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Vilma Loveall  Period 9 (1980-) Oil Dependence and U.S. Foreign Policy  

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Vilma Loveall  Period 9 (1980-) Oil Dependence and U.S. Foreign Policy  

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U.S. oil development spans three major periods: the rise of oil as a commodity, beginning in 1850; the post–World War II age of geopolitical competition; and the post–Cold War era of deregulation and diversification. Most recently, Russia’s war with Ukraine has aggravated geopolitical tensions and revived the debate about U.S. energy.

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The United States' dependence on oil has long influenced its foreign policy. U.S. oil development spans three major periods: the rise of oil as a commodity, beginning in 1850; the post-World War II age of geopolitical competition; and the post-Cold War era of deregulation and diversification. Most recently, Russia's war with Ukraine has aggravated geopolitical tensions and revived the debate about U.S. energy independence.

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Timeline: Oil Dependence and U.S. Foreign Policy

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The United States' dependence on oil has long influenced its foreign policy. This timeline traces the story of U.S. oil development.

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Vilma Loveall Period 8 (1945-1980) Industrial Pollution

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Vilma Loveall Period 8 (1945-1980) Industrial Pollution

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As cities became more populated towards the end of the 19th century, industrialized cities across Europe and the United States were experiencing a new kind of pollution: waste from industries and factories.

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CLEVELAND, Ohio - The water quality improvements the Cuyahoga River has undergone since its iconic fire almost 50 years ago are well-documented. Now, another chapter has been added to the environmental success story: the release of a new documentary film on the YouTube channel.

The 12-minute video, "Celebrating the Comeback of the Burning River, 1969-2019," traces the years since the fire instigated the launch of the federal Clean Water Act by environmentalists, and the river's inspiring transformation since then.

The film is illustrated by archival footage and interviews with some of the key participants in the river's rebirth, such as river advocates Elaine Marsh and Jane Goodman, and the Ohio EPA's Bob Wysenski and Bill Zawiski. The movie was produced by the Ohio EPA.

For those too young to remember the black-and-white images from local television newsreels, the film presents horrific scenes of fiery plumes of smoke on the river, fire boats pumping water on a burning railroad trestle, dead fish floating on the surface, and thick blobs of oil bobbing in the poisonous water - all accompanied by a haunting musical soundtrack.

No photographs or film from the June 1969 burning river are known to exist, although photographers captured firefighters hosing down a charred wooden bridge in the days that followed. A Time magazine story on the burning river that sparked nationwide outrage contained a photograph from a previous river-burning event.

"The air was choking and the river ... there was oil, there was pickle liquor, it was flowing orange and red. It was almost an alien environment," said Wysenski, a retired Ohio EPA water quality specialist who worked on the committee formed to oversee the river cleanup.

"There were days when I thought it might be hopeless," Wysenski said in his filmed interview.

Contrast those post-apocalyptic scenes with the river as it appears in 2018: blue water, a vegetated shoreline with wildflowers skirting the Towpath Trail, and hikers, bikers, boaters and pedestrians enjoying the waterfront.

"So often in the environmental community it's kind of a bummer, folks see the mistakes, and people feel like there's a lack of progress," said Kyle Dreyfuss-Wells, CEO of the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, during the film. "But when you come to Cleveland and when you go to the Cuyahoga River and you walk along the East Bank of the Flats, you can see it and you can smell it and it's a huge improvement."

Ohio EPA spokeswoman Heidi Griesmer said the agency will promote the film in advance of its premier screening at the River Rally in Cleveland June 21-24, an event to commemorate the 50-year anniversary of the river burning.

"Many people in our agency have spent a lot of time, some their entire careers, working to restore the Cuyahoga River," Griesmer said. "The idea was to focus on the environmental movement, the river's comeback and the restoration work that remains."
Clean river spurs economic progress
Recent water tests have found the cleanest river readings in the past 20 years, and water quality assessments in compliance with state standards. That's a far cry from 1988, when the Cuyahoga was designated one of the 43-most-polluted waterways in North America.

Most of those improvements are the environmental benefits of billions of dollars spent on sewer infrastructure projects and rebuilt water-treatment plants in Cleveland and Akron, as well as new federal regulations restricting industrial discharges, said Frank Greenland, director of watershed programs for the sewer district.

A cleaner river has brought economic stimulus to the cities, Greenland said.

"The Metroparks have taken control of certain areas, and now you've got a restaurant on the river [Merwin's Wharf]," he said. "We've got kayakers on the river, St. Ignatius and other high school teams are sculling on the river, and there's a lot of boating interests and sports fishing going on. All of these are quality of life enhancements."

The next step in the Cuyahoga River's rescue effort could have the greatest impact on water quality, but will require the greatest investment, said Bill Zawiski, an environmental scientist with the Ohio EPA. That would be a $70 million project to demolish the Gorge Dam, a 57-foot-high, 440-foot-wide defunct hydroelectric plant that now serves no useful purpose. Most of the money will finance the removal of polluted sediment that has built up behind the dam over the past century.

Plans are also underway to remove the Brecksville Dam in 2019.

Combined, the dam removals would release a free-flowing river from Lake Rockwell in Kent to its mouth at Lake Erie.

"The Gorge Dam is probably the largest unresolved water quality issue on the Cuyahoga River," said Elaine Marsh, a watershed specialist with the Summit Metro Parks and facilitator for the Gorge Dam Removal Stakeholder Committee.

The dam's removal will expose a two-mile stretch of rocky river bottom, producing whitewater rapids that plunge more than 200 feet, Marsh said.

"So we will have this spectacularly beautiful geology which provides opportunities for tourism, even beyond what we experience now, plus opportunities for expert paddlers," she said.

Cuyahoga Falls Mayor Don Walters said the two dams previously removed in his city have produced Class 5 rapids downtown. But the 2-1/2-mile stretch of whitewater in the Gorge would be the best kayaking rapids east of the Mississippi River, Walters said.

Marsh and Zawiski offer the Cuyahoga River as a symbol to the world of the potential for environmental rescue projects.

"I embrace the burning river," Marsh said, providing an epilogue to the film. "I know what it meant when it burned. We have taken that burning river and turned it into a phoenix. Where we are right now is kind of a zenith. It's very important to continue these values so that the zenith continues to improve."

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Cuyahoga River's recovery since 1969 fire documented in new Ohio EPA film on YouTube

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The Ohio EPA has produced a 12-minute video on the YouTube channel that traces the 50 years since the Cuyahoga River caught fire in 1969, instigating the launch of the federal Clean Water Act by environmentalists, and the river's inspiring transformation since then.

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Vilma Loveall Period 7 (1890-1945) Atomic bomb

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Vilma Loveall Period 7 (1890-1945) Atomic bomb

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The Manhattan Project was the code name for the American-led effort to develop a functional atomic weapon during World War II. Started in response to fears that German scientists had been working on a weapon using nuclear technology since the 1930s—and that Adolf Hitler was prepared to use it.

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America Declares War

The agencies leading up to the Manhattan Project were first formed in 1939 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt after U.S. intelligence operatives reported that scientists working for Adolf Hitler were already working on a nuclear weapon.

At first, Roosevelt set up the Advisory Committee on Uranium, a team of scientists and military officials tasked with researching uranium's potential role as a weapon. Based on the committee's findings, the U.S. government started funding research by Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard at Columbia University, which was focused on radioactive isotope separation (also known as uranium enrichment) and nuclear chain reactions.

The Advisory Committee on Uranium's name was changed in 1940 to the National Defense Research Committee, before finally being renamed the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) in 1941 and adding Fermi to its list of members.

That same year, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt declared that the U.S. would enter World War II and align with Great Britain, France and Russia to fight against the Germans in Europe and the Japanese in the Pacific theater.

The Army Corps of Engineers joined the OSRD in 1942 with President Roosevelt's approval, and the project officially morphed into a military initiative, with scientists serving in a supporting role.

The Manhattan Project Begins

The OSRD formed the Manhattan Engineer District in 1942 and based it in the New York City borough of the same name. U.S. Army Colonel Leslie R. Groves was appointed to lead the project.

Fermi and Szilard were still engaged in research on nuclear chain reactions, the process by which atoms separate and interact, now at the University of Chicago, and successfully enriching uranium to produce uranium-235.

Meanwhile, scientists like Glenn Seaborg were producing microscopic samples of pure plutonium, and Canadian government and military officials were working on nuclear research at several sites in Canada.

On December 28, 1942, President Roosevelt authorized the formation of the Manhattan Project to combine these various research efforts with the goal of weaponizing nuclear energy. Facilities were set up in remote locations in New Mexico, Tennessee and Washington, as well as sites in Canada, for this research and related atomic tests to be performed.

Robert Oppenheimer and Project Y

Theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was already working on the concept of nuclear fission (along with Edward Teller and others) when he was named director of the Los Alamos Laboratory in northern New Mexico in 1943.

Los Alamos Laboratory-the creation of which was known as Project Y-was formally established on January 1, 1943. The complex is where the first Manhattan Project bombs were built and tested.

On July 16, 1945, in a remote desert location near Alamogordo, New Mexico, the first atomic bomb was successfully detonated-the Trinity Test -creating an enormous mushroom cloud some 40,000 feet high and ushering in the Atomic Age.

Scientists working under Oppenheimer had developed two distinct types of bombs: a uranium-based design called "the Little Boy" and a plutonium-based weapon called "the Fat Man." With both designs in the works at Los Alamos, they became an important part of U.S. strategy aimed at bringing an end to World War II.

The Potsdam Conference

With the Germans sustaining heavy losses in Europe and nearing surrender, the consensus among U.S. military leaders in 1945 was that the Japanese would fight to the bitter end and force a full-scale invasion of the island nation, resulting in significant casualties on both sides.

On July 26, 1945, at the Potsdam Conference in the Allied-occupied city of Potsdam, Germany, the U.S. delivered an ultimatum to Japan-surrender under the terms outlined in the Potsdam Declaration (which, among other provisions, called for the Japanese to form a new, democratic and peaceful government) or face "prompt and utter destruction."

As the Potsdam Declaration provided no role for the emperor in Japan's future, the ruler of the island nation was unwilling to accept its terms.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Meanwhile, the military leaders of the Manhattan Project had identified Hiroshima, Japan, as an ideal target for an atomic bomb, given its size and the fact that there were no known American prisoners of war in the area. A forceful demonstration of the technology developed in New Mexico was deemed necessary to encourage the Japanese to surrender.

With no surrender agreement in place, on August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay bomber plane dropped the as-yet untested "Little Boy" bomb some 1,900 feet above Hiroshima, causing unprecedented destruction and death over an area of five square miles. Three days later, with still no surrender declared, on August 9th, the "Fat Man" bomb was dropped over Nagasaki, the site of a torpedo-building plant, destroying more than three square miles of the city.

The two bombs combined killed more than 100,000 people and leveled the two Japanese cities to the ground.

The Japanese informed Washington, which following Roosevelt's death was under the new leadership of President Harry Truman, of their intention to surrender on August 10th, and formally surrendered on August 14, 1945.

Legacy of the Manhattan Project

With the development of weapons designed to bring about the end of World War II as its stated mission, it's easy to think that the story of the Manhattan Project ends in August 1945. However, that's far from the case.

Following the end of the war, the United States formed the Atomic Energy Commission to oversee research efforts designed to apply the technologies developed under the Manhattan Project to other fields.

Ultimately, in 1964, then-President Lyndon B. Johnson put an end to the U.S. government's effective monopoly over nuclear energy by allowing for private ownership of nuclear materials.

The nuclear fission technology perfected by the Manhattan Project engineers has since become the basis for the development of nuclear reactors, power generators, as well as other innovations, including medical imaging systems and radiation therapies for various forms of cancer.

Sources

Manhattan: The Army and the Atomic Bomb. U.S. Army Center of Military History.
The Manhattan Project-Its Story. U.S. Department of Energy: Office of Scientific and Technical Information.
Leo Szilárd, a traffic light and a slice of nuclear history. Scientific American.
J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967). Atomic Archive.

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The agencies leading up to the Manhattan Project were first formed in 1939 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt after U.S. intelligence operatives reported that scientists working for Adolf Hitler were already working on a nuclear weapon. At first, Roosevelt set up the Advisory Committee on Uranium, a team of scientists and military officials tasked with researching uranium's potential role as a weapon.

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Vilma Loveall Period 7 (1890-1945) Conservation Movement

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Vilma Loveall Period 7 (1890-1945) Conservation Movement

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Emerged during the Progressive era from 1890 - 1920. The goal  was to preserve important natural features in America and advocated the establishment of state and national and state parks, wildlife refuges and national monuments led by President Theodore Roosevelt.

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Vilma Loveall Period 6 (1865-1898) Barbed Wire Changed the American West

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Vilma Loveall Period 6 (1865-1898) Barbed Wire Changed the American West

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The simple but effective fencing material forever changed the lifestyle of cowboys, ranchers, and Native Americans.  The nomadic way of life that these cultures enjoyed for thousands of years was over, thanks to barbed wire. In fact, many Native Americans referred to barbed wire as the Devil’s Rope.

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In 1848 the rush for gold accelerated into a stampede. Gold seekers traveled overland across the mountains to California. The populations of many of the coastal towns, and  many countries  were depleted as prospective prospectors headed to the gold fields.

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America the Story of Us: Gold Rush | History

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Vilma Loveall Period 4 (1800-1848) Texas annexation

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Vilma Loveall Period 4 (1800-1848) Texas annexation

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On December 29, 1845, Texas became the 28th state in the United States. Formerly part of Mexico, Texas had been an independent country since 1836, the annexation took nearly 10 years entering the nation as a state that legalized slavery, and seceded from it 15 years later as part of the Confederate States of America.

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Vilma Loveall Period 3 (1754-1800) Royal Proclamation of 1763

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Vilma Loveall Period 3 (1754-1800) Royal Proclamation of 1763

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This royal proclamation, issued on October 7, 1763, closed down colonial expansion westward beyond the Appalachian mountains. The edict forbade private citizens and colonial governments alike from buying land or making any agreements with natives.

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7th October 1763: The Royal Proclamation of 1763 issued by King George III

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Vilma Loveall      Period 2 (1607-1754)  South Plantations

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Vilma Loveall      Period 2 (1607-1754)  South Plantations

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The climate and soil of the South were suitable for the cultivation of commercial (plantation) crops such as tobacco, rice, and indigo, slavery developed in the southern colonies on a much larger scale than in the northern colonies.

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Cotton Plantations Photos and Premium High Res Pictures - Getty Images

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Find the perfect Cotton Plantations stock photos and editorial news pictures from Getty Images. Select from premium Cotton Plantations of the highest quality.

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Vilma Loveall                               Period 1 (1492-1607)Europeans brought sickness to the Americas  

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Vilma Loveall                               Period 1 (1492-1607)Europeans brought sickness to the Americas  

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When the Europeans arrived, carrying germs which thrived in dense, semi-urban populations, the indigenous people of the Americas were effectively doomed. They had never experienced smallpox, measles or flu before, and the viruses tore through the continent, killing an estimated 90% of Native Americans.

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The Story Of... Smallpox - and other Deadly Eurasian Germs

Much of the credit for European military success in the New World can be handed to the superiority of their weapons, their literary heritage, even the fact they had unique load-bearing mammals, like horses. These factors combined, gave the conquistadors a massive advantage over the sophisticated civilisations of the Aztec and Inca empires.

But weapons alone can't account for the breathtaking speed with which the indigenous population of the New World were completely wiped out.

Within just a few generations, the continents of the Americas were virtually emptied of their native inhabitants - some academics estimate that approximately 20 million people may have died in the years following the European invasion - up to 95% of the population of the Americas.

No medieval force, no matter how bloodthirsty, could have achieved such enormous levels of genocide. Instead, Europeans were aided by a deadly secret weapon they weren't even aware they were carrying: Smallpox.

Smallpox acted as a form of biological weapon

Smallpox is a viral infection which usually enters the body through the nose or throat. From here the virus travels to the lungs, where it multiplies and spreads to the lymphatic system. Within a few days, large pustules begin to appear all over the victim's skin.

Starting with the hands and the face, and then spreading to cover the rest of the body, each blister is packed full of smallpox DNA. If punctured, these blisters become highly infectious, projecting fresh smallpox particles into the air and onto surrounding surfaces -such as someone else's skin. It is a disease that requires close human contact to replicate and survive.

The total incubation period lasts 12 days, at which point the patient will will either have died or survived. But throughout that period, if gone unchecked, they may have passed the disease to an enormous number of people. But the disease requires close human contact to replicate and survive.

Smallpox is a remarkably effective, and remarkably stable, infection - research has shown that over the course of 10 years, as few as three individual bases may change in a strain's DNA. The disease found an effective formula thousands of years ago, and there's no reason to change it.

So where does this deadly disease come from, and why was it linked to Europeans?

For thousands of years, the people of Eurasia lived in close proximity to the largest
variety of domesticated mammals in the world - eating, drinking, and breathing in the germs these animals bore. Over time, animal infections crossed species, evolving into new strains which became deadly to man. Diseases like smallpox, influenza and measles were in fact the deadly inheritance of the Eurasian farming tradition - the product of thousands of years spent farming livestock.

These epidemic Eurasian diseases flourished in dense communities and tended to explode in sudden, overwhelming spates of infection and death. Transmitted via coughing, sneezing and tactile infection, they wreaked devastation throughout Eurasian history - and in the era before antibiotics, thousands died.

But not everyone.

With each epidemic eruption, some people survived, acquiring antibodies and immunities which they passed on to the next generation. Over time, the population of Europe gained increased immunity, and the devastating impact of traditional infections decreased.

Yet the people of the New World had no history of prior exposure to these germs. They farmed only one large mammal - the llama - and even this was geographically isolated. The llama was never kept indoors, it wasn't milked and only occasionally eaten - so the people of the New World were not troubled by cross-species viral infection.

When the Europeans arrived, carrying germs which thrived in dense, semi-urban populations, the indigenous people of the Americas were effectively doomed. They had never experienced smallpox, measles or flu before, and the viruses tore through the continent, killing an estimated 90% of Native Americans.

Smallpox is believed to have arrived in the Americas in 1520 on a Spanish ship sailing from Cuba, carried by an infected African slave. As soon as the party landed in Mexico, the infection began its deadly voyage through the continent. Even before the arrival of Pizarro, smallpox had already devastated the Inca Empire, killing the Emperor Huayna Capac and unleashing a bitter civil war that distracted and weakened his successor, Atahuallpa.

In the era of global conquest which followed, European colonizers were assisted around the world by the germs which they carried. A 1713 smallpox epidemic in the Cape of Good Hope decimated the South African Khoi San people, rendering them incapable of resisting the process of colonization. European germs also wreaked devastation on the aboriginal communities of Australia and New Zealand.

More victims of colonization were killed by Eurasian germs, than by either the gun or the sword, making germs the deadliest agent of conquest.

Where to next?

Find out more about germs go to the Story of... Malaria.

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Guns Germs & Steel: Variables. Smallpox | PBS

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The Story Of... Smallpox - and other Deadly Eurasian Germs Much of the credit for European military success in the New World can be handed to the superiority of their weapons, their literary heritage, even the fact they had unique load-bearing mammals, like horses.

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J.P. Morgan is one of the most powerful bankers known during his time. He financed railroads and helped organize U.S. Steel and General Electric. He helped Wall Street out of the 1907 financial crisis. Some people thought he had too much power and manipulated the financial system for his own gain.

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The Gilded Age cities were seeing advances in bridges and canals, elevators and skyscrapers, trolley lines, and subways. The growth of these cities is known as urbanization. These cities were also seeing population growth and this came with rises in crime rates and rapid disease spread.

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The first formal peace movements started in 1815 and 1816. It is a social movement that seeks to end war and stop violence in a particular place or situation.

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After Reconstruction, racial segregation laws were enacted. These laws were known as Jim Crow laws. These laws separated people of color and whites. It also took away their rights to vote.

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John Brown was from a family with anti-slavery views. He was a conductor of the underground railway and helped many slaves escape from slavery. He moved to Kansas territory and led some men to Pottawatomie Creek. He raided Missouri, freeing eleven slaves and killing the slave owner. While Brown and his men were raiding the Federal Arsenal, many of his men were killed, he was injured, and he was found guilty of murder, inciting slave insurrection, and treason against Virginia. Many people considered him a hero but many also did not agree with his violent ways. He was hung on December 2, 1859.

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John Brown was a leading figure in the abolitionist movement in the pre-Civil War United States. Unlike many anti-slavery activists, he was not a pacifist and believed in aggressive action against slaveholders and any government officials who enabled them. An entrepreneur who ran tannery and cattle trading businesses prior to the economic crisis of 1839, Brown became involved in the abolitionist movement following the brutal murder of Presbyterian minister and anti-slavery activist Elijah P. Lovejoy in 1837. He said at the time, "Here, before God, in the presence of these witnesses, from this time, I consecrate my life to the destruction of slavery!"
WATCH: Escape to Freedom on HISTORY Vault
Early Life

Brown was born on May 9, 1800, in Torrington, Connecticut, the son of Owen and Ruth Mills Brown. His father, who was in the tannery business, relocated the family to Ohio, where the abolitionist spent most of his childhood.

The Brown family's new home of Hudson, Ohio, happened to be a key stop on the Underground Railroad, and Owen Brown became active in the effort to bring former enslaved people to freedom. The family home soon became a safe house for fugitive enslaved people.

The younger Brown left his family at 16 for Massachusetts and then Connecticut, where he attended school and was ordained a Congregational minister. By 1819, though, he had returned to Hudson and opened a tannery of his own, on the opposite side of town from his father. He also married and started a family during that time.

Did you know? John Brown declared bankruptcy at age 42 and had more than 20 lawsuits filed against him.

Family and Financial Problems

Initially, Brown's business ventures were very successful, but by the 1830s his finances took a turn for the worse. It didn't help that he lost his wife and two of his children to illness at the time.

He relocated the family business and his four surviving children to present-day Kent, Ohio. However, Brown's financial losses continued to mount, although he did remarry in 1833.

With a new business partner, Brown set up shop in Springfield, Massachusetts, hoping to reverse his fortunes. In addition to finding some business success, Brown quickly became immersed in the city's influential abolitionist community.

He also became more familiar with the so-called mercantile class of wealthy entrepreneurs and their often ruthless business practices. It is in Springfield that many historians believe Brown became a radical abolitionist.

Timbuctoo

By 1850, he had relocated his family again, this time to the Timbuctoo farming community in the Adirondack region of New York State. Abolitionist leader Gerrit Smith was providing land in the area to Black farmers-at that time, owning land or a house enabled Black men to vote.

Brown bought a farm there himself, near Lake Placid, New York, where he not only worked the land but could advise and assist members of the Black communities in the region.

Bleeding Kansas

Brown's first militant actions as part of the abolitionist movement didn't occur until 1855. By then, two of his sons had started families of their own, in the western territory that eventually became the state of Kansas.

His sons were involved in the abolitionist movement in the territory, and they summoned their father, fearing attack from pro-slavery settlers. Confident he and his family could bring Kansas into the Union as a "free" state for Black people, Brown went west to join his sons.

After pro-slavery activists attacked at Lawrence, Kansas, in 1856, Brown and other abolitionists mounted a counterattack. They targeted a group of pro-slavery settlers called the Pottawatomie Rifles.

What became known as the Pottawatomie Massacre occurred on May 25, 1856, and resulted in the deaths of five pro-slavery settlers.
WATCH: Slavery in America
These and other events surrounding Kansas' difficult transition to statehood, made even more complicated by the issue of slavery, became known as Bleeding Kansas. But John Brown's legend as a militant abolitionist was just beginning.

Over the next several years, Brown's efforts in Kansas continued, and two of his sons were captured - and a third was killed - by pro-slavery settlers.

The abolitionist was undaunted, however, and Brown still advocated for the movement, traveling all over the country to raise money and obtain weapons for the cause. In the meantime, Kansas held elections and voted to be a free state in 1858.

Harpers Ferry

By early 1859, Brown was leading raids to free enslaved people in areas where forced labor was still in practice, primarily in the present-day Midwest. At this time, he also met Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, activists and abolitionists both, and they became important people in Brown's life, reinforcing much of his ideology.

With Tubman, whom he called "General Tubman," Brown began planning an attack on slaveholders, as well as a United States military armory, at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), using armed freed enslaved people. He hoped the attack would help lay the groundwork for a revolt, but historians have called the raid a dress rehearsal for the Civil War.

Brown recruited 22 men in all, including his sons Owen and Watson, and several freed enslaved people. The group received military training in advance of the raid from experts within the abolitionist movement.

John Brown's Raid

The operation began on October 16, 1859, with the planned capture of Colonel Lewis Washington, a distant relative of George Washington, at the former's estate. The Washington family continued to own enslaved people.

A group of men, led by Owen Brown, was able to kidnap Washington, while the rest of the men, with John Brown at the lead, began a raid on Harpers Ferry to seize both weapons and pro-slavery leaders in the town. Key to the raid's success was accomplishing the objective - namely the seizure of the armory - before officials in Washington, D.C., could be informed and send in reinforcements.

To that end, John Brown's men stopped a Baltimore & Ohio Railroad train headed for the nation's capital. However, Brown relented and let the train continue-the conductor ultimately notified authorities in Washington about what was happening at Harpers Ferry.

It was during the efforts to stop the train that the first casualty of the raid on Harpers Ferry occurred. A baggage handler at the town's train station was shot in the back and killed when he refused the orders of Brown's men. The victim was a free Black man-one of the very people the abolitionist movement sought to help.

John Brown's Fort

Brown's men were able to capture several local slaveowners but, by the end of the day on October 16, local townspeople began to fight back. Early the next morning, they raised a local militia, which captured a bridge crossing the Potomac River, effectively cutting off an important escape route for Brown and his compatriots.

Although Brown and his men were able to take the Harpers Ferry armory during the morning of October 17, the local militia soon had the facility surrounded, and the two sides traded gunfire.

There were casualties on both sides, with four Harpers Ferry citizens killed, including the town's mayor. A militia made up of men from the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad arrived in town and assisted local residents in countering Brown's attack.

Brown was forced to move his remaining men and their captives to the armory's engine house, a smaller building that later became known as John Brown's Fort. They effectively barricaded themselves inside.

The militia attack was able to free several of Brown's captives, although eight of the railroad men died in the fighting. With no escape route and under heavy fire, Brown sent his son Watson out to surrender. However, the younger Brown was shot by the militia and mortally wounded.

Robert E. Lee and the Marines

Late in the afternoon of October 17, 1859, President James Buchanan ordered a company of Marines under the command of Brevet Colonel (and future Confederate General) Robert E. Lee to march into Harpers Ferry.

The next morning, Lee attempted to get Brown to surrender, but the latter refused. Ordering the Marines under his command to attack, the military men stormed John Brown's Fort, taking all of the abolitionist fighters and their captives alive.

In the end, John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry ended in failure.

John Brown's Body

Lee and his men arrested Brown and transported him to the courthouse in nearby Charles Town, where he was imprisoned until he could be tried. In November, a jury found Brown guilty of treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Brown was hanged on December 2, 1859, at the age of 59. Among the witnesses to his execution were Lee and the actor and pro-slavery activist John Wilkes Booth. (Booth would later assassinate President Abraham Lincoln over the latter's decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.)

After he was executed, his wife, Mary Ann (Day) took John Brown's body to the family farm in upstate New York for burial. The farm and gravesite are owned by New York State and operated as the John Brown Farm State Historic Site, a National Historic Landmark.

Slavery would ultimately come to an end in the United States in 1865, six years after Brown's death, following the Union's defeat of the Confederacy in the Civil War. Although Brown's actions didn't bring an end to slavery, they did spur those opposed to it to more aggressive action, perhaps fueling the bloody conflict that finally ended slavery in America.
READ MORE: 6 Early Abolitionists
Sources

American Battlefield Trust. "John Brown's Harpers Ferry Raid." Battlefields.org.
Bordewich, F.M. (2009). "John Brown's Day of Reckoning." Smithsonianmag.com.
"John Brown." PBS.org.

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John Brown was a leading figure in the abolitionist movement in the pre-Civil War United States. Unlike many anti-slavery activists, he was not a pacifist and believed in aggressive action against slaveholders and any government officials who enabled them.

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Araminta Ross was her original name before she changed it to Harriet Tubman. She worked as a field hand, housekeeper, and childcare provider. She escaped with her brothers and pursued freedom. She was a conductor on the underground railroad. She led many slaves to freedom, including many family members, and risked her life many times. She was also a nurse and spy for the Union army. She was an advocate for women's rights and African Americans. She was well known in her lifetime and dies in 1913.

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0:00 / 3:27•Watch full video

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Harriet Tubman: American abolitionist | Biography

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In 1619, 20 Africans were brought to Jamestown, Virginia. In the 17th and 18th centuries enslaved Africans were mainly used to work tobacco, rice, and indigo plantations. Most northern states abolished slavery between 1774 and 1804 and in 1808 the U.S Congress outlawed slavery. Slavery continued but Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. This still did not completely abolish slavery. It was not until after the Civil War ended in 1865 and the 13th amendment was passed.

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History project on the slave trade by me and Tom B.

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The Indian Removal Act allowed the president to grant Indian tribes unsettled western prairie land in exchange for territories inside state borders. President Andrew Jackson promoted this policy which became the Indian Removal Act of 1830.

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This article was most recently revised and updated by

Indian Removal Act, (May 28, 1830), first major legislative departure from the U.S. policy of officially respecting the legal and political rights of the American Indians. The act authorized the president to grant Indian tribes unsettled western prairie land in exchange for their desirable territories within state borders (especially in the Southeast), from which the tribes would be removed. The rapid settlement of land east of the Mississippi River made it clear by the mid-1820s that the white man would not tolerate the presence of even peaceful Indians there. Pres. Andrew Jackson (1829-37) vigorously promoted this new policy, which became incorporated in the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Although the bill provided only for the negotiation with tribes east of the Mississippi on the basis of payment for their lands, trouble arose when the United States resorted to force to gain the Indians' compliance with its demand that they accept the land exchange and move west.

A number of northern tribes were peacefully resettled in western lands considered undesirable for the white man. The problem lay in the Southeast, where members of what were known as the Five Civilized Tribes ( Chickasaw, Choctaw, Seminole, Cherokee, and Creek) refused to trade their cultivated farms for the promise of strange land in the Indian Territory with a so-called permanent title to that land. Many of these Indians had homes, representative government, children in missionary schools, and trades other than farming. Some 100,000 tribesmen were forced to march westward under U.S. military coercion in the 1830s; up to 25 percent of the Indians, many in manacles, perished en route. The trek of the Cherokee in 1838-39 became known as the infamous " Trail of Tears." Even more reluctant to leave their native lands were the Florida Indians, who fought resettlement for seven years (1835-42) in the second of the Seminole Wars.

The frontier began to be pushed aggressively westward in the years that followed, upsetting the "guaranteed" titles of the displaced tribes and further reducing their relocated holdings.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Adam Augustyn.

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Indian Removal Act | Definition, History, Significance, & Facts

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Indian Removal Act (1830), first major legislative departure from the U.S. policy of officially respecting the legal and political rights of the American Indians. The act authorized the president to grant Indian tribes unsettled western prairie land in exchange for their desirable territories within state borders.

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The Thirteen Colonies are also known as The British Colonies. The middle colonies, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, were looking to practice their own religion and make money. The New England Colonies, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, were farming and fishing communities. There made their own clothes and shoes and grew their own food. The Southern Colonies, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia were wanting to make good money. Those original thirteen colonies are what became the United States.

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The Constitution was written in 1787, ratified in 1788, and put into operation in 1789. It has three main parts, the preamble, which states the goals and purpose of the government. Then there are seven articles that tell the structure of the government. Third, there are 27 amendments to the Constitution. The first ten amendments are the Bill of Rights.

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The Indian Removal Act allowed the president to grant Indian tribes unsettled western prairie land in exchange for territories inside state borders. President Andrew Jackson promoted this policy which became the Indian Removal Act of 1830.

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American abolitionist author.  She wrote the infamous Uncle Tom's Cabin about the life of a slave in the South. Outspoken activist for the abolitionist and women's rights movements in the United States.

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MLA - Michals, Debra. "Harriet Beecher Stowe." National Women's History Museum, 2017. Date accessed.

Chicago - Michals, Debra "Harriet Beecher Stowe." National Women's History Museum. 2017. www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/harriet-beecher-stowe.

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Abolitionist author, Harriet Beecher Stowe rose to fame in 1851 with the publication of her best-selling book, Uncle Tom's Cabin, which highlighted the evils of slavery, angered the slaveholding South.

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This document served as the notice to England that the American colonies were dissatisfied with their reign. The colonies split from English rule.

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Table of Contents

1. America Before the Declaration of Independence

2. Thomas Jefferson Writes the Declaration of Independence

3. The Continental Congress Votes for Independence

The Declaration of Independence was the first formal statement by a nation's people asserting their right to choose their own government.

When armed conflict between bands of American colonists and British soldiers began in April 1775, the Americans were ostensibly fighting only for their rights as subjects of the British crown. By the following summer, with the Revolutionary War in full swing, the movement for independence from Britain had grown, and delegates of the Continental Congress were faced with a vote on the issue. In mid-June 1776, a five-man committee including Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin was tasked with drafting a formal statement of the colonies' intentions. The Congress formally adopted the Declaration of Independence-written largely by Jefferson-in Philadelphia on July 4, a date now celebrated as the birth of American independence.

America Before the Declaration of Independence

Even after the initial battles in the Revolutionary War broke out, few colonists desired complete independence from Great Britain, and those who did-like John Adams- were considered radical. Things changed over the course of the next year, however, as Britain attempted to crush the rebels with all the force of its great army. In his message to Parliament in October 1775, King George III railed against the rebellious colonies and ordered the enlargement of the royal army and navy. News of his words reached America in January 1776, strengthening the radicals' cause and leading many conservatives to abandon their hopes of reconciliation. That same month, the recent British immigrant Thomas Paine published "Common Sense," in which he argued that independence was a "natural right" and the only possible course for the colonies; the pamphlet sold more than 150,000 copies in its first few weeks in publication.

Did you know? Most Americans did not know Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence until the 1790s; before that, the document was seen as a collective effort by the entire Continental Congress.

In March 1776, North Carolina's revolutionary convention became the first to vote in favor of independence; seven other colonies had followed suit by mid-May. On June 7, the Virginia delegate Richard Henry Lee introduced a motion calling for the colonies' independence before the Continental Congress when it met at the Pennsylvania State House (later Independence Hall) in Philadelphia. Amid heated debate, Congress postponed the vote on Lee's resolution and called a recess for several weeks. Before departing, however, the delegates also appointed a five-man committee-including Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, John Adams of Massachusetts, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania and Robert R. Livingston of New York-to draft a formal statement justifying the break with Great Britain. That document would become known as the Declaration of Independence.

Thomas Jefferson Writes the Declaration of Independence

Jefferson had earned a reputation as an eloquent voice for the patriotic cause after his 1774 publication of "A Summary View of the Rights of British America," and he was given the task of producing a draft of what would become the Declaration of Independence. As he wrote in 1823, the other members of the committee "unanimously pressed on myself alone to undertake the draught [sic]. I consented; I drew it; but before I reported it to the committee I communicated it separately to Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams requesting their corrections....I then wrote a fair copy, reported it to the committee, and from them, unaltered to the Congress."

As Jefferson drafted it, the Declaration of Independence was divided into five sections, including an introduction, a preamble, a body (divided into two sections) and a conclusion. In general terms, the introduction effectively stated that seeking independence from Britain had become "necessary" for the colonies. While the body of the document outlined a list of grievances against the British crown, the preamble includes its most famous passage: "We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

The Continental Congress Votes for Independence

The Continental Congress reconvened on July 1, and the following day 12 of the 13 colonies adopted Lee's resolution for independence. The process of consideration and revision of Jefferson's declaration (including Adams' and Franklin's corrections) continued on July 3 and into the late morning of July 4, during which Congress deleted and revised some one-fifth of its text. The delegates made no changes to that key preamble, however, and the basic document remained Jefferson's words. Congress officially adopted the Declaration of Independence later on the Fourth of July (though most historians now accept that the document was not signed until August 2).

The Declaration of Independence became a significant landmark in the history of democracy. In addition to its importance in the fate of the fledgling American nation, it also exerted a tremendous influence outside the United States, most memorably in France during the French Revolution. Together with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence can be counted as one of the three essential founding documents of the United States government.

HISTORY Vault

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America Before the Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson Writes the Declaration of Independence The Continental Congress Votes for Independence The Declaration of Independence was the first formal statement by a nation's people asserting their right to choose their own government.

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The steamboat changed how the rivers were used by the growing nation. It helped with trade, movement of natural resources, and aided in the expansion west.

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Image

Image from Picturenow

Any seagoing vessel drawing energy from a steam-powered engine can be called a steamboat. However, the term most commonly describes the kind of craft propelled by the turning of steam-driven paddle wheels and often found on rivers in the United States in the 19th century. These boats made use of the steam engine invented by the Englishman Thomas Newcomen in the early 18th century and later improved by James Watt of Scotland. Several Americans made efforts to apply this technology to maritime travel. The United States was expanding inland from the Atlantic coast at the time. There was a need for more efficient river transportation, since it took a great deal of muscle power to move a craft against the current.

In 1787, John Fitch demonstrated a working model of the steamboat concept on the Delaware River. The first truly successful design appeared two decades later. It was built by Robert Fulton with the assistance of Robert R. Livingston, the former U.S. minister to France. Fulton's craft made its first voyage in August of 1807, sailing up the Hudson River from New York City to Albany, New York, at an impressive speed of eight kilometers (five miles) per hour. Fulton then began making this round trip on a regular basis for paying customers.

Following this introduction, steamboat traffic grew steadily on the Mississippi River and other river systems in the inland United States. There were numerous kinds of steamboats, which had different functions. The most common type on southern rivers was the packet boat. Packet boats carried human passengers as well as commercial cargo, such as bales of cotton from southern plantations. Compared to other types of craft used at the time, such as flatboats, keelboats, and barges, steamboats greatly reduced both the time and expense of shipping goods to distant markets. For this reason, they were enormously important in the growth and consolidation of the U.S. economy before the Civil War.

Steamboats were a fairly dangerous form of transportation, due to their construction and the nature of how they worked. The boilers used to create steam often exploded when they built up too much pressure. Sometimes debris and obstacles-logs or boulders-in the river caused the boats to sink. This meant that steamboats had a short life span of just four to five years on average, making them less cost-effective than other forms of transportation.

In the later years of the 19th century, larger steam-powered ships were commonly used to cross the Atlantic Ocean. The Great Western, one of the earliest oceangoing steam-powered ships, was large enough to accommodate more than 200 passengers. Steamships became the predominant vehicles for transatlantic cargo shipping as well as passenger travel. Millions of Europeans immigrated to the United States aboard steamships.

By 1900, railroads had long since surpassed steamboats as the dominant form of commercial transport in the United States. Most steamboats were eventually retired, except for a few elegant "showboats" that today serve as tourist attractions.

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October 10, 2022

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Steam-powered vessels were important to the growth of the U.S. economy in the antebellum years.

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The robber barons were industry tycoons in the 19th century. They became wealthy through monopolies during the Industrial Revolution. Several of them were John D. Rockefeller, John Jacob Astor, and Andrew Carnegie. Their names live on in many New York City buildings today.

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Robber baron, pejorative term for one of the powerful 19th-century U.S. industrialists and financiers who made fortunes by monopolizing huge industries through the formation of trusts, engaging in unethical business practices, exploiting workers, and paying little heed to their customers or competition. Alternatively, those who credit the explosive growth of American capitalism during this period to the indefatigable pursuit of success and material wealth are likely to celebrate these entrepreneurial tycoons as "captains of industry." Among the sectors in which they compiled their great wealth were the oil, steel, liquor, cotton, textile, and tobacco industries, railroads, and banks.

It has been argued that these capitalist pioneers were the "antecedents" of the organized crime that emerged in the United States during the Prohibition era (1920-33). The robber barons transformed the wealth of the American frontier into vast financial empires, amassing their fortunes by monopolizing essential industries. In turn, these monopolies were built upon the liberal use of tactics that are today the hallmark of organized crime: intimidation, violence, corruption, conspiracies, and fraud.

Among the earliest of the robber barons was John Jacob Astor, a fur magnate who amassed his fortune through the monopoly held by his American Fur Company over the trade in the central and western United States during the first 30 years of the 19th century. This monopoly was achieved in part by crushing rivals and systematically cheating Native Americans of fur pelts. When his competitors complained to the government, Astor's agents resorted to violence. With his riches, Astor routinely paid off politicians to protect his business interests. At the time of his death, Astor was considered the wealthiest person in the country.

James Fisk, one Wall Street's first great financiers, accumulated much of his fortune by fraudulent stock market practices. Fisk took much of the considerable money he made from smuggling Southern cotton to Northern mills during the American Civil War and invested it in Confederate bonds. He then swindled European investors by selling short when the defeat of the Confederate army was imminent but before Europe learned that the Confederate currency had collapsed.

In 1866, he formed the brokerage firm Fisk and Belden, and later he and his colleagues protected their control over the Erie Railroad Company by issuing fraudulent stock. Along with his associates, Fisk attempted to corner the gold market by inflating the price, which was accomplished by bribing public officials to keep government gold off the market. The venture brought them vast sums but led to a securities market panic that began on September 24, 1869, a day that was long remembered as Black Friday. At the time, the negative repercussions of the gold hoarding shook the economy and the scandal-plagued administration of Pres. Ulysses S. Grant.

Leland Stanford became involved in Republican politics in California and was elected governor in 1861. While governor, Stanford approved millions of dollars in state grants for the construction of a transcontinental railroad line during a period when he was also president of the Central Pacific Railroad. With three colleagues, he formed the Pacific Association and used their combined assets to bribe congressmen and others with political influence in the country's capital. In return, the association was provided 9 million acres (3.6 million hectares) and a $24 million loan financed by federal bonds.

In addition, Stanford and his associates intimidated local governments into providing millions of dollars in subsidies by threatening to have the rail line bypass their communities. In 1885, Stanford was elected to the U.S. Senate by the legislature and re-elected in 1891. In 1885 also, he established what would later become Stanford University. Stanford died in 1893 worth more than $18 billion in 2004 dollars.

John D. Rockefeller made his immense riches from monopolizing America's oil industry. Conspiring with refinery owners, he helped found what became known as the Standard Oil monopoly. The consortium colluded with the railroads to monopolize oil delivery, prompting competitors to allow themselves to be bought by Standard Oil or be forced to pay outrageous shipping costs that would drive them out of business. These who stubbornly resisted were confronted with price wars. By 1890, the Rockefeller trust controlled approximately 90 percent of the petroleum production in the United States, a situation that led to the passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act that same year.

Other robber barons

Among the others who are often counted among the robber barons are financier John Pierpont Morgan, who organized a number of major railroads and consolidated the United States Steel, International Harvester, and General Electric corporations; Andrew Carnegie, who led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century; shipping and railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt; industrialist George Pullman, the inventor of the Pullman sleeping car; and Henry Clay Frick, who helped build the world's largest coke and steel operations. Perhaps ironically, many of the robber barons were also among the most prominent and generous philanthropists in U.S. history.

Stephen Schneider

Monopoly and competition, basic factors in the structure of economic markets. In economics, monopoly and competition signify certain complex relations among firms in an industry. A monopoly implies an exclusive possession of a market by a supplier of a product or a service for which there is no substitute. In...

Organized crime, complex of highly centralized enterprises set up for the purpose of engaging in illegal activities. Such organizations engage in offenses such as cargo theft, fraud, robbery, kidnapping for ransom, and the demanding of "protection" payments. The principal source of income for these criminal syndicates is the supply of...

Prohibition, legal prevention of the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages in the United States from 1920 to 1933 under the terms of the Eighteenth Amendment. Although the temperance movement, which was widely supported, had succeeded in bringing about this legislation, millions of Americans were willing to drink liquor...

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robber baron | Definition, Significance, & Captains of Industry

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Robber baron, pejorative term for one of the 19th-century U.S. industrialists and financiers who made fortunes by monopolizing huge industries. Those who credit U.S. capitalism's growth to these tycoons call them 'captains of industry.' Learn more about the achievements and transgressions of the robber barons.

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Court case and its ruling that was historic for the civil rights movement. It upheld the "separate but equal" doctrine. It allowed segregation to become standard practice in the South.

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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 Reconstruction era of the United States occurred directly after the Civil War. It detailed how the South was supposed to adapt their way of life after the abolishment of slavery.

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What was the Reconstruction era?

Reconstruction, in U.S. history, the period (1865-77) that followed the American Civil War and during which attempts were made to redress the inequities of slavery and its political, social, and economic legacy and to solve the problems arising from the readmission to the Union of the 11 states that had seceded at or before the outbreak of war. Long portrayed by many historians as a time when vindictive Radical Republicans fastened Black supremacy upon the defeated Confederacy, Reconstruction has since the late 20th century been viewed more sympathetically as a laudable experiment in interracial democracy. Reconstruction witnessed far-reaching changes in America's political life. At the national level, new laws and constitutional amendments permanently altered the federal system and the definition of American citizenship. In the South, a politically mobilized Black community joined with white allies to bring the Republican Party to power, and with it a redefinition of the responsibilities of government.

Origins of Reconstruction

The national debate over Reconstruction began during the Civil War. In December 1863, less than a year after he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, Pres. Abraham Lincoln announced the first comprehensive program for Reconstruction, the Ten Percent Plan. Under it, when one-tenth of a state's prewar voters took an oath of loyalty, they could establish a new state government. To Lincoln, the plan was an attempt to weaken the Confederacy rather than a blueprint for the postwar South. It was put into operation in parts of the Union-occupied Confederacy, but none of the new governments achieved broad local support. In 1864 Congress enacted (and Lincoln pocket vetoed) the Wade-Davis Bill, which proposed to delay the formation of new Southern governments until a majority of voters had taken a loyalty oath. Some Republicans were already convinced that equal rights for the former slaves had to accompany the South's readmission to the Union. In his last speech, on April 11, 1865, Lincoln, referring to Reconstruction in Louisiana, expressed the view that some Blacks-the "very intelligent" and those who had served in the Union army-ought to enjoy the right to vote.

Presidential Reconstruction

Following Lincoln's assassination in April 1865, Andrew Johnson became president and inaugurated the period of Presidential Reconstruction (1865-67). Johnson offered a pardon to all Southern whites except Confederate leaders and wealthy planters (although most of these subsequently received individual pardons), restoring their political rights and all property except slaves. He also outlined how new state governments would be created. Apart from the requirement that they abolish slavery, repudiate secession, and abrogate the Confederate debt, these governments were granted a free hand in managing their affairs. They responded by enacting the Black codes, laws that required African Americans to sign yearly labour contracts and in other ways sought to limit the freedmen's economic options and reestablish plantation discipline. African Americans strongly resisted the implementation of these measures, and they seriously undermined Northern support for Johnson's policies.

When Congress assembled in December 1865, Radical Republicans such as Rep. Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania and Sen. Charles Sumner from Massachusetts called for the establishment of new Southern governments based on equality before the law and universal male suffrage. But the more numerous moderate Republicans hoped to work with Johnson while modifying his program. Congress refused to seat the representatives and senators elected from the Southern states and in early 1866 passed the Freedmen's Bureau and Civil Rights Bills. The first extended the life of an agency Congress had created in 1865 to oversee the transition from slavery to freedom. The second defined all persons born in the United States as national citizens, who were to enjoy equality before the law.

A combination of personal stubbornness, fervent belief in states' rights, and racist convictions led Johnson to reject these bills, causing a permanent rupture between himself and Congress. The Civil Rights Act became the first significant legislation in American history to become law over a president's veto. Shortly thereafter, Congress approved the Fourteenth Amendment, which put the principle of birthright citizenship into the Constitution and forbade states to deprive any citizen of the "equal protection" of the laws. Arguably the most important addition to the Constitution other than the Bill of Rights, the amendment constituted a profound change in federal-state relations. Traditionally, citizens' rights had been delineated and protected by the states. Thereafter, the federal government would guarantee all Americans' equality before the law against state violation.

In the fall 1866 congressional elections, Northern voters overwhelmingly repudiated Johnson's policies. Congress decided to begin Reconstruction anew. The Reconstruction Acts of 1867 divided the South into five military districts and outlined how new governments, based on manhood suffrage without regard to race, were to be established. Thus began the period of Radical or Congressional Reconstruction, which lasted until the end of the last Southern Republican governments in 1877.

By 1870 all the former Confederate states had been readmitted to the Union, and nearly all were controlled by the Republican Party. Three groups made up Southern Republicanism. Carpetbaggers, or recent arrivals from the North, were former Union soldiers, teachers, Freedmen's Bureau agents, and businessmen. The second large group, scalawags, or native-born white Republicans, included some businessmen and planters, but most were nonslaveholding small farmers from the Southern up-country. Loyal to the Union during the Civil War, they saw the Republican Party as a means of keeping Confederates from regaining power in the South.

In every state, African Americans formed the overwhelming majority of Southern Republican voters. From the beginning of Reconstruction, Black conventions and newspapers throughout the South had called for the extension of full civil and political rights to African Americans. Composed of those who had been free before the Civil War plus slave ministers, artisans, and Civil War veterans, the Black political leadership pressed for the elimination of the racial caste system and the economic uplifting of the former slaves. Sixteen African Americans served in Congress during Reconstruction-including Hiram Revels and Blanche K. Bruce in the U.S. Senate-more than 600 in state legislatures, and hundreds more in local offices from sheriff to justice of the peace scattered across the South. So-called "Black supremacy" never existed, but the advent of African Americans in positions of political power marked a dramatic break with the country's traditions and aroused bitter hostility from Reconstruction's opponents.

Serving an expanded citizenry, Reconstruction governments established the South's first state-funded public school systems, sought to strengthen the bargaining power of plantation labourers, made taxation more equitable, and outlawed racial discrimination in public transportation and accommodations. They also offered lavish aid to railroads and other enterprises in the hope of creating a "New South" whose economic expansion would benefit Blacks and whites alike. But the economic program spawned corruption and rising taxes, alienating increasing numbers of white voters.

Meanwhile, the social and economic transformation of the South proceeded apace. To Blacks, freedom meant independence from white control. Reconstruction provided the opportunity for African Americans to solidify their family ties and to create independent religious institutions, which became centres of community life that survived long after Reconstruction ended. The former slaves also demanded economic independence. Blacks' hopes that the federal government would provide them with land had been raised by Gen. William T. Sherman's Field Order No. 15 of January 1865, which set aside a large swath of land along the coast of South Carolina and Georgia for the exclusive settlement of Black families, and by the Freedmen's Bureau Act of March, which authorized the bureau to rent or sell land in its possession to former slaves. But President Johnson in the summer of 1865 ordered land in federal hands to be returned to its former owners. The dream of "40 acres and a mule" was stillborn. Lacking land, most former slaves had little economic alternative other than resuming work on plantations owned by whites. Some worked for wages, others as sharecroppers, who divided the crop with the owner at the end of the year. Neither status offered much hope for economic mobility. For decades, most Southern Blacks remained propertyless and poor.

Nonetheless, the political revolution of Reconstruction spawned increasingly violent opposition from white Southerners. White supremacist organizations that committed terrorist acts, such as the Ku Klux Klan, targeted local Republican leaders for beatings or assassination. African Americans who asserted their rights in dealings with white employers, teachers, ministers, and others seeking to assist the former slaves also became targets. At Colfax, Louisiana, in 1873, scores of Black militiamen were killed after surrendering to armed whites intent on seizing control of local government. Increasingly, the new Southern governments looked to Washington, D.C., for assistance.

By 1869 the Republican Party was firmly in control of all three branches of the federal government. After attempting to remove Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, in violation of the new Tenure of Office Act, Johnson had been impeached by the House of Representatives in 1868. Although the Senate, by a single vote, failed to remove him from office, Johnson's power to obstruct the course of Reconstruction was gone. Republican Ulysses S. Grant was elected president that fall ( see United States presidential election of 1868). Soon afterward, Congress approved the Fifteenth Amendment, prohibiting states from restricting the right to vote because of race. Then it enacted a series of Enforcement Acts authorizing national action to suppress political violence. In 1871 the administration launched a legal and military offensive that destroyed the Klan. Grant was reelected in 1872 in the most peaceful election of the period.

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Reconstruction | Definition, Summary, Timeline & Facts

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Reconstruction, the period (1865-77) after the American Civil War during which attempts were made to redress the inequities of slavery and its political, social, and economic legacy and to solve the problems arising from the readmission to the Union of the 11 states that had seceded.

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The cotton gin played an important role early in the industrial revolution. The information on the bottom of the page gives great details as to the importance of this invention on the South's production of cotton.

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As Eli Whitney left New England and headed South in 1792, he had no idea that he would patent a machine that would profoundly alter the course of American history. While in the South, Whitney quickly learned that Southern plantation owners were eager for a way to make cotton growing profitable. Whitney knew that if he could invent such a machine, he could apply to the federal government for a patent. Read more... Primary Sources Links go to DocsTeach, the online tool for teaching with documents from the National Archives.

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The Louisiana Purchase led to Manifest Destiny and Westward expansion. Thomas Jefferson bought the land from the French doubling the size of the United States.

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The Louisiana Purchase Explained [Turning Point in U.S. History]

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The Stamp Act was one of the causes that lead to the American Revolution.  It was passed in England to raise revenue from the colonists. Other acts like the stamp act further enraged the colonists who wanted a voice in their government,

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Contents

1. 1. The Stamp Act (March 1765)

2. 2. The Townshend Acts (June-July 1767)

3. 3. The Boston Massacre (March 1770)

4. 4. The Boston Tea Party (December 1773)

5. 5. The Coercive Acts (March-June 1774)

6. 6. Lexington and Concord (April 1775)

7. 7. British attacks on coastal towns (October 1775-January 1776)

The American colonists' breakup with the British Empire in 1776 wasn't a sudden, impetuous act. Instead, the banding together of the 13 colonies to fight and win a war of independence against the Crown was the culmination of a series of events, which had begun more than a decade earlier. Escalations began shortly after the end of the French and Indian War -known elsewhere as the Seven Years War in 1763. Here are a few of the pivotal moments that led to the American Revolution.

1. The Stamp Act (March 1765)

To recoup some of the massive debt left over from the war with France, Parliament passed laws such as the Stamp Act, which for the first time taxed a wide range of transactions in the colonies.

"Up until then, each colony had its own government which decided which taxes they would have, and collected them," explains Willard Sterne Randall, a professor emeritus of history at Champlain College and author of numerous works on early American history, including Unshackling America: How the War of 1812 Truly Ended the American Revolution."They felt that they'd spent a lot of blood and treasure to protect the colonists from the Indians, and so they should pay their share."

The colonists didn't see it that way. They resented not only having to buy goods from the British but pay tax on them as well. "The tax never got collected, because there were riots all over the place," Randall says. Ultimately, Benjamin Franklin convinced the British to rescind it, but that only made things worse. "That made the Americans think they could push back against anything the British wanted," Randall says.
READ MORE: The Stamp Act
2. The Townshend Acts (June-July 1767)

Parliament again tried to assert its authority by passing legislation to tax goods that the Americans imported from Great Britain. The Crown established a board of customs commissioners to stop smuggling and corruption among local officials in the colonies, who were often in on the illicit trade.

Americans struck back by organizing a boycott of the British goods that were subject to taxation and began harassing the British customs commissioners. In an effort to quell the resistance, the British sent troops to occupy Boston, which only deepened the ill feeling.
READ MORE: The Townshend Acts
3. The Boston Massacre (March 1770)

Simmering tensions between the British occupiers and Boston residents boiled over one late afternoon, when a disagreement between an apprentice wigmaker and a British soldier led to a crowd of 200 colonists surrounding seven British troops. When the Americans began taunting the British and throwing things at them, the soldiers apparently lost their cool and began firing into the crowd.

As the smoke cleared, three men-including an African American sailor named Crispus Attucks-were dead, and two others were mortally wounded. The massacre became a useful propaganda tool for the colonists, especially after Paul Revere distributed an engraving that misleadingly depicted the British as the aggressors.
READ MORE: Did a Snowball Fight Start the American Revolution?
4. The Boston Tea Party (December 1773)

The British eventually withdrew their forces from Boston and repealed much of the onerous Townshend legislation. But they left in place the tax on tea, and in 1773 enacted a new law, the Tea Act, to prop up the financially struggling British East India Company. The act gave the company extended favorable treatment under tax regulations so that it could sell tea at a price that undercut the American merchants who imported from Dutch traders.

That didn't sit well with Americans. "They didn't want the British telling them that they had to buy their tea, but it wasn't just about that," Randall explains. "The Americans wanted to be able to trade with any country they wanted."

The Sons of Liberty, a radical group, decided to confront the British head-on. Thinly disguised as Mohawks, they boarded three ships in Boston harbor and destroyed more than 92,000 pounds of British tea by dumping it into the harbor. To make the point that they were rebels rather than vandals, they avoided harming any of the crew or damaging the ships themselves, and the next day even replaced a padlock that had been broken.

Nevertheless, the act of defiance "really ticked off the British government," Randall explains. "Many of the East India Company's shareholders were members of Parliament. They each had paid 1,000 pounds sterling-that would probably be about a million dollars now-for a share of the company, to get a piece of the action from all this tea that they were going to force down the colonists' throats. So when these bottom-of-the-rung people in Boston destroyed their tea, that was a serious thing to them."
READ MORE: The Boston Tea Party
5. The Coercive Acts (March-June 1774)

In response to the Boston Tea Party, the British government decided that it had to tame the rebellious colonists in Massachusetts. In the spring of 1774, Parliament passed a series of laws, the Coercive Acts, which closed Boston Harbor until restitution was paid for the destroyed tea, replaced the colony's elected council with one appointed by the British, gave sweeping powers to the British military governor General Thomas Gage, and forbade town meetings without approval.

Yet another provision protected British colonial officials who were charged with capital offenses from being tried in Massachusetts, instead requiring that they be sent to another colony or back to Great Britain for trial.

But perhaps the most provocative provision was the Quartering Act, which allowed British military officials to demand accommodations for their troops in unoccupied houses and buildings in towns, rather than having to stay out in the countryside. While it didn't force the colonists to board troops in their own homes, they had to pay for the expense of housing and feeding the soldiers. The quartering of troops eventually became one of the grievances cited in the Declaration of Independence.

6. Lexington and Concord (April 1775)

British General Thomas Gage led a force of British soldiers from Boston to Lexington, where he planned to capture colonial radical leaders Sam Adams and John Hancock, and then head to Concord and seize their gunpowder. But American spies got wind of the plan, and with the help of riders such as Paul Revere, word spread to be ready for the British.

On the Lexington Common, the British force was confronted by 77 American militiamen, and they began shooting at each other. Seven Americans died, but other militiamen managed to stop the British at Concord, and continued to harass them on their retreat back to Boston.

The British lost 73 dead, with another 174 wounded and 26 missing in action. The bloody encounter proved to the British that the colonists were fearsome foes who had to be taken seriously. It was the start of America's war of independence.
READ MORE: The Battles of Lexington and Concord
7. British attacks on coastal towns (October 1775-January 1776)

Though the Revolutionary War's hostilities started with Lexington and Concord, Randall says that at the start, it was unclear whether the southern colonies, whose interests didn't necessarily align with the northern colonies, would be all in for a war of independence.

"The southerners were totally dependent upon the English to buy their crops, and they didn't trust the Yankees," he explains. "And in New England, the Puritans thought the southerners were lazy."

But that was before the brutal British naval bombardments and burning of the coastal towns of Falmouth, Massachusetts and Norfolk, Virginia helped to unify the colonies. In Falmouth, where townspeople had to grab their possessions and flee for their lives, northerners had to face up to "the fear that the British would do whatever they wanted to them," Randall says.

As historian Holger Hoock has written, the burning of Falmouth shocked General George Washington, who denounced it as "exceeding in barbarity & cruelty every hostile act practiced among civilized nations."

Similarly, in Norfolk, the horror of the town's wooden buildings going up in flames after a seven-hour naval bombardment shocked the southerners, who also knew that the British were offering African Americans their freedom if they took up arms on the loyalist side. "Norfolk stirred up fears of a slave insurrection in the South," Randall says.

Leaders of the rebellion seized the burnings of the two ports to make the argument that the colonists needed to band together for survival against a ruthless enemy and embrace the need for independence-a spirit that ultimately would lead to their victory.

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7 Events That Enraged Colonists and Led to the American Revolution

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1. The Stamp Act (March 1765) 2. The Townshend Acts (June-July 1767) 3. The Boston Massacre (March 1770) 4. The Boston Tea Party (December 1773) 5. The Coercive Acts (March-June 1774) 6. Lexington and Concord (April 1775) 7. British attacks on coastal towns (October 1775-January 1776) The American colonists' breakup with the British Empire in 1776 wasn't a sudden, impetuous act.

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King George III was the King of England when the Declaration of Independence was signed in the English colonies in America.

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George III - Children, Facts & The American Revolution

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During his 59-year reign, King George III led Britain to victory in the Seven Years’ War, successfully resisted Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, and presided over the loss of the American Revolution. He spent his last decade in a fog of insanity and blindness.

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George Washington (February 22, 1732 – December 14, 1799) was an American stateman, military officer, and founding father who served as the 1st president from 1789 to 1797 and served as the president of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, which created the Constitution of the United States and the American federal government.

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Contribution of China (4 Main Inventions)

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Contribution of China (4 Main Inventions)

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Paper making, gunpowder, compass, and printing are 4 inventions from ancient China that changed the world.

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The 4 Great Inventions that changed the world (China)

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Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American diplomat, architect, philosopher, stateman, lawyer and founding father who served as the 3rd president from 1801 to 1809, he was the principal author of the Deceleration of Independence.

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Thomas Jefferson's Early Years

Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743, at Shadwell, a plantation on a large tract of land near present-day Charlottesville, Virginia. His father, Peter Jefferson (1707/08-57), was a successful planter and surveyor and his mother, Jane Randolph Jefferson (1720-76), came from a prominent Virginia family. Thomas was their third child and eldest son; he had six sisters and one surviving brother.

Did you know? In 1815, Jefferson sold his 6,700-volume personal library to Congress for $23,950 to replace books lost when the British burned the U.S. Capitol, which housed the Library of Congress, during the War of 1812. Jefferson's books formed the foundation of the rebuilt Library of Congress's collections.

In 1762, Jefferson graduated from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, where he reportedly enjoyed studying for 15 hours, then practicing violin for several more hours on a daily basis. He went on to study law under the tutelage of respected Virginia attorney George Wythe (there were no official law schools in America at the time, and Wythe's other pupils included future Chief Justice John Marshall and statesman Henry Clay).

Jefferson began working as a lawyer in 1767. As a member of colonial Virginia's House of Burgesses from 1769 to 1775, Jefferson, who was known for his reserved manner, gained recognition for penning a pamphlet, "A Summary View of the Rights of British America" (1774), which declared that the British Parliament had no right to exercise authority over the American colonies.

Marriage and Monticello

After his father died when Jefferson was a teen, the future president inherited the Shadwell property. In 1768, Jefferson began clearing a mountaintop on the land in preparation for the elegant brick mansion he would construct there called Monticello ("little mountain" in Italian). Jefferson, who had a keen interest in architecture and gardening, designed the home and its elaborate gardens himself.

Over the course of his life, he remodeled and expanded Monticello and filled it with art, fine furnishings and interesting gadgets and architectural details. He kept records of everything that happened at the 5,000-acre plantation, including daily weather reports, a gardening journal and notes about his slaves and animals.

On January 1, 1772, Jefferson married Martha Wayles Skelton (1748-82), a young widow. The couple moved to Monticello and eventually had six children; only two of their daughters-Martha (1772-1836) and Mary (1778-1804)-survived into adulthood. In 1782, Jefferson's wife Martha died at age 33 following complications from childbirth. Jefferson was distraught and never remarried. However, it is believed he fathered more children with one of his enslaved women, Sally Hemings (1773-1835), who was also his wife's half-sister.

Slavery was a contradictory issue in Jefferson's life. Although he was an advocate for individual liberty and at one point promoted a plan for the gradual emancipation of slaves in America, he enslaved people throughout his life. Additionally, while he wrote in the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal," he believed African Americans were biologically inferior to whites and thought the two races could not coexist peacefully in freedom. Jefferson inherited some 175 enslaved people from his father and father-in-law and owned an estimated 600 slaves over the course of his life. He freed only a small number of them in his will; the majority were sold following his death.

Thomas Jefferson and the American Revolution

In 1775, with the American Revolutionary War recently underway, Jefferson was selected as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress. Although not known as a great public speaker, he was a gifted writer and at age 33, was asked to draft the Declaration of Independence (before he began writing, Jefferson discussed the document's contents with a five-member drafting committee that included John Adams and Benjamin Franklin). The Declaration of Independence, which explained why the 13 colonies wanted to be free of British rule and also detailed the importance of individual rights and freedoms, was adopted on July 4, 1776.

In the fall of 1776, Jefferson resigned from the Continental Congress and was re-elected to the Virginia House of Delegates (formerly the House of Burgesses). He considered the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which he authored in the late 1770s and which Virginia lawmakers eventually passed in 1786, to be one of the significant achievements of his career. It was a forerunner to the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which protects people's right to worship as they choose.

From 1779 to 1781, Jefferson served as governor of Virginia, and from 1783 to 1784, did a second stint in Congress (then officially known, since 1781, as the Congress of the Confederation). In 1785, he succeeded Benjamin Franklin (1706-90) as U.S. minister to France. Jefferson's duties in Europe meant he could not attend the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787; however, he was kept informed of the proceedings to draft a new national constitution and later advocated for including a bill of rights and presidential term limits.

Jefferson's Path to the Presidency

After returning to America in the fall of 1789, Jefferson accepted an appointment from President George Washington (1732-99) to become the new nation's first secretary of state. In this post, Jefferson clashed with U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton (1755/57-1804) over foreign policy and their differing interpretations of the U.S. Constitution. In the early 1790s, Jefferson, who favored strong state and local government, co-founded the Democratic-Republican Party to oppose Hamilton's Federalist Party, which advocated for a strong national government with broad powers over the economy.

In the presidential election of 1796, Jefferson ran against John Adams and received the second-highest amount of votes, which, according to the law at the time, made him vice president.

Jefferson ran against Adams again in the presidential election of 1800, which turned into a bitter battle between the Federalists and Democratic-Republicans. Jefferson defeated Adams; however, due to a flaw in the electoral system, Jefferson tied with fellow Democratic-Republican Aaron Burr (1756-1836). The House of Representatives broke the tie and voted Jefferson into office. In order to avoid a repeat of this situation, Congress proposed the Twelfth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which required separate voting for president and vice president. The amendment was ratified in 1804.

Jefferson Becomes Third U.S. President

Jefferson was sworn into office on March 4, 1801; he was the first presidential inauguration held in Washington, D.C. ( George Washington was inaugurated in New York in 1789; in 1793, he was sworn into office in Philadelphia, as was his successor, John Adams, in 1797.) Instead of riding in a horse-drawn carriage, Jefferson broke with tradition and walked to and from the ceremony.

One of the most significant achievements of Jefferson's first administration was the purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France for $15 million in 1803. At more than 820,000 square miles, the Louisiana Purchase (which included lands extending between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains and the Gulf of Mexico to present-day Canada) effectively doubled the size of the United States. Jefferson then commissioned explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the uncharted land, plus the area beyond, out to the Pacific Ocean. (At the time, most Americans lived within 50 miles of the Atlantic Ocean.) Lewis and Clark's expedition, known today as the Corps of Discovery, lasted from 1804 to 1806 and provided valuable information about the geography, American Indian tribes and animal and plant life of the western part of the continent.

In 1804, Jefferson ran for re-election and defeated Federalist candidate Charles Pinckney (1746-1825) of South Carolina with more than 70 percent of the popular vote and an electoral count of 162-14. During his second term, Jefferson focused on trying to keep America out of Europe's Napoleonic Wars (1803-15). However, after Great Britain and France, who were at war, both began harassing American merchant ships, Jefferson implemented the Embargo Act of 1807.

The act, which closed U.S. ports to foreign trade, proved unpopular with Americans and hurt the U.S. economy. It was repealed in 1809 and, despite the president's attempts to maintain neutrality, the U.S. ended up going to war against Britain in the War of 1812. Jefferson chose not to run for a third term in 1808 and was succeeded in office by James Madison (1751-1836), a fellow Virginian and former U.S. secretary of state.

Thomas Jefferson's Later Years and Death

Jefferson spent his post-presidential years at Monticello, where he continued to pursue his many interests, including architecture, music, reading and gardening. He also helped found the University of Virginia, which held its first classes in 1825. Jefferson was involved with designing the school's buildings and curriculum and ensured that unlike other American colleges at the time, the school had no religious affiliation or religious requirements for its students.

Jefferson died at age 83 at Monticello on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Coincidentally, John Adams, Jefferson's friend, former rival and fellow signer of the Declaration of Independence, died the same day. Jefferson was buried at Monticello. However, due to the significant debt the former president had accumulated during his life, his mansion, furnishing and enslaved people were sold at auction following his death. Monticello was eventually acquired by a nonprofit organization, which opened it to the public in 1954.

Jefferson remains an American icon. His face appears on the U.S. nickel and is carved into stone at Mount Rushmore. The Jefferson Memorial, near the National Mall in Washington, D.C., was dedicated on April 13, 1943, the 200th anniversary of Jefferson's birth.

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Thomas Jefferson - Facts, Presidency & Children

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Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), a statesman, Founding Father, author of the Declaration of Independence and the third U.S. president, was a leading figure in America's early development. One of Jefferson's major legacies was the Louisiana Purchase, which more than doubled the size of the United States.

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Exploration and Colonization of North American

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Exploration and Colonization of North American

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Exploration and colonization of North American happen many times by many nations Spanish did it for glory, gold and god, French did it for fur, friends and fish, British did it for 2 reasons religious freedom and economic wealth.

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Exploration and Colonization of North America: History with Ms. H

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Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 – April 17, 1790) was an American statesmen, writer, diplomat, scientist, printer, and publisher and was one of the founding father of the United States who was a drafter and signer of the declaration of independence as well as the first United States Postmaster General.

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Contributions such as writing and language, making the first calendars, architecture advancement, sculpting, math, science and astronomy.

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Ancient Egyptian Contributions to Society

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President Franklin D. Roosevelt's "New Deal" aimed at promoting economic recovery and putting Americans back to work through Federal activism.

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How FDR's New Deal Put America Back to Work During the Great Depression

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The Gilded Age was an era extending roughly from 1870 to 1900 and was a time of rapid economic growth, especially in the Northern and Western United States.

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Transcontinental Railroad

Before the Civil War, rail travel was dangerous and difficult, but after the war, George Westinghouse invented the air brake, which made braking systems more dependable and safe.

Soon, the development of Pullman sleeping cars and dining cars made rail travel comfortable and more enjoyable for passengers. It wasn't long before trains overtook other forms of long-distance travel such as the stagecoach and riding horseback.

In 1869, the Transcontinental Railroad was finished and led to rapid settlement of the western United States. It also made it much easier to transport goods over long distances from one part of the country to another.

This enormous railroad expansion resulted in rail companies and their executives receiving lavish amounts of money and land-up to 200 million acres, by some estimates-from the United States government. In many cases, politicians cut shady backroom deals and helped create railroad and shipping tycoons such as Cornelius Vanderbilt and Jay Gould. Meanwhile, thousands of African American-many of them former slaves-were hired as Pullman porters and paid a pittance to cater to riders' every need.

Robber Barons

Railroad tycoons were just one of many types of so-called robber barons that emerged in the Gilded Age.

These men used union busting, fraud, intimidation, violence and their extensive political connections to gain an advantage over any competitors. Robber barons were relentless in their efforts to amass wealth while exploiting workers and ignoring standard business rules-and in many cases, the law itself.

They soon accumulated vast amounts of money and dominated every major industry including the railroad, oil, banking, timber, sugar, liquor, meatpacking, steel, mining, tobacco and textile industries.

Some wealthy entrepreneurs such as Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and Henry Frick are often referred to as robber barons but may not exactly fit the mold. While it's true they built huge monopolies, often by crushing any small business or competitor in their way, they were also generous philanthropists who didn't always rely on political ploys to build their empires.

Some tried to improve life for their employees, donated millions to charities and nonprofits and supported their communities by providing funding for everything from libraries and hospitals to universities, public parks and zoos.

Industrial Revolution

The Gilded Age was in many ways the culmination of the Industrial Revolution, when America and much of Europe shifted from an agricultural society to an industrial one.

Millions of immigrants and struggling farmers arrived in cities such as New York, Boston, Philadelphia, St. Louis and Chicago, looking for work and hastening the urbanization of America. By 1900, about 40 percent of Americans lived in major cities.

Most cities were unprepared for rapid population growth. Housing was limited, and tenements and slums sprung up nationwide. Heating, lighting, sanitation and medical care were poor or nonexistent, and millions died from preventable disease.

Many immigrants were unskilled and willing to work long hours for little pay. Gilded Age plutocrats considered them the perfect employees for their sweatshops, where working conditions were dangerous and workers endured long periods of unemployment, wage cuts and no benefits.

Gilded Age Homes

Homes of the Gilded Age elite were nothing short of spectacular. The wealthy considered themselves America's royalty and settled for nothing less than estates worthy of that distinction. Some of America's most famous mansions were built during the Gilded Age such as:

Biltmore, located in Asheville, North Carolina, was the family estate of George and Edith Vanderbilt. Construction started on the 250-room chateau in 1889, prior to the couple's marriage, and continued for six years. The home had 35 bedrooms, 43 bathrooms, 65 fireplaces, a dairy, a horse barn and beautiful formal and informal gardens.

The Breakers in Newport, Rhode Island, is another Vanderbilt mansion. It was the summer home of railroad mogul Cornelius Vanderbilt. The Italian-Renaissance style home has 70 rooms, a stable and a carriage house.

Rosecliff, also in Newport, was completed in 1902. The oceanfront home was contracted by Theresa Fair Oelrichs and built to resemble the Grand Trianon of Versailles. Today, it's best known as the backdrop for movie scenes in The Great Gatsby, High Society, 27 Dresses and True Lies.

Whitehall, located in Palm Beach, Florida, was the neoclassical winter retreat of oil tycoon Henry Flagler and his wife Mary. The 100,000 square foot, 75-room mansion was completed in 1902 and is now a popular museum.

Income Inequality in the Gilded Age

The industrialists of the Gilded Age lived high on the hog, but most of the working class lived below poverty level. As time went on, the income inequality between wealthy and poor became more and more glaring.

While the wealthy lived in opulent homes, dined on succulent food and showered their children with gifts, the poor were crammed into filthy tenement apartments, struggled to put a loaf of bread on the table and often accompanied their children to a sweatshop each morning where they faced a 12-hour (or longer) workday.

Some moguls used Social Darwinism to justify the inequality between the classes. The theory presumes that the fittest humans are the most successful and poor people are destitute because they're weak and lack the skills to be prosperous.

Muckrakers

Muckrakers is a term used to describe reporters who exposed corruption among politicians and the elite. They used investigative journalism and the print revolution to dig through "the muck" of the Gilded Age and report scandal and injustice.

In 1890, reporter and photographer Jacob Riis brought the horrors of New York slum life to light in his book, How the Other Half Lives, prompting New York politicians to pass legislation to improve tenement conditions.

In 1902, McClure Magazine journalist Lincoln Steffens took on city corruption when he penned the article, "Tweed Days in St. Louis." The article, which is widely considered the first muckracking magazine article, exposed how city officials deceitfully made deals with crooked businessmen to maintain power.

Another journalist, Ida Tarbell, spent years investigating the underhanded rise of oilman John D. Rockefeller. Her 19-part series, also published in McClure in 1902, led to the breakup of Rockefeller's monopoly, the Standard Oil Company.

In 1906, activist journalist and novelist Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle to expose horrendous working conditions in the meatpacking industry. The book and ensuing public outcry led to the passing of the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act.

Labor Unions Rise

It soon became obvious that the huge disparity between the wealthy and poor couldn't last, and the working class would have to organize to improve their working and living conditions. It was also obvious this wouldn't happen without some degree of violence.

Much of the violence, however, was between the workers themselves as they struggled to agree on what they were fighting for. Some simply wanted increased wages and a better working environment, while others also wanted to keep women, immigrants and blacks out of the workforce.

Although the first labor unions occurred around the turn of the nineteenth century, they gained momentum during the Gilded Age, thanks to the increased number of unskilled and unsatisfied factory workers.

Railroad Strikes

On July 16, 1877, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company announced a 10-percent pay cut on its railroad workers in Martinsburg, West Virginia, the second cut in less than eight months.

Infuriated and fed up, the workers-with the support of the locals-announced they'd prevent all trains from leaving the roundhouse until their pay was restored.

The mayor, the police and even the National Guard couldn't stop the strike. It wasn't until Federal troops arrived that one train finally left the station.

The strike spread among other railroads, sparking violence across America between the working class and local and federal authorities. At its peak, over 100,000 railroad workers were on strike. Many of the Robber Barons feared an aggressive, all-out revolution against their way of life.

Instead, the strike-later known as the Great Upheaval-ended abruptly and was labeled a dismal failure. Yet it showed America's tycoons there was strength in numbers and that organized labor had the potential to shut down entire industries and inflict major economic and political damage.

As the working class continued to use strikes and boycotts to fight for higher wages and improved working conditions, their bosses staged lock-outs and brought in replacement workers known as scabs.

They also created blacklists to prevent active union workers from becoming employed elsewhere. Even so, the working class continued to unite and press their cause and often won at least some of their demands.

Gilded Age Cities

Innovations of the Gilded Age helped usher in modern America. Urbanization and technological creativity led to many engineering advances such as bridges and canals, elevators and skyscrapers, trolley lines and subways.

The invention of electricity brought illumination to homes and businesses and created an unprecedented, thriving night life. Art and literature flourished, and the rich filled their lavish homes with expensive works of art and elaborate décor.

In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone and made the world a much smaller place for both individuals and businesses. Advances in sanitation and housing, and the availability of better quality food and material goods, improved quality of life for the middle class.

But while the middle and upper classes enjoyed the allure of city life, little changed for the poor. Most still faced horrific living conditions, high crime rates and a pitiable existence.

Many escaped their drudgery by watching a vaudeville show or a spectator sport such as boxing, baseball or football, all of which enjoyed a surge during the Gilded Age.

Women in the Gilded Age

Upper-class women of the Gilded Age have been compared to dolls on display dressed in resplendent finery. They flaunted their wealth and endeavored to improve their status in society while poor and middle-class women both envied and mimicked them.

Some wealthy Gilded Age women were much more than eye candy, though, and often traded domestic life for social activism and charitable work. They felt a new degree of empowerment and fought for equality, including the right to vote through women's suffrage groups.

Some created homes for destitute immigrants while others pushed a temperance agenda, believing the source of poverty and most family troubles was alcohol. Wealthy women philanthropists of the Gilded Age include:

Louise Whitfield Carnegie, wife of Andrew Carnegie, who created Carnegie Hall and donated to the Red Cross, the Y.W.C.A., and other charities.

Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, wife of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who helped create hotels for women and solicited funds to create the New York Museum of Modern Art.

Margaret Olivia Sage, wife of Russell Sage, who after the death of her miserly husband gave away $45 million of her $75 million inheritance to support women's causes, educational institutions and the creation of the Russell Sage Foundation for Social Betterment, which directly helped poor people.

Many women during the Gilded Age sought higher education. Others postponed marriage and took jobs such as typists or telephone switchboard operators.

Thanks to a print revolution and the accessibility of newspapers, magazines and books, women became increasingly knowledgeable, cultured, well-informed and a political force to be reckoned with.

Jane Addams

Jane Addams is arguably the best-known philanthropist of the Gilded Age. In 1889, she and Ellen Gates Star established a secular settlement house in Chicago known as Hull-House.

The neighborhood was a melting pot of struggling immigrants, and Hull-House provided everything from midwife services and basic medical care to kindergarten, day care and housing for abused women. It also offered English and citizenship classes. Addams received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.

Carrie Nation

Temperance leader Carrie Nation gained notoriety during the Gilded Age for smashing up saloons with a hatchet to bring attention to her sobriety agenda. She was also a strong voice for the suffrage movement.

Nation's belief that alcohol was the root of all evil was partially due to her difficult first marriage to an alcoholic, and her work with women and children displaced or abused by over-imbibing husbands.

Convinced God had instructed her to use whatever means necessary to close bars throughout Kansas, she was often beaten, mocked and jailed but ultimately helped pave the way for the 18th Amendment (prohibiting the sale of alcohol) and the 19th Amendment (giving women the right to vote).

Limits to Power

Many other pivotal events happened during the Gilded Age which changed America's course and culture. As muckrakers exposed corrupt robber barons and politicians, labor unions and reformist politicians enacted laws to limit their power.

The western frontier saw violent conflicts between white settlers and the United States Army against Native Americans. The Native Americans were eventually forced off their land and onto reservations with often disastrous results. In 1890, the western frontier was declared closed.

Populist Party

As drought and depression struck rural America, farmers in the west-who vilified railroad tycoons and wanted a political voice-organized and played a key role in forming the Populist Party.

The Populists had a democratic agenda that aimed to give power back to the people and paved the way for the progressive movement, which still fights to close the gap between the wealthy and poor and champion the needy and disenfranchised.

End of the Gilded Age

In 1893, both the overextended Philadelphia and Reading Railroad and the National Cordage Company failed, which set off an economic depression unlike any seen before in America.

Banks and other businesses folded, and the stock market plunged, leaving millions unemployed, homeless and hungry. In some states, unemployment rose to almost 50 percent.

The Panic of 1893 lasted four years and left lower and even middle-class Americans fed up with political corruption and social inequality. Their frustration gave rise to the Progressive Movement which took hold when President Theodore Roosevelt took office in 1901.

Although Roosevelt supported corporate America, he also felt there should be federal controls in place to keep excessive corporate greed in check and prevent individuals from making obscene amounts of money off the backs of immigrants and the lower class.

Helped by the muckrackers and the White House, the Progressive Era ushered in many reforms that helped shift away power from robber barons, such as:

trust busting

labor reform

women's suffrage

birth control

formation of trade unions

increased conservation efforts

food and medicine regulations

tax reform

civil rights

election reform

fair labor standards

By 1916, America's cities were cleaner and healthier, factories safer, governments less corrupt and many people had better housing, working hours and wages. Fewer monopolies meant more people could pursue the American Dream and start their own businesses.

When America entered World War I in 1917, the Progressive Era and any remnants of the Gilded Age effectively ended as the country's focus shifted to the realities of war. Most robber barons and their families, however, remained wealthy for generations.

Even so, many bequeathed much of their wealth, land and homes to charity and historical societies. And progressives continued their mission to close the gap between the wealthy and poor and champion the needy and disenfranchised.

Sources

Chicago Workers During the Long Gilded Age. The Newberry.
Gilded Age Reform. University of Virginia.
The Doll House: Wealth and Women in the Gilded Age. Journeys Into the Past: An Online Journal of Miami University's History Department.
The Gilded Age. Scholastic.
About Jane Addams. Jane Addams Hull-House Museum.
Carrie A. Nation (1846-1911). The State Historical Society of Missouri: Historic Missourians.
Lincoln Steffens Exposes "Tweed Days in St. Louis." History Matters.
The Breakers. The Preservation Society of Newport County.
The Progressive Era (1890-1920). The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project.
Biltmore Estate History. Biltmore.
Margaret Olivia Sage. Philanthropy Roundtable.

Fact Check

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The Gilded Age describes the tumultuous years between the Civil War and the turn of the 20th century when America saw unprecedented growth in industry and technology and when greedy, corrupt industrialists, bankers and politicians enjoyed extraordinary wealth.

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John Adams (1735-1826) was a leader of the American Revolution and served as the second U.S. president from 1797 to 1801.

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John Adams: American Independence: The 2nd President of the United States | Mini Bio | BIO

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The Trail of Tears was a series of forced displacement of approximately 60,000 American Indians between 1830 and 1850 by the United States Government over 3,000 Native Americans died.

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The 'Indian Problem'

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

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

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

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

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

Worcester v. Georgia

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

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

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

Indian Removal Act

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

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

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

Trail of Tears

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

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

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

Treaty of New Echota

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

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

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

John Ross

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

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

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

Legacy of the Trail of Tears

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

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

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

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

Sources

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

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

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