the city.

For the Confederates, the situation appeared grim. Johnston encouraged Pemberton to escape from the city, believing the loss of over 30,000 Confederate soldiers would be worse than the loss of the city, yet Pemberton did not heed his advice. Being a northerner fighting for the South, Pemberton did not want to appear weak in the face of Northern armies, especially in surrendering one of the most important cities in the entire Confederacy.

Behind Grant's forces, Johnston was attempting to gather enough men to attack the Federals from the rear. Grant realized this threat and set aside an entire corps to keep an eye on Johnston to prevent him from disrupting the siege. Inside the city, Confederate soldiers and civilians suffered greatly. The lack of food and supplies led to widespread disease sweeping through the ranks. Pemberton knew he had to surrender or his men would die of starvation.

On July 3, 1863, Pemberton sent word to Grant that he wanted to discuss surrender. The following day, July 4, 1863, Union forces accepted the surrender of Vicksburg. Over 30,000 Confederates were paroled, as they were starving and in poor condition.

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summary & map - video & lesson transcript | study.com

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Siege of Vicksburg: Facts, Summary & Map - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

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No doubt, many people are familiar with the Battle of Gettysburg. A Union victory which culminated on July 3, 1863, Gettysburg has been described by historians as the turning point of the American Civil War. Yet, the following day, hundreds of miles to the west, there was an even more important Union victory.

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Southern Surrender at Appomattox Courthouse

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Southern Surrender at Appomattox Courthouse

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The Fall of Ft. Sumter:
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/fort-sumter
The Emancipation Proclamation:
https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation
Clara Barton and the American Red Cross:
https://www.biography.com/activist/clara-barton
The Battle of Gettysburg:
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/civil-war-era/slavery-and-the-civil-war/v/gettysburg
The Battle of Vicksburg:
https://study.com/academy/lesson/siege-of-vicksburg-facts-summary-map.html
Southern Surrender at Appomattox Courthouse:
https://www.history.com/.image/t_share/MTU3ODc5MDgzMjA4NjgxMTgz/appomattox_court_house-hero.jpg

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The 13th Amendment:
https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/thirteenth-amendment
The 14th Amendment: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Fourteenth-Amendment
The 15th Amendment:
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/civil-war-era/reconstruction/v/reconstruction-amendments-15th-amendment
The Election of 1876:
https://www.270towin.com/historical_maps/1876_large.png
Plessy vs. Ferguson:
https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/plessy-v-ferguson

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Founding Fathers and Slavery

Despite the long history of slavery in the British colonies in North America, and the continued existence of slavery in America until 1865, the amendment was the first explicit mention of the institution of slavery in the U.S. Constitution.

While America's founding fathers enshrined the importance of liberty and equality in the nation's founding documents-including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution-they conspicuously failed to mention slavery, which was legal in all 13 colonies in 1776.

Many of the founders themselves owned enslaved workers, and though they acknowledged that slavery was morally wrong, they effectively pushed the question of how to eradicate it to future generations of Americans.

Thomas Jefferson, who left a particularly complex legacy regarding slavery, signed a law banning the importation of enslaved people from Africa in 1807. Still, the institution became ever more entrenched in American society and economy-particularly in the South.

By 1861, when the Civil War broke out, more than 4 million people (nearly all of them of African descent) were enslaved in 15 southern and border states.

Emancipation Proclamation

Though Abraham Lincoln abhorred slavery as a moral evil, he also wavered over the course of his career (and as president) on how to deal with the peculiar institution.

But by 1862, he had become convinced that emancipating enslaved people in the South would help the Union crush the Confederate rebellion and win the Civil War. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which took effect in 1863, announced that all enslaved people held in the states "then in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free."

But the Emancipation Proclamation in itself did not end slavery in the United States, as it only applied to the 11 Confederate states then at war against the Union, and only to the portion of those states not already under Union control. To make emancipation permanent would take a constitutional amendment abolishing the institution of slavery itself.

Battle Over the 13th Amendment

In April 1864, the U.S. Senate passed a proposed amendment banning slavery with the necessary two-thirds majority. But the amendment faltered in the House of Representatives, as more and more Democrats refused to support it (especially during an election year).

As November approached, Lincoln's reelection looked far from assured, but Union military victories greatly helped his cause, and he ended up defeating his Democratic opponent, General George McClellan, by a resounding margin.

When Congress reconvened in December 1864, the emboldened Republicans put a vote on the proposed amendment at the top of their agenda. More than any previous point in his presidency, Lincoln threw himself in the legislative process, inviting individual representatives to his office to discuss the amendment and putting pressure on border-state Unionists (who had previously opposed it) to change their position.

Lincoln also authorized his allies to entice House members with plum positions and other inducements, reportedly telling them: "I leave it to you to determine how it shall be done; but remember that I am President of the United States, clothed with immense power, and I expect you to procure those votes."

Hampton Roads Conference

Last-minute drama ensued when rumors started flying that Confederate peace commissioners were en route to Washington (or already there), putting the future of the amendment in serious doubt.

But Lincoln assured Congressman James Ashley, who had introduced the bill into the House, that no peace commissioners were in the city, and the vote went ahead.

As it turned out, there were in fact Confederate representatives on their way to Union headquarters in Virginia. On February 3, at the Hampton Roads Conference, Lincoln met with them aboard a steamboat called the River Queen, but the meeting ended quickly after he refused to grant any concessions.

13th Amendment Passes

On January 31, 1865, the House of Representatives passed the proposed amendment with a vote of 119-56, just over the required two-thirds majority. The following day, Lincoln approved a joint resolution of Congress submitting it to the state legislatures for ratification.

But he would not see final ratification: Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865, and the necessary number of states did not ratify the 13th Amendment until December 6.

While Section 1 of the 13th Amendment outlawed chattel slavery and involuntary servitude ( except as punishment for a crime), Section 2 gave the U.S. Congress the power "to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."

Black Codes

The year after the amendment's passage, Congress used this power to pass the nation's first civil rights bill, the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The law invalidated the so-called black codes, those laws put into place in the former Confederate states that governed the behavior of Black people, effectively keeping them dependent on their former owners.

Congress also required the former Confederate states to ratify the 13th Amendment in order to regain representation in the federal government.

Together with the 14th and 15th Amendments, also ratified during the Reconstruction era, the 13th Amendment sought to establish equality for black Americans. Despite these efforts, the struggle to achieve full equality and guarantee the civil rights of all Americans has continued well into the 21st century. (It wasn't until February 2013 that Mississippi officially ratified the 13th Amendment, one of the later states to do so.)

Sources

13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Abolition of Slavery (1865), OurDocuments.gov.
The Thirteenth Amendment, Constitution Center.
Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery ( New York: W.W. Norton, 2010).
Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

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13th Amendment - Simplified, Definition & Passed | HISTORY

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The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which abolished slavery, passed in Congress during the Civil War before being ratified in late 1865.

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This article was most recently revised and updated by

Fourteenth Amendment, amendment (1868) to the Constitution of the United States that granted citizenship and equal civil and legal rights to African Americans and slaves who had been emancipated after the American Civil War, including them under the umbrella phrase "all persons born or naturalized in the United States." In all, the amendment comprises five sections, four of which began in 1866 as separate proposals that stalled in legislative process and were later amalgamated, along with a fifth enforcement section, into a single amendment.

This so-called Reconstruction Amendment prohibited the states from depriving any person of "life, liberty, or property, without due process of law" and from denying anyone within a state's jurisdiction equal protection under the law. Nullified by the Thirteenth Amendment, the section of the Constitution apportioning representation in the House of Representatives based on a formula that counted each slave as three-fifths of a person was replaced by a clause in the Fourteenth Amendment specifying that representatives be "apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed." The amendment also prohibited former civil and military office holders who had supported the Confederacy from again holding any state or federal office-with the proviso that this prohibition could be removed from individuals by a two-thirds vote in both Houses of Congress. Moreover, the amendment upheld the national debt while exempting the federal government and state governments from any responsibility for the debts incurred by the rebellious Confederate States of America. Finally, the last section, mirroring the approach of the Thirteenth Amendment, provided for enforcement.

The full text of the amendment is:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state.

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any state shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Among those legislators responsible for introducing the amendment's provisions were Rep. John A. Bingham of Ohio, Sen. Jacob Howard of Michigan, Rep. Henry Deming of Connecticut, Sen. Benjamin G. Brown of Missouri, and Rep. Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania. The Congressional Joint Resolution proposing the amendment was submitted to the states for ratification on June 16, 1866. On July 28, 1868, having been ratified by the requisite number of states, it entered into force. However, its attempt to guarantee civil rights was circumvented for many decades by the post-Reconstruction-era black codes, Jim Crow laws, and the U.S. Supreme Court's "separate but equal" ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Adam Augustyn.

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Fourteenth Amendment | Definition, Summary, Rights, Significance, & Facts

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Fourteenth Amendment, amendment (1868) to the Constitution of the United States that granted citizenship and equal civil and legal rights to African Americans and slaves who had been emancipated after the Civil War, including them under the umbrella phrase 'all persons born or naturalized in the United States.'

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The 15th Amendment (video) | Reconstruction | 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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Plessy v. Ferguson: Background and Context

After the Compromise of 1877 led to the withdrawal of federal troops from the South, Democrats consolidated control of state legislatures throughout the region, effectively marking the end of Reconstruction.

Southern Black people saw the promise of equality under the law embodied by the 13th Amendment, 14th Amendment and 15th Amendment to the Constitution receding quickly, and a return to disenfranchisement and other disadvantages as white supremacy reasserted itself across the South.

As historian C. Vann Woodward pointed out in a 1964 article about Plessy v. Ferguson, white and Black Southerners mixed relatively freely until the 1880s, when state legislatures passed the first laws requiring railroads to provide separate cars for "Negro" or "colored" passengers.

Florida became the first state to mandate segregated railroad cars in 1887, followed in quick succession by Mississippi, Texas, Louisiana and other states by the end of the century.

Black Resistance to Segregation

As Southern Black people witnessed with horror the dawn of the Jim Crow era, members of the Black community in New Orleans decided to mount a resistance.

At the heart of the case that became Plessy v. Ferguson was a law passed in Louisiana in 1890 "providing for separate railway carriages for the white and colored races." It stipulated that all passenger railways had to provide these separate cars, which should be equal in facilities.

Homer Adolph Plessy, who agreed to be the plaintiff in the case aimed at testing the law's constitutionality, was of mixed race; he described himself as "seven-eighths Caucasian and one-eighth African blood."

On June 7, 1892, Plessy bought a ticket on a train from New Orleans bound for Covington, Louisiana, and took a vacant seat in a whites-only car. After refusing to leave the car at the conductor's insistence, he was arrested and jailed.

Convicted by a New Orleans court of violating the 1890 law, Plessy filed a petition against the presiding judge, Hon. John H. Ferguson, claiming that the law violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

Supreme Court Ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson

Over the next few years, segregation and Black disenfranchisement picked up pace in the South, and was more than tolerated by the North. Congress defeated a bill that would have given federal protection to elections in 1892, and nullified a number of Reconstruction laws on the books.

Then, on May 18, 1896, the Supreme Court delivered its verdict in Plessy v. Ferguson. In declaring separate-but-equal facilities constitutional on intrastate railroads, the Court ruled that the protections of 14th Amendment applied only to political and civil rights (like voting and jury service), not "social rights" (sitting in the railroad car of your choice).

In its ruling, the Court denied that segregated railroad cars for Black people were necessarily inferior. "We consider the underlying fallacy of [Plessy's] argument," Justice Henry Brown wrote, "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."

John Marshall Harlan's Dissent

Alone in the minority was Justice John Marshall Harlan, a former slaveholder from Kentucky. Harlan had opposed emancipation and civil rights for freed slaves during the Reconstruction era-but changed his position due to his outrage over the actions of white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan.

Harlan argued in his dissent that segregation ran counter to the constitutional principle of equality under the law: "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," he wrote. "It cannot be justified upon any legal grounds."

Plessy v. Ferguson Significance

The Plessy v. Ferguson verdict enshrined the doctrine of "separate but equal" as a constitutional justification for segregation, ensuring the survival of the Jim Crow South for the next half-century.

Intrastate railroads were among many segregated public facilities the verdict sanctioned; others included buses, hotels, theaters, swimming pools and schools. By the time of the 1899 case Cummings v. Board of Education, even Harlan appeared to agree that segregated public schools did not violate the Constitution.

It would not be until the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, at the dawn of the civil rights movement, that the majority of the Supreme Court would essentially concur with Harlan's opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson..

Writing the majority opinion in that 1954 case, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote that "the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place" in public education, calling segregated schools "inherently unequal," and declaring that the plaintiffs in the Brown case were being "deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment."

Sources

C. Vann Woodward, " Plessy v. Ferguson: The Birth of Jim Crow," American Heritage (Volume 15, Issue 3: April 1964).
Landmark Cases: Plessy v. Ferguson, PBS: The Supreme Court - The First Hundred Years.
Louis Menand, "Brown v. Board of Education and the Limits of Law," The New Yorker (February 12, 2001).
Today in History - May 18: Plessy v. Ferguson, Library of Congress.

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Plessy v. Ferguson: Separate But Equal Doctrine | HISTORY

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Plessy v. Ferguson was a landmark 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation under the "separate but equal" doctrine.

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The Transcontinental Railroad:
https://www.arcgis.com/sharing/rest/content/items/e679f80b19ed4482b10910f2a918946e/resources/OceanTravelAnimaton__1543351601916.gif
Massacre at Wounded Knee:
https://www.history.com/topics/native-american-history/wounded-knee
Dawes General Allotment Act:
https://study.com/academy/lesson/the-dawes-act-of-1877-definition-summary.html
The Homestead and Morrill Acts:
https://into-the-westah1.weebly.com/homestead-act-and-morrill-land.html

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Wounded Knee, located on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, was the site of two conflicts between Native Americans and representatives of the U.S. government, including the U.S. Army and, later, the FBI. An 1890 massacre left some 150 Native Americans dead, in what was the final clash between federal troops and the Sioux tribe. In 1973, members of the American Indian Movement occupied Wounded Knee for 71 days to protest conditions on the reservation.

Ghost Dance and Sitting Bull

Throughout 1890, the U.S. government was worried about the increasing influence at Pine Ridge Indian Reservation of the Ghost Dance spiritual movement, which taught that Native Americans had been defeated and confined to reservations because they had angered the gods by abandoning their traditional customs.

Many Sioux believed that if they practiced the Ghost Dance and rejected the ways of the white man, the gods would create the world anew and destroy all non-believers, including non-Indians. On December 15, 1890, reservation police tried to arrest Sitting Bull, the famous Sioux chief, whom they mistakenly believed was a Ghost Dancer, and killed him in the process, increasing the tensions at Pine Ridge in South Dakota.

Did you know? Nearly half of the Sioux killed at the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre were women and children.

Wounded Knee Massacre

On December 29, the U.S. Army's 7th Cavalry surrounded a band of Ghost Dancers under Big Foot, a Lakota Sioux chief, near Wounded Knee Creek and demanded they surrender their weapons. As that was happening, a fight broke out between an Indian and a U.S. soldier and a shot was fired, although it's unclear from which side.

A brutal massacre followed, in which an estimated 150 Indians were killed. (Some historians put this number at twice as high.) Nearly half of them were women and children. The U.S. cavalry lost 25 men.

The conflict at Wounded Knee was originally referred to as a battle-the Army troops involved were later rewarded with Medals of Honor-but in reality it was a tragic and avoidable massacre. Surrounded by heavily armed troops, it's unlikely that Big Foot's band would have intentionally started a fight. Some historians speculate that the soldiers of the 7th Cavalry were deliberately taking revenge for the regiment's defeat at Little Bighorn in 1876.

Whatever the motives, the massacre ended the Ghost Dance movement and was one of the last major confrontations in the Indian Wars, America's deadly series of wars against the Plains Indians and other Native Americans.

American Indian Movement

The American Indian Movement (AIM) was founded in 1968 in an effort to stop police harassment of Indians in the Minneapolis area. Borrowing some tactics from the Vietnam war protests of the era, AIM soon gained national notoriety for its flamboyant demonstrations. However, many mainstream Indian leaders denounced the youth-dominated group as too radical.

In 1972, a faction of AIM members led by Dennis Banks and Leonard Peltier sought to close the divide by making alliances with traditional tribal elders on reservations. They had their greatest success on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, after a group of young white men murdered a Sioux man named Yellow Thunder.

Although Yellow Thunder's attackers received only six-year prison sentences, this was widely seen as a victory by the local Sioux accustomed to unfair treatment by the often racist judicial system. AIM's highly visible publicity campaign on the case was given considerable credit for the verdict, winning the organization a great deal of respect on the reservation.

Wounded Knee Siege

AIM's growing prestige and influence, however, threatened the conservative Sioux tribal chairman, Dick Wilson. When Wilson learned of a planned AIM protest against his administration at Pine Ridge, he retreated to tribal headquarters where he was under the protection of federal marshals and Bureau of Indian Affairs police.

Rather than confront the police in Pine Ridge, some 200 AIM members and their supporters decided to occupy the symbolically significant hamlet of Wounded Knee, site of the 1890 massacre. Wilson, with the backing of the federal government, responded by besieging Wounded Knee.

During the 71 days of the siege, which began on February 27, 1973, federal officers and AIM members exchanged gunfire almost nightly. Hundreds of arrests were made, and two Native Americans were killed and a federal marshal was permanently paralyzed by a bullet wound.

The leaders of AIM finally surrendered on May 8 after a negotiated settlement was reached. In a subsequent trial, the judge ordered their acquittal because of evidence that the FBI had manipulated key witnesses. AIM emerged victorious and succeeded in shining a national spotlight on the problems of modern Native Americans.

Trouble Continues at Pine Ridge

The troubles at Wounded Knee, however, were not over after the siege. A virtual civil war broke out between the opposing Indian factions on the Pine Ridge reservation, and a series of beatings, shootings and murders left more than 100 Indians dead. When two FBI agents were killed in a 1975 gunfight, the agency raided the reservation and arrested AIM leader Leonard Peltier for the crime.

The FBI crackdown coupled with AIM's own excesses ended its influence at Pine Ridge. In 1977, Peltier was convicted of killing the two FBI agents and sentenced to life in prison. To this day, Peltier's supporters continue to maintain his innocence and seek a presidential pardon for him.

And in 2021, members of the U.S. Congress petitioned President Joe Biden to revoke the Medals of Honor soldiers received for their participation in the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre.

HISTORY Vault: Native American History

Sources

Disaster at Wounded Knee. Library of Congress.
What really happened at Wounded Knee, the site of a historic massacre. National Geographic.
Warren, Merkley, Kahele Lead Bicameral Letter Urging Biden to Rescind Medals of Honor Awarded to Soldiers who Perpetrated Wounded Knee Massacre. Elizabeth Warren, U.S. Senate.
Wounded Knee Massacre. Encyclopedia of the Great Plains.

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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Wounded Knee: Massacre, Memorial & Battle - HISTORY

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Wounded Knee in South Dakota was the site of an 1890 Indian massacre by U.S. Army troops, and a deadly 1973 occupation by Native American activists.

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What Was the Dawes Act?

The General Allotment Act of 1887, known commonly as the Dawes Act, was introduced by Henry Dawes, a Senator from Massachusetts. Simply put, the Act broke up previous land settlements given to Native Americans in the form of reservations and separated them into smaller, separate parcels of land to live on. More importantly, the Act required Natives to live apart from their nations and assimilate into European culture.

Dawes felt that the law, once fully realized, would actually save Native Americans from the alternative, which was their total extermination. However, the Dawes Act may, in fact, be the gold medal winner of all time when it comes to how often the best intentions result in the worst harm, since, ironically, it just about accomplished what Dawes claimed he was trying to avoid.

Background

Since Europeans arrived in the 15th century, Native Americans had been inexorably pushed west, as the frontier moved in front of colonization. By the mid-19th century, the expansion of the United States was in full swing. The passage of the Homestead Act in 1862, which effectively gave away land in the West to settlers in an effort to populate those territories, was a clear marker of what was coming.

Given all this expansion, it was clear that some sort of governmental policy should be adopted to accommodate both the Native Americans who chose not to resist and those who actively fought back. The initial approach, relocation, as typified by the Indian Removal Act of 1830, proved less than successful, especially given the variety, diversity, and entrenched nature of Native American societies across the eastern U.S. In 1851, the U.S. government passed the Indian Appropriations Act, which was supposed to create a long-term solution to the Native American issue: reservations.

The reservations, originally to be based in Oklahoma, but later across the West, were land grants upon which tribes could live more or less as they pleased, so long as they remained within the reservation's borders. However, many tribes ignored orders from the U.S. government to relocate, and the Army was brought in to enforce the policy (this became substantially more common after the Civil War ended in 1865).

Of course, bringing troops into the issue resulted in conflict, most famously in 1876, when Sioux, under the command of 'hostiles,' like Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, wiped out George A. Custer and most of his command at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. The death of over 200 American soldiers right around the time of the nation's centennial celebration ignited cries for revenge against the Sioux and all recalcitrant Native Americans. This was the atmosphere in which Henry Dawes was operating when he unveiled his plan.

The Dawes Act

Dawes's plan was to 'save' Native Americans by changing their way of life. To understand this, it's helpful to take a quick look at how most Native American societies operated. This is, of course, by no means true of all Native Americans. With over 500 separate indigenous societies, there was a tremendous amount of diversity, but there were some values that were largely shared across the spectrum, and these were the values that Dawes saw as a genuine threat to Native American survival.

Native Americans tended to view land ownership as a fairly foreign concept, instead focusing on land stewardship (caring for and using the land, but not considering themselves owners of it in a legal sense). Similarly, most Native Americans, in the face of U.S. expansion in the Plains territories of the West and Midwest, led nomadic, quasi-hunter/gatherer lifestyles that were incompatible with the 19th-century American emphasis on agriculture.

Dawes saw these philosophies as a direct threat to Native American existence, since, without adhering to the American ethos of land ownership and capitalistic enterprise, he felt it was unlikely that a peaceful resolution could be reached between Native Americans and the U.S. government. His plan was to survey Native-held reservations, which varied in size based on the particular tribe's area and size, and separate them into smaller units, or allotments, of around 160 acres apiece. These allotments would then be given to Native Americans. Those who accepted and lived separately from their tribes would be granted U.S. citizenship. The sizes of the parcels were equal regardless of how much land the tribe had previously been allotted for the reservations.

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the dawes act of 1887: definition & summary - video & lesson transcript | study.com

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The Dawes Act of 1887: Definition & Summary - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

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The General Allotment Act of 1887, known commonly as the Dawes Act, was introduced by Henry Dawes, a Senator from Massachusetts. Simply put, the Act broke up previous land settlements given to Native Americans in the form of reservations and separated them into smaller, separate parcels of land to live on.

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The homestead act was passed May 20, 1862. This act allowed for US citizens to get 160 acres of land out in the west for free. They had to be adults of course, and they also had to have been loyal to...

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The Bessemer Process: https://www.britannica.com/technology/Bessemer-process
Growth of Invention- late 1800s:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xjPiYmhJqg
The Rise of Bog Business:
https://ehistory.osu.edu/exhibitions/1912/trusts/RiseBigBusiness
The Antitrust Movement:
https://ehistory.osu.edu/exhibitions/1912/trusts/TheAntitrustMovement
The Labor Movement:
https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/c_fill,f_auto,fl_progressive,g_center,h_675,pg_1,q_80,w_1200/ms6hik3ia0xqkrex0y2m.jpg

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Bessemer process, the first method discovered for mass-producing steel. Though named after Sir Henry Bessemer of England, the process evolved from the contributions of many investigators before it could be used on a broad commercial basis. It was apparently conceived independently and almost concurrently by Bessemer and by William Kelly of the United States. As early as 1847, Kelly, a businessman-scientist of Pittsburgh, began experiments aimed at developing a revolutionary means of removing impurities from pig iron by an air blast. Kelly theorized that not only would the air, injected into the molten iron, supply oxygen to react with the impurities, converting them into oxides separable as slag, but that the heat evolved in these reactions would increase the temperature of the mass, keeping it from solidifying during the operation. After several failures, he succeeded in proving his theory and rapidly producing steel ingots.

In 1856 Bessemer, working independently in Sheffield, developed and patented the same process. Whereas Kelly had been unable to perfect the process owing to a lack of financial resources, Bessemer was able to develop it into a commercial success. Another Englishman, Robert Forester Mushet, found that adding an alloy of carbon, manganese, and iron after the air-blowing was complete restored the carbon content of the steel while neutralizing the effect of remaining impurities, notably sulfur. A Swedish ironmaster, Goran Goransson, redesigned the Bessemer furnace, or converter, making it reliable in performance. The end result was a means of mass-producing steel. The resultant volume of low-cost steel in Britain and the United States soon revolutionized building construction and provided steel to replace iron in railroad rails and many other uses.

The Bessemer converter is a cylindrical steel pot approximately 6 metres (20 feet) high, originally lined with a siliceous refractory. Air is blown in through openings (tuyeres) near the bottom, creating oxides of silicon and manganese, which become part of the slag, and of carbon, which are carried out in the stream of air. Within a few minutes an ingot of steel can be produced, ready for the forge or rolling mill.

The original Bessemer converter was not effective in removing the phosphorus present in sizable amounts in most British and European iron ore. The invention in England, by Sidney Gilchrist Thomas, of what is now called the Thomas-Gilchrist converter, which was lined with a basic material such as burned limestone rather than an (acid) siliceous material, overcame this problem. Another drawback to Bessemer steel, its retention of a small percentage of nitrogen from the air blow, was not corrected until the 1950s. The open-hearth process, which was developed in the 1860s, did not suffer from this difficulty, and it eventually outstripped the Bessemer process to become the dominant steelmaking process until the mid-20th century. The open-hearth process was in turn replaced by the basic oxygen process, which is actually an extension and refinement of the Bessemer process.

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Bessemer process | Dates, Definition, & Facts

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Bessemer process, the first method discovered for mass-producing steel. Though named after Sir Henry Bessemer of England, the process evolved from the contributions of many investigators before it could be used on a broad commercial basis. It was apparently conceived independently and almost concurrently by Bessemer and by William Kelly of the United States.

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Inventions In America's Growth (1850-1910) - Phonograph, Telephone, Electric Lamp 24860 HD

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The late nineteenth century saw the rise of "big business" in important areas of economic activity. ("Big" is never defined precisely, but the quantitative term is popularly used to connote something important.) Big business firms were institutions that used management to control economic activity. Big business firms broke themselves into different functions, or "departments," and used managers to coordinate the work of departments, and "middle managers" to coordinate work among departments.

Railroads were the first "big businesses" in the United States. After railroad companies began to operate on tracks that stretched for fifty and more miles, their owners soon realized that they had to divide responsibilities among different managers, with coordination of the various functions of the company--from soliciting business, to operating trains, to maintaining facilities, to financing everything. By the 1850s railroad executives were perfecting systems of managerial control over their ever more complex firms.

After the railroads pioneered the formation of "big business," big businesses appeared in manufacturing and distribution.

Big city department stores were a form of "big business." They combined many different retail operations in one organization, and placed them together in one building. By 1912 department stores were principal features of the downtown districts of every city.

Still other big businesses, mail order firms such as Sears, Roebuck, were by 1912 serving rural areas and small towns.

Thus when Americans shopped in 1912, they were likely to encounter a "big business." In their stores, moreover, they were likely to find products manufactured by "big businesses."

The "big business" form of organization spread rapidly in manufacturing industries after about 1870.

In some lines of manufacturing, there were advantages to have a single organization control raw materials, transportation, fabrication, and distribution. When he sold his steel company in 1901, for example, Andrew Carnegie was the most efficient--and the wealthiest--steel maker in the world. Carnegie steel had control over sources of coal, coke, and iron ore. Carnegie steel exercised control over ships and railroads that brought raw materials to its mills in the Pittsburgh district. Carnegie insisted on his mill remaining the most advanced of their day. Not only did Carnegie Steel manufacture steel, the company also produced finished products like railroad rails and bridge girders. All of these operations were in a single managerial organization. Managers controlled the flow of materials. Carnegie Steel was so efficient that it could undercut all of its competitors and still make large profits.

Meatpacking was another industry that witnessed the rise and perfection of "big business" forms. After 1870, several Chicago meatpackers built huge, complex organizations for purchasing animals, butchering them, and distributing meat to markets all across the nation. Their companies used all of the byproducts of the animals they slaughtered. Skins went into leather goods, hoofs into glue, bones into fertilizer, and fat into soap. One wag commented that the only part of the hog the Chicago packers did not use and sell was the squeal!

By the end of the nineteenth century, Standard Oil, led by John D. Rockefeller, dominated the refining and distribution of petroleum products in the United States, and extended its reach well beyond the nation's borders.

When an entrepreneur like Carnegie was successful in building an efficient organization to control manufacturing processes, he drove competitors out of business. A steel maker either had to compete by mimicking Carnegie's managerial techniques, or go into a niche, or specialized, market that the big steel companies did not enter. In the case of meatpacking, by 1900 thousands of local butchers found themselves squeezed, because they were less efficient than the Chicago packers. Small shopkeepers sometimes faced ruin from large department store competitors. These businesses following older, more traditional practices sometimes fueled popular sentiment to "bust" the trusts.

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The late nineteenth century saw the rise of "big business" in important areas of economic activity. ("Big" is never defined precisely, but the quantitative term is popularly used to connote something important.) Big business firms were institutions that used management to control economic activity.

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Concern about "the trusts" and the rise of big business was not new in 1912. The trust issue went back at least to the 1880s.

Americans were often ambivalent about "the trusts" and the phenomenon of the rise of big business. On the one hand, Americans admired the efficiencies that large businesses provided. Department stores, for instance, grew at the expense of small merchants because department stores were popular. The large stores provided attractive spaces for customers, as well as a wide range of different goods arranged in "departments" such as clothing for women and men, dry goods, appliances, hardware, and so forth.

On the other hand, Americans worried that the growth of large firms eliminated many opportunities for individuals to go into business. The limitation of those opportunities seemed somehow to lessen freedom itself and to have potentially dangerous implications for republican society and democratic government. Here the department store appears as a pig, keeping out the hungry small business person.

Frank Beard and other cartoonists expressed this ambivalence well before 1912. The ambivalence resulted in a long history of antitrust activity before the election of 1912.

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Concern about "the trusts" and the rise of big business was not new in 1912. The trust issue went back at least to the 1880s. Americans were often ambivalent about "the trusts" and the phenomenon of the rise of big business. On the one hand, Americans admired the efficiencies that large businesses provided.

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International Stock Food Factory, between 1900 and 1910
Detroit Publishing Company

In the decades following the Civil War, the United States emerged as an industrial giant. Old industries expanded and many new ones, including petroleum refining, steel manufacturing, and electrical power, emerged. Railroads expanded significantly, bringing even remote parts of the country into a national market economy.

Industrial growth transformed American society. It produced a new class of wealthy industrialists and a prosperous middle class. It also produced a vastly expanded blue collar working class. The labor force that made industrialization possible was made up of millions of newly arrived immigrants and even larger numbers of migrants from rural areas. American society became more diverse than ever before.

Not everyone shared in the economic prosperity of this period. Many workers were typically unemployed at least part of the year, and their wages were relatively low when they did work. This situation led many workers to support and join labor unions. Meanwhile, farmers also faced hard times as technology and increasing production led to more competition and falling prices for farm products. Hard times on farms led many young people to move to the city in search of better job opportunities.

Americans who were born in the 1840s and 1850s would experience enormous changes in their lifetimes. Some of these changes resulted from a sweeping technological revolution. Their major source of light, for example, would change from candles, to kerosene lamps, and then to electric light bulbs. They would see their transportation evolve from walking and horse power to steam-powered locomotives, to electric trolley cars, to gasoline-powered automobiles. Born into a society in which the vast majority of people were involved in agriculture, they experienced an industrial revolution that radically changed the ways millions of people worked and where they lived. They would experience the migration of millions of people from rural America to the nation's rapidly growing cities.

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Overview | 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 decades following the Civil War, the United States emerged as an industrial giant. Old industries expanded and many new ones, including petroleum refining, steel manufacturing, and electrical power, emerged. Railroads expanded significantly, bringing even remote parts of the country into a national market economy. Industrial growth transformed American society.

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The Rise of Immigration- late 1800s:
http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/timeline/riseind/immgnts/
The Growth of Cities:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpBbnL3pMRA
Tenement Life- Causes and Effects:
https://www.history.com/topics/immigration/tenements
The Growth of Mass Communication- late 1800s:
https://www.history.com/.image/t_share/MTU3ODc5MDg2NDM0NzU1OTEz/printing-press-2.jpg

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Urbanisation and the growth of global cities

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In the 19th century, more and more people began crowding into America's cities, including thousands of newly arrived immigrants seeking a better life than the one they had left behind. In New York City-where the population doubled every decade from 1800 to 1880-buildings that had once been single-family dwellings were increasingly divided into multiple living spaces to accommodate this growing population.

Known as tenements, these narrow, low-rise apartment buildings-many of them concentrated in the city's Lower East Side neighborhood-were all too often cramped, poorly lit and lacked indoor plumbing and proper ventilation. By 1900, some 2.3 million people (a full two-thirds of New York City's population) were living in tenement housing.

The Rise of Tenement Housing

In the first half of the 19th century, many of the more affluent residents of New York's Lower East Side neighborhood began to move further north, leaving their low-rise masonry row houses behind. At the same time, more and more immigrants began to flow into the city, many of them fleeing the Irish Potato Famine, or Great Hunger, in Ireland or revolution in Germany. Both of these groups of new arrivals concentrated themselves on the Lower East Side, moving into row houses that had been converted from single-family dwellings into multiple-apartment tenements, or into new tenement housing built specifically for that purpose.

Did you know? By 1900, more than 80,000 tenements had been built in New York City. They housed a population of 2.3 million people, a full two-thirds of the city's total population of around 3.4 million.

A typical tenement building had five to seven stories and occupied nearly all of the lot upon which it was built (usually 25 feet wide and 100 feet long, according to existing city regulations). Many tenements began as single-family dwellings, and many older structures were converted into tenements by adding floors on top or by building more space in rear-yard areas. With less than a foot of space between buildings, little air and light could get in.

In many tenements, only the rooms on the street got any light, and the interior rooms had no ventilation (unless air shafts were built directly into the room). Later, speculators began building new tenements, often using cheap materials and construction shortcuts. Even new, this kind of housing was at best uncomfortable and at worst highly unsafe.

Calls for Reform

New York was not the only city in America where tenement housing emerged as a way to accommodate a growing population during the 1900s. In Chicago, for example, the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 led to restrictions on building wood-frame structures in the center of the city and encouraged the construction of lower-income dwellings on the city's outskirts.

Unlike in New York, where tenements were highly concentrated in the poorest neighborhoods of the city, in Chicago they tended to cluster around centers of employment, such as stockyards and slaughterhouses. Nowhere, however, did the tenement situation become as dire as it was in New York, particularly on the Lower East Side. A cholera epidemic in 1849 took some 5,000 lives, many of them poor people living in overcrowded housing.

During the infamous New York draft riots that tore apart the city in 1863, rioters were not only protesting against the new military conscription policy; they were also reacting to the intolerable conditions in which many of them were living. The Tenement House Act of 1867 legally defined a tenement for the first time and set construction regulations; among these were the requirement of one toilet (or privy) per 20 people.

"How the Other Half Lives"

The existence of tenement legislation did not guarantee its enforcement, however, and conditions were little improved by 1889, when the Danish-born author and photographer Jacob Riis was researching the series of newspaper articles that would become his seminal book "How the Other Half Lives."

Riis had experienced firsthand the hardship of immigrant life in New York City, and as a police reporter for newspapers, including The Evening Sun, he had gotten a unique view into the grimy, crime-infested world of the Lower East Side. Seeking to draw attention to the horrible conditions in which many urban Americans were living, Riis photographed what he saw in the tenements and used these vivid photos to accompany the text of "How the Other Half Lives," published in 1890.

The hard facts included in Riis' book-such as the fact that 12 adults slept in a room some 13 feet across, and that the infant death rate in the tenements was as high as 1 in 10-stunned many in America and around the world and led to a renewed call for reform.

Two major studies of tenements were completed in the 1890s, and in 1901 city officials passed the Tenement House Law, which effectively outlawed the construction of new tenements on 25-foot lots and mandated improved sanitary conditions, fire escapes and access to light. Under the new law-which in contrast to past legislation would actually be enforced-pre-existing tenement structures were updated, and more than 200,000 new apartments were built over the next 15 years, supervised by city authorities.

Life After the Tenements

By the late 1920s, many tenements in Chicago had been demolished and replaced with large, privately subsidized apartment projects. The next decade saw the implementation of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, which would transform low-income housing in many American cities through programs including slum clearing and the building of public housing.

The first fully government-built public housing project opened in New York City in 1936. Called First Houses, it consisted of a number of rehabilitated pre-law tenements covering a partial block at Avenue A and East 3rd Street, an area that had been considered part of the Lower East Side.

Among the trendy restaurants, boutique hotels and bars that can be found in the neighborhood today, visitors can still get a glimpse into its past at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, located at 97 Orchard Street.

Built in 1863, the building is an example of an "old-law" tenement (as defined by the Tenement House Act of 1867) and was home over the years for some 7,000 working class immigrants. Though the basement and the first floor have been renovated, the rest of the building looks much the same as it did in the 19th century, and has been designated a National Historic Site.

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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In the 19th century, more and more people began crowding into America's cities, including thousands of newly arrived immigrants seeking a better life than the one they had left behind. In New York City-where the population doubled every decade from 1800 to 1880-buildings that had once been single-family dwellings were increasingly divided into multiple living spaces to accommodate this growing population.

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The Growth of Mass Communication - late 1800s

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The Growth of Mass Communication - late 1800s

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video:

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Rise of Political Machines:
https://study.com/academy/lesson/political-machine-definition-lesson.html
Progressive Reform (Late 1800s):
https://www2.gwu.edu/~erpapers/teachinger/glossary/progressive-era.cfm

Rise of Labor Organizations (Early 1900s):
https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/labor
Women’s Suffrage & the Temperance Movement (Late 1800s/Early 1900s):
https://dp.la/primary-source-sets/women-and-the-temperance-movement
Election of 1912:
https://cdn.britannica.com/28/73728-050-DE1541AC/election-Results-Candidate-American-Votes-Sources-Woodrow-1912.jpg
Isolationism vs. Imperialism:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2vs6_06Mzk

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The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project is a university-chartered research center associated with the Department of History of The George Washington University

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Rise of Labor Organizations (Early 1900s)

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Rise of Labor Organizations (Early 1900s)

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Origins of The Labor Movement

The origins of the labor movement lay in the formative years of the American nation, when a free wage-labor market emerged in the artisan trades late in the colonial period. The earliest recorded strike occurred in 1768 when New York journeymen tailors protested a wage reduction. The formation of the Federal Society of Journeymen Cordwainers (shoemakers) in Philadelphia in 1794 marks the beginning of sustained trade union organization among American workers.
WATCH: The Labor Movement
From that time on, local craft unions proliferated in the cities, publishing lists of "prices" for their work, defending their trades against diluted and cheap labor and, increasingly, demanding a shorter workday in the face of the Industrial Revolution. Thus a job-conscious orientation was quick to emerge, and in its wake there followed the key structural elements characterizing American trade unionism. First, with the formation in 1827 of the Mechanics' Union of Trade Associations in Philadelphia, central labor bodies began uniting craft unions within a single city, and then, with the creation of the International Typographical Union in 1852, national unions began bringing together local unions of the same trade from across the United States and Canada (hence the frequent union designation "international"). Although the factory system was springing up during these years, industrial workers played little part in the early trade union development. In the 19th century, trade unionism was mainly a movement of skilled workers.

Did you know? In 2009, 12 percent of American workers belonged to unions.

Early Labor Unions

The early labor movement was, however, inspired by more than the immediate job interest of its craft members. It harbored a conception of the just society, deriving from the Ricardian labor theory of value and from the republican ideals of the American Revolution, which fostered social equality, celebrated honest labor, and relied on an independent, virtuous citizenship. The transforming economic changes of industrial capitalism ran counter to labor's vision. The result, as early labor leaders saw it, was to raise up "two distinct classes, the rich and the poor." Beginning with the workingmen's parties of the 1830s, the advocates of equal rights mounted a series of reform efforts that spanned the nineteenth century. Most notable were the National Labor Union, launched in 1866, and the Knights of Labor, which reached its zenith in the mid-1880s.

On their face, these reform movements might have seemed at odds with trade unionism, aiming as they did at the cooperative commonwealth rather than a higher wage, appealing broadly to all "producers" rather than strictly to wageworkers, and eschewing the trade union reliance on the strike and boycott. But contemporaries saw no contradiction: trade unionism tended to the workers' immediate needs, labor reform to their higher hopes. The two were held to be strands of a single movement, rooted in a common working-class constituency and to some degree sharing a common leadership. But equally important, they were strands that had to be kept operationally separate and functionally distinct.
PHOTOS: These Appalling Images Exposed Child Labor in America
American Federation of Labor

During the 1880s, that division fatally eroded. Despite its labor reform rhetoric, the Knights of Labor attracted large numbers of workers hoping to improve their immediate conditions. As the Knights carried on strikes and organized along industrial lines, the threatened national trade unions demanded that the group confine itself to its professed labor reform purposes. When it refused, they joined in December 1886 to form the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The new federation marked a break with the past, for it denied to labor reform any further role in the struggles of American workers. In part, the assertion of trade union supremacy stemmed from an undeniable reality. As industrialism matured, labor reform lost its meaning-hence the confusion and ultimate failure of the Knights of Labor. Marxism taught Samuel Gompers and his fellow socialists that trade unionism was the indispensable instrument for preparing the working class for revolution. The founders of theAFL translated this notion into the principle of "pure and simple" unionism: only by self-organization along occupational lines and by a concentration on job-conscious goals would the worker be "furnished with the weapons which shall secure his industrial emancipation."

That class formulation necessarily defined trade unionism as the movement of the entire working class. The AFL asserted as a formal policy that it represented all workers, irrespective of skill, race, religion, nationality or gender. But the national unions that had created the AFL in fact comprised only the skilled trades. Almost at once, therefore, the trade union movement encountered a dilemma: How to square ideological aspirations against contrary institutional realities?

Discrimination in The Labor Movement

As sweeping technological change began to undermine the craft system of production, some national unions did move toward an industrial structure, most notably in coal mining and the garment trades. But most craft unions either refused or, as in iron and steel and in meat-packing, failed to organize the less skilled. And since skill lines tended to conform to racial, ethnic and gender divisions, the trade union movement took on a racist and sexist coloration as well. For a short period, the AFL resisted that tendency. But in 1895, unable to launch an interracial machinists' union of its own, the Federation reversed an earlier principled decision and chartered the whites-only International Association of Machinists. Formally or informally, the color bar thereafter spread throughout the trade union movement. In 1902, blacks made up scarcely 3 percent of total membership, most of them segregated in Jim Crow locals. In the case of women and eastern European immigrants, a similar devolution occurred-welcomed as equals in theory, excluded or segregated in practice. (Only the fate of Asian workers was unproblematic; their rights had never been asserted by the AFLin the first place.)

Samuel Gompers

Gompers justified the subordination of principle to organizational reality on the constitutional grounds of "trade autonomy," by which each national union was assured the right to regulate its own internal affairs. But the organizational dynamism of the labor movement was in fact located in the national unions. Only as they experienced inner change might the labor movement expand beyond the narrow limits-roughly 10 percent of the labor force-at which it stabilized before World War I.

In the political realm, the founding doctrine of pure-and-simple unionism meant an arm's-length relationship to the state and the least possible entanglement in partisan politics. A total separation had, of course, never been seriously contemplated; some objectives, such as immigration restriction, could be achieved only through state action, and the predecessor to the AFL, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (1881), had in fact been created to serve as labor's lobbying arm in Washington. Partly because of the lure of progressive labor legislation, even more in response to increasingly damaging court attacks on the trade unions, political activity quickened after 1900. With the enunciation of Labor's Bill of Grievances (1906), the AFL laid down a challenge to the major parties. Henceforth it would campaign for its friends and seek the defeat of its enemies.

This nonpartisan entry into electoral politics, paradoxically, undercut the left-wing advocates of an independent working-class politics. That question had been repeatedly debated within theAFL, first in 1890 over Socialist Labor party representation, then in 1893-1894 over an alliance with the Populist Party and after 1901 over affiliation with the Socialist party of America. Although Gompers prevailed each time, he never found it easy. Now, as labor's leverage with the major parties began to pay off, Gompers had an effective answer to his critics on the left: the labor movement could not afford to waste its political capital on socialist parties or independent politics. When that nonpartisan strategy failed, as it did in the reaction following World War I, an independent political strategy took hold, first through the robust campaigning of the Conference for Progressive Political Action in 1922, and in 1924 through labor's endorsement of Robert La Follette on the Progressive ticket. By then, however, the Republican administration was moderating its hard line, evident especially in Herbert Hoover's efforts to resolve the simmering crises in mining and on the railroads. In response, the trade unions abandoned the Progressive party, retreated to nonpartisanship, and, as their power waned, lapsed into inactivity.

The Labor Movement and The Great Depression
WATCH: Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal
It took the Great Depression to knock the labor movement off dead center. The discontent of industrial workers, combined with New Deal collective bargaining legislation, at last brought the great mass production industries within striking distance. When the craft unions stymied the ALF's organizing efforts, John L. Lewis of the United Mine Workers and his followers broke away in 1935 and formed the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO), which crucially aided the emerging unions in auto, rubber, steel and other basic industries. In 1938 the CIO was formally established as the Congress of Industrial Organizations. By the end of World War II, more than 12 million workers belonged to unions and collective bargaining had taken hold throughout the industrial economy.

In politics, its enhanced power led the union movement not to a new departure but to a variant on the policy of nonpartisanship. As far back as the Progressive Era, organized labor had been drifting toward the Democratic party, partly because of the latter's greater programmatic appeal, perhaps even more because of its ethno-cultural basis of support within an increasingly "new" immigrant working class. With the coming of Roosevelt's New Deal, this incipient alliance solidified, and from 1936 onward the Democratic Party could count on-and came to rely on-the campaigning resources of the labor movement.

Collective Bargaining

That this alliance partook of the nonpartisan logic of Gompers's authorship-too much was at stake for organized labor to waste its political capital on third parties-became clear in the unsettled period of the early cold war. Not only did theCIO oppose the Progressive party of 1948, but it expelled the left-wing unions that broke ranks and supported Henry Wallace for the presidency that year.

The formation of the AFL-CIOin 1955 visibly testified to the powerful continuities persisting through the age of industrial unionism. Above all, the central purpose remained what it had always been-to advance the economic and job interests of the union membership. Collective bargaining performed impressively after World War II, more than tripling weekly earnings in manufacturing between 1945 and 1970, gaining for union workers an unprecedented measure of security against old age, illness and unemployment, and, through contractual protections, greatly strengthening their right to fair treatment at the workplace. But if the benefits were greater and if they went to more people, the basic job-conscious thrust remained intact. Organized labor was still a sectional movement, covering at most only a third of America's wage earners and inaccessible to those cut off in the low-wage secondary labor market.

Women and Minorities in the Labor Movement

Nothing better captures the uneasy amalgam of old and new in the postwar labor movement than the treatment of minorities and women who flocked in, initially from the mass production industries, but after 1960 from the public and service sectors as well. Labor's historic commitment to racial and gender equality was thereby much strengthened, but not to the point of challenging the status quo within the labor movement itself. Thus the leadership structure remained largely closed to minorities-as did the skilled jobs that were historically the preserve of white male workers-notoriously so in the construction trades but in the industrial unions as well. Yet the AFL-CIOplayed a crucial role in the battle for civil rights legislation in 1964-1965. That this legislation might be directed against discriminatory trade union practices was anticipated (and quietly welcomed) by the more progressive labor leaders. But more significant was the meaning they found in championing this kind of reform: the chance to act on the broad ideals of the labor movement. And, so motivated, they deployed labor's power with great effect in the achievement of John F. Kennedy's and Lyndon B. Johnson 's domestic programs during the 1960s.

Decline in Unions

This was ultimately economic, not political power, however, and as organized labor's grip on the industrial sector began to weaken, so did its political capability. From the early 1970s onward, new competitive forces swept through the heavily unionized industries, set off by deregulation in communications and transportation, by industrial restructuring and by an unprecedented onslaught of foreign goods. As oligopolistic and regulated market structures broke down, nonunion competition spurted, concession bargaining became widespread and plant closings decimated union memberships. The once-celebrated National Labor Relations Act increasingly hamstrung the labor movement; an all-out reform campaign to get the law amended failed in 1978. And with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, there came to power an anti-union administration the likes of which had not been seen since the Harding era.

Between 1975 and 1985, union membership fell by 5 million. In manufacturing, the unionized portion of the labor force dropped below 25 percent, while mining and construction, once labor's flagship industries, were decimated. Only in the public sector did the unions hold their own. By the end of the 1980s, less than 17 percent of American workers were organized, half the proportion of the early 1950s.

The labor movement has never been swift to change. But if the new high-tech and service sectors seemed beyond its reach in 1989, so did the mass production industries in 1929. There is a silver lining: Compared to the old AFL, organized labor is today much more diverse and broadly based: In 2018, of the 14.7 million wage and salary workers who were part of a union (compared to 17.7 million in 1983), 25 percent are women and 28 percent are Black.

Sources

TED: The Economics Daily. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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The origins of the labor movement lay in the formative years of the American nation, when a free wage-labor market emerged in the artisan trades late in the colonial period. The earliest recorded strike occurred in 1768 when New York journeymen tailors protested a wage reduction.

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Women’s Suffrage & the Temperance Movement (Late 1800s/Early 1900s)

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Women’s Suffrage & the Temperance Movement (Late 1800s/Early 1900s)

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During the late 1800s and early 1900s, the Temperance Movement fought to reduce consumption of alcohol. The movement began in the 1820s, rooted in Protestant churches, led by clergy and prominent laymen, and powered by women volunteers. More women were involved in temperance than any other cause in US history up to that point. Women's involvement seemed natural since the movement targeted men's alcohol abuse and how it harmed women and children. At first, the Temperance Movement sought to moderate drinking, then to promote resisting the temptation to drink. Later, the goal became outright prohibition of alcohol sales. This shift coincided with a large wave of immigrants from Southern, Central, and Eastern Europe, and some temperance advocates echoed the concerns of nativists as they objected to immigrants' "wet" cultures and drinking customs. In addition, temperance advocates regarded urban saloons as hosts to a range of immoral behaviors beyond drunkenness, such as gambling, adultery, prostitution, profanity, and corruption.

Women rose to leadership roles with the founding of the national Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in 1874. Temperance became known as the "Woman's Crusade," and women staged peaceful demonstrations of prayer at businesses that served alcohol. These methods reflected the gentle moral guidance expected from women of the era. Later, the Temperance Movement changed its goals and tactics, and it became a powerful political force which sought to prohibit alcohol entirely. Carrie (or Carry) Nation, a radical temperance advocate, gained both support and notoriety through raiding saloons and using a hatchet to smash their liquor bottles. In the 1890s, the Anti-Saloon League rose to prominence as an influential prohibition lobby, using methods from business and government rather than the church. The League fueled the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment, or Prohibition, in 1920, which banned production and consumption of alcohol nationwide until 1933, when it was repealed by the Twenty-First Amendment. While the movement aligned itself with privileged white femininity, many women who participated in the Temperance Movement also contributed to other forms of social activism, such as abolition, women's suffrage, and equal rights for women and people of color.

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During the late 1800s and early 1900s, the Temperance Movement fought to reduce consumption of alcohol. The movement began in the 1820s, rooted in Protestant churches, led by clergy and prominent laymen, and powered by women volunteers. More women were involved in temperance than any other cause in US history up to that point.

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Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

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Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

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Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie are shot to death by a Bosnian Serb nationalist during an official visit to the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. The killings sparked a chain of events that led to the outbreak of World War I by early August. On June 28, 1919, five years to the day after Franz Ferdinand's death, Germany and the Allied Powers signed the Treaty of Versailles, officially marking the end of World War I.

The archduke traveled to Sarajevo in June 1914 to inspect the imperial armed forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina, annexed by Austria-Hungary in 1908. The annexation had angered Serbian nationalists, who believed the territories should be part of Serbia. A group of young nationalists hatched a plot to kill the archduke during his visit to Sarajevo, and after some missteps, 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip was able to shoot the royal couple at point-blank range, while they traveled in their official procession, killing both almost instantly.

The assassination set off a rapid chain of events, as Austria-Hungary immediately blamed the Serbian government for the attack. As large and powerful Russia supported Serbia, Austria asked for assurances that Germany would step in on its side against Russia and its allies, including France and possibly Great Britain. On July 28, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and the fragile peace between Europe's great powers collapsed, beginning the devastating conflict now known as the First World War.

After more than four years of bloodshed, the Great War ended on November 11, 1918, after Germany, the last of the Central Powers, surrendered to the Allies. At the peace conference in Paris in 1919, Allied leaders would state their desire to build a post-war world that was safe from future wars of such enormous scale. The Versailles Treaty, signed on June 28, 1919, tragically failed to achieve this objective. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's grand dreams of an international peace-keeping organization faltered when put into practice as the League of Nations. Even worse, the harsh terms imposed on Germany, the war's biggest loser, led to widespread resentment of the treaty and its authors in that country-a resentment that would culminate in the outbreak of the Second World War two decades later.

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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Austria's Archduke Ferdinand assassinated | June 28, 1914 | HISTORY

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Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie are shot to death by a Bosnian Serb nationalist during an official visit to the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. The killings sparked a chain of events that led to the outbreak of World War I by early August.

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World War I shaped our world in many, many, many ways. And it's important to realize it wasn't that long ago. It was not even 100 years ago. But it was really the end of the more traditional empires. It was the end of kingdoms. It really reshaped much of the globe much more around states defined by nations rather than states defined by monarchies or states defined by empires. And it was also the first war where technology, or I would say modern technology-- technology has always played a major role in wars. In fact, wars have been a catalyst for technology often. But it was the first time that much of what we consider to be modern technology played a huge role in the actual carrying out of the war. And to a large degree, this is what made the war so much bloodier, and one could argue, even more protracted. So here I have a bunch of pictures of the various technologies used in World War I. Here in this picture you have a machine gun, which obviously allows you to indiscriminately mow down folks. These guys, it looks like they might be in some type of a trench. And so you could imagine that combination if viewed from above. So let's say that this is a trench. This is a trench right over here. We're looking from above. So there's some people sitting in the trench. A couple of these folks have machine guns. The rest of the guys just have rifles over here. If you wanted to storm this trench, you'd be in a bad situation. The guy with the machine gun essentially could just mow people down. They also tended to use barbed wire. Barbed wire wasn't invented in World War I. It was invented many decades before in the 1800s. But that would make it very hard for someone to cross this period. They would get stuck in it. At which point these guys in the trench could shoot him down. And it would be very hard to shoot the guys in the trench. So it also, other than making it very deadly, it gave all the advantages to the defense. So any time someone wanted to gain ground, especially in one of the fronts where trench warfare was being used, it was a hugely, hugely, hugely bloody affair. The other technology that came into mainstream use in World War I was the use of gas, and in particular poison gas. And as you see these gentleman right over here, they're wearing gas masks because they're afraid that their opponent is going to use poison gas. And the benefit of gas in particular is let's say you have an artillery shell that you throw over and it doesn't hit anybody. But then it starts releasing a canister of-- let me do that in a different color-- it starts releasing a canister of gas. So the gas I've drawn in this purplish color. And so it doesn't have to be a direct hit. It can just linger there and infect that trench. And it'll affect everyone there. And gas warfare was-- actually, the Germans weren't first to use just gas warfare. But they were the first to use very lethal, what we would call poison, gas. And in particular in 1915, they used chlorine gas. So let me write that down. Chlorine gas, which immediately attacks the respiratory system of the person who inhales it. And they essentially choke to death within seconds or minutes. They also used phosgene gas because this did not stimulate that choking. And in some ways it could infiltrate the respiratory system even more. It had a delayed effect. So it would linger around. And you have the use of mustard gas. Mustard gas was very hard to protect against. It wouldn't immediately have you choke to death like chlorine gas. It would be severe blistering. It would essentially take you out of the battle. It was very hard to protect against. And it would also linger around in the trench. So it made the trench a very toxic environment to work in. So these are very, very, very ugly weapons. I mean, war itself is ugly. Weapons themselves are ugly. I mean, the machine gun is not a pleasant weapon. It can mow people down. But even folks who view something like a machine gun as an acceptable thing tend to view these things as particularly ugly things to use. Other weapons that showed up in World War I, we talked about this in other videos, but the tank started to become a factor. This right over here is an American tank. Obviously, with these treads it can go in tough terrain. It's heavily, heavily armored. When you talk about this trench type of thing, well, if you've got a big hulking beast, maybe that could roll through the barbed wire and take some beating and maybe eventually-- so you could imagine a tank over here, it could eventually-- and actually the tanks at this time did not have these big turrets. So they might have looked something more like that. But this might be able to actually be part of an offensive against a trench like this. We've talked extensively about submarine warfare in World War I. The Germans especially used it, essentially to have a chance against the dominant British Navy. Unrestricted U-boat warfare was one of the primary reasons given by the Americans as to why they entered the war on the side of the entente. These are World War I era US submarines, just to give an idea of how they actually looked. And in some ways the best foreshadowing of what would play a major, major, major role in future wars it was the bringing of heavier than air craft into the war. So in particular, we're talking about airplanes. So before this, you had stuff like balloons and zeppelins used for reconnaissance, used to see where we should aim the artillery, things like that. But now you had the Wright brothers only, frankly, several years before inventing the engine powered heavier than air craft. And at first the airplane, in the beginning stages the war, was used for reconnaissance. But as the technology improved, as the engines improved, it started to be used for bombing. It started to actually used for air to air combat. And out of all of the folks involved in air to air combat, this gentleman right over here is probably the most famous. Although you might not recognize his name. He's been turned into a bit of a caricature in the modern world. But this is Manfred von Richthofen. And he was a pilot for the Germans. And he's more famously known as the Red Baron. And he was called the Red Baron because he was actually a Baron. It is a title of nobility in imperial Germany. And he painted his plane red. So this is a picture of his plane right over here. So if I were to color it in-- I guess this isn't quite red. I should actually probably try to get a more reddish color. So maybe this is more of a red. So this is obviously a black and white photograph, but maybe if I color it in for you, you'll get more of the feeling of what his plane might have looked like. And it was a triplane. It had these three wings right over here, or three levels of wings. So whatever, his plane was red. That's why he was called the Red Baron. And he was famous for being the most lethal pilot in all of the war. He has 80 confirmed kills. He was able to down 80 enemy aircraft. So 80 confirmed wins, I guess you can say in combat, which is more than any other folks in World War I. So very, very famous pilot. He himself-- when you're talking about any of the combatants in World War I did not have a long life expectancy. The pilots especially this was a dangerous game. And he also, despite being the top pilot, the top ace, amongst all the pilots in World War I, he also ended up getting shot in the air in 1918. He literally got shot through the lungs and the heart. He somehow managed to land his plane. And when the people ran up to him, the accounts say, that his famous last words as he died, right when they ran up to him, was "kaput". So interesting. And on top of that, he's now been turned into a bit of a caricature. I mean, us in the West, in the US, we recognize the brand Red Baron pizza. It is named for the Red Baron, for Manfred von Richthofen. Kind of a strange name, I think, for a pizza company. I mean, he's not even Italian. But that's, I guess, what we know him for. But you see, this guy right over here looks a lot more like Tom Selleck than look like the real Manfred von Richthofen.

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Technology in World War I (video) | Khan Academy

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World War I shaped our world in many, many, many ways. And it's important to realize it wasn't that long ago. It was not even 100 years ago. But it was really the end of the more traditional empires.

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The Fourteen Points speech of President Woodrow Wilson was an address delivered before a joint meeting of Congress on January 8, 1918, during which Wilson outlined his vision for a stable, long-lasting peace in Europe, the Americas and the rest of the world following World War I.

Wilson's proposal called for the victorious Allies to set unselfish peace terms with the vanquished Central Powers of World War I, including freedom of the seas, the restoration of territories conquered during the war and the right to national self-determination in such contentious regions as the Balkans.

The devastation and carnage of the First World War grimly illustrated to Wilson the unavoidable relationship between international stability and American national security.

At the same time, he sought to placate American isolationists by stating that the world must "be made fit and safe to live in; and particularly that it be made safe for every peace-loving nation which, like our own, wishes to live its own life, determine its own institutions, be assured of justice and fair dealing by the other peoples of the world as against force and selfish aggression."

What Were the Fourteen Points?

In his speech, Wilson itemized 14 strategies to ensure national security and world peace. Several points addressed specific territorial issues in Europe, but the most significant sections set the tone for postwar American diplomacy and the ideals that would form the backbone of U.S. foreign policy as the nation achieved superpower status in the early 20th century.

Wilson could foresee that international relations would only become more important to American security and global commerce. He advocated equal trade conditions, arms reduction and national sovereignty for former colonies of Europe's weakening empires.

One of Wilson's purposes in delivering the Fourteen Points speech was to present a practical alternative to the traditional notion of an international balance of power preserved by alliances among nations-belief in the viability of which had been shattered by World War I-and to the Bolshevik-inspired dreams of world revolution that at the time were gaining ground both within and outside of Russia.

Wilson hoped also to keep a conflict-ridden Russia in the war on the Allied side. This effort met with failure, as the Bolsheviks sought peace with the Central Powers at the end of 1917, shortly after taking power following the Russian Revolution.

In other ways, however, Wilson's Fourteen Points played an essential role in world politics over the next several years. The speech was translated and distributed to the soldiers and citizens of Germany and Austria-Hungary and contributed to their decision to agree to an armistice in November 1918.

Treaty of Versailles

Like the man himself, Wilson's Fourteen Points were liberal, democratic and idealistic. He spoke in grand and inspiring terms, but was less certain of the specifics of how his aims would be achieved.

At the Paris Peace Conference, Wilson had to contend with the leaders of the other victorious Allied nations, who disagreed with many of the Fourteen Points and demanded stiff penalties for Germany in the Treaty of Versailles.

Importantly, Wilson urged the establishment of an international governing body of united nations for the purpose of guaranteeing political independence and territorial integrity to great and small countries alike. His idea gave birth to the short-lived League of Nations. The more viable United Nations would come into existence only after the conclusion of another devastating global conflict: World War II.

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The Fourteen Points speech of President Woodrow Wilson was an address delivered before a joint meeting of Congress on January 8, 1918, during which Wilson outlined his vision for a stable, long-lasting peace in Europe, the Americas and the rest of the world following World War I.

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Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand:
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/archduke-ferdinand-assassinated
New Technology of World War 1:
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/world-history/euro-hist/world-war-i-fighting/v/technology-in-world-war-i
President Wilson's 14 Points:
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/wilson-delivers-fourteen-points-speech
Treaty of Versailles:
https://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/treaty-of-versailles-1024x532.jpg?ezimgfmt=rs:354x184/rscb2/ng:webp/ngcb2