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A Lady's Life in the Gold Rush

'Really, everybody ought to go to the mines just to see how little it takes to make people comfortable in the world,' Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clapp wrote from the mines in California, to her sister Molly in New England. She penned 23 letters in all, from September 13, 1851, through November 21, 1852, describing life at Rich Bar and nearby Indian Bar, on the 'East Branch of the North Fork of Feather River,' roughly 120 miles northeast of Sacramento, in present-day Plumas National Forest.

Louise Clapp's letters were published as a series, from January 1854 through December 1855, under the nom de plume 'Dame Shirley,' in Ferdinand Ewer's short-lived literary journal: The Pioneer: or California Monthly Magazine. Ewer informed readers that the letters 'were not (originally) intended for publication, and have been inserted with scarcely an erasure from us.' Among those who read the series was Bret Harte (see August 1995 Wild West). Harte was influenced by the Shirley letters when he wrote The Luck of Roaring Camp and other California Gold Rush stories. Nineteenth century historian, philosopher and writer Josiah Royce said the Shirley letters 'form the best account of an early mining camp that is known to me.' And in the 20th century, when the Book Club of California invited 16 leading authorities to list the 10 best primary sources on the California Gold Rush, 13 named the Shirley letters. No other source received that much recognition.

Louisa Amelia Knapp Smith was born on July 28, 1819, in Elizabeth, N.J., the daughter of Moses and Lois (Lee) Smith. Her father was the schoolmaster at the local academy. The family eventually moved back to her father's hometown of Amherst, Mass., where Moses died in 1832, at age 47. Louise was 13 at the time. Lois followed her husband to the grave five years later, leaving seven orphans. Louise was entrusted to an attorney and family friend in Amherst, Osmyn Baker. He sent her to school at the Female Seminary in Charlestown, Mass., and the Amherst Academy. Her closest sibling was Mary Jane, or 'Molly,' to whom she later wrote her now famous letters. Louise may have met Amherst residents Emily Dickinson and Helen Hunt (Jackson), but Louise, as historian Rodman Wilson Paul notes, was 11 years older than her literary neighbors.

Someone with whom Louise did exchange letters was Alexander Hill Everett. They met by chance in August 1839 while traveling by stagecoach in southern Vermont. Louise Smith was then a delicate, bright, golden-haired 20-year-old student. Alexander Everett was a widely traveled diplomat 30 years her elder. She was fascinated by him, in an academic way. He was infatuated with her. As her literary mentor, he advised, on October 31, 1839: 'If you were to add to the love of reading the habit of writing you would find a new and inexhaustible source of comfort and satisfaction opening upon you.' She accepted his advice, rejected his love. Everett died in Macao, China, in June 1847, the same year he received a letter from Louise announcing her engagement to a young doctor.

The man Louise Smith married was five years her junior. Fayette Clapp had graduated from Brown University in 1848 and was a medical student and doctor's apprentice when he met Louise. Both Louise and Fayette Clapp longed to go west, so when they heard that gold had been discovered in California, the newlyweds packed their trunks and boarded the schooner Manilla. They sailed out of New York Harbor in August 1849, arriving in San Francisco about five months later. The foggy, damp bay weather did not agree with Fayette. He suffered from bilious attacks, fever, ague and jaundice while in San Francisco. Louise, on the other hand, liked the hilly city. She wrote: 'What with its many-costumed, many-tongued, many-visaged population: its flashy looking squares, built one day and burned the next; its wickedly beautiful gambling houses; its gay stores where the richest productions of every nation can be found; and its wild, free, unconventional style of living, it possesses, for the young adventurer especially, a strange charm.'

For health reasons, Fayette Clapp moved inland with his wife, settling in Plumas City, a place Louise described as 'a was-to-have-been city' of 'vanishing splendors.' Built near the Feather River, between Sacramento City and Marysville, Plumas City no longer exists.

On June 7, 1851, Fayette set out with a friend to Rich Bar, hoping the pure mountain air would be good for his health. He also hoped that good mining investment opportunities existed at the camp, and that there was a shortage of doctors. In many other places in California, doctors and lawyers were already in abundance. Luckily for young Dr. Clapp, prospects at Rich Bar were good on all counts. Once he had successfully established himself, he returned for his wife in September. Since Louise was provided with a cook and a laundress, she had plenty of time for writing.

There were few women at Rich Bar. Louise found only four besides herself. The mining camp had no brothel, although the Empire, a combination inn, restaurant and general store, had originally been constructed with a brothel in mind. The venture had failed and the gamblers who had invested $8,000 - building and furnishing the two-story structure with its 'elegant mirror,' glass windows, monte tables, and 'bedsteads so heavy that nothing short of a giant's strength could move them' - sold out to Curtis and Louise Bancroft for a few hundred dollars.

Louise Bancroft (referred to in the letters as 'Mrs. B-') was the first woman Louise Clapp met at Rich Bar. The writer describes her as 'a gentle and amiable looking woman, about twenty-five years of age.' When Louise Clapp entered the Empire, Mrs. Bancroft 'was cooking supper for some half-a-dozen people, while her really pretty boy, who lay kicking furiously in his champagne basket cradle and screaming...had that day completed just two weeks of his earthly pilgrimage.'

The other women at the camp included 'Mrs. R-,' whose name has not yet been decoded by historians. She lived with her husband in a three-room canvas house she kept exceptionally clean. Louise dubbed her 'the little sixty-eight-pounder queen.' In her fifth letter, she quotes a miner who praised Mrs. R- enthusiastically. 'Magnificent woman that,' the miner said. 'A wife of the right sort she is. Why, she earnt her old man nine-hundred dollars in nine weeks, clear of all expenses, by washing! Such women ain't common I tell you; if they were, a man might marry and make money by the operation.'

Mrs. Nancy Bailey was also tiny. She shared a dirt floor cabin with her husband and three children, but she fell sick and died weeks after Louise arrived. 'I have just returned from the funeral of poor Mrs. B-,' Louise wrote, 'who died of peritonitis, a common disease in this country.' The body was placed in a coffin and carried, with a monte tablecloth for a pall, to a mountainside cemetery, where the gravestone still stands.

The first woman to arrive at Rich Bar ran the Indiana Hotel with her father. She was called the Indiana Girl. Louise wrote about her in her second letter:

The sweet name of girl seems sadly incongruous when applied to such a gigantic piece of humanity....The far-off roll of her mighty voice, booming through two closed doors and a long entry, added greatly to the severe attack of nervous headache under which I was suffering when she called. This gentle creature wears the thickest kind of miner's boots, and has the dainty habit of wiping her dishes on her apron! Last spring she walked to this place and packed fifty pounds of flour on her back down that awful hill - the snow being five feet deep at the time.

All the same, several men, including Yank, keeper of a log cabin store farther up the bar, were'smitten with the charms of the Indiana Girl,' Louise admits in her ninth letter. Yank himself was a character. His aspiration was to be a dandy grafter. 'He takes me largely into his confidence, as to the various ways he has of doing green miners,' Louise wrote. As for his log cabin store, she described it as 'the most comical olla podrida [potpourri] of heterogeneous merchandise that I ever saw. There is nothing you can ask for but what he has - from crow bars down to cambric needles; from velveteen trowsers up to broadcloth coats of the jauntiest description....His collection of novels is by far the largest, the greasiest, and the 'yellowest kivered' of any to be found on the river.'

In her seventh letter, Louise describes the log cabin Fayette acquired for her on the sparsely populated Indian Bar, upriver from Rich Bar but within walking distance:

Enter my dear; you are perfectly welcome; besides, we could not keep you out if we would, as there is not even a latch on the canvas door....The room into which we have just entered is about twenty feet square. It is lined over the top with white cotton cloth....The sides are hung with a gaudy chintz, which I consider a perfect marvel of calico printing. The artist seems to have exhausted himself on roses...from earliest budhood up to the ravishing beauty of the 'last rose of summer.' A curtain of the above described chintz divides off a portion of the room, behind which stands a bedstead....The fireplace is built of stones and mud, the chimney finished off with alternate layers of rough sticks....The mantle piece...is formed of a beam of wood, covered with strips of tin procured from cans, upon which still remain in black hieroglyphics, the names of the different eatables which they formerly contained....I suppose that it would be no more than civil to call a hole two feet square in one side of the room, a window, although it is as yet guiltless of glass.

The path between Indian Bar, where the Clapp cabin stood, and Rich Bar, where Fayette had his office, was somewhat precarious. Footbridges across the river were felled logs still wrapped in bark and moss. Large rocks and countless mining pits, 6 or more feet deep, with accompanying gravel heaps, had to be skirted. One pit was only a few feet from their cabin door.

On the way to Indian Bar, Louise recorded: 'The first thing that attracted my attention, as my new home came in view, was the blended blue, red and white of the American banner...suspended on the Fourth of July last, by a patriotic sailor, who climbed to the top of the [cedar] tree to which he attached it, cutting away the branches as he descended, until it stood among its brethren, a beautiful moss-wreathed Liberty pole, flinging to the face of Heaven the glad colors of the Free.'

She also glimpsed the 'artificial elegance' of a hotel:

Over the entrance...is painted in red capitals...the name of the great Humboldt spelt without the d. This is the only hotel in this vicinity, and as there is a really excellent bowling alley attached to it, and the bar-room has a floor on which the miners can dance, and, above all, a cook who can play the violin, it is very popular. But the clinking of glasses, and the swaggering air of some of the drinkers, reminds us that it is no place for a lady.

Louise Clapp enjoyed being a 'lady,' but she sometimes showed an unladylike willfulness, describing herself as the sort of 'obstinate little personage, who has always been haunted with a passionate desire to do everything which people said she could not do.' Taking up residence in a mining town was an adventure most ladies avoided. So was panning for gold. When Louise washed a single pan of dirt, she found $3.25 in gold placer. She also discovered it was hard, dirty work, and she did not repeat the experiment, not for years. But she did observe and write about the gold miners. The methods they used, as well as the claim system that governed them, is the subject of her 15th'severely utilitarian' letter:

First, let me explain to you the 'claiming' system. As there are no State laws upon the subject, each mining community is permitted to make its own. Here, they have decided that no man may 'claim' an area of more than forty foot square. This he'stakes off' and puts a notice upon it....If he does not choose to 'work it' immediately, he is obliged to renew the notice every ten days; for without this precaution, any other person has the right to 'jump it'....There are many ways of evading the above law. For instance, an individual can 'hold' as many claims as he pleases if he keeps a man at work in each....The laborer...can jump the claim of the very man who employs him...[but] generally prefers to receive the six dollars per diem, of which he is sure...[rather than] running the risk of a claim not proving valuable....The labor of excavation is extremely difficult, on account of the immense rocks...[in] the soil. Of course, no man can work out a claim alone. For that reason...they congregate in companies of four or six, generally designating themselves by the name of the place from whence the majority of the members have emigrated; for example, the 'Illinois,' 'Bunker Hill,' 'Bay State,' etc., companies. In many places the surface soil, or 'top dirt,' 'pays' when worked in a 'Long Tom.'

Some companies discarded top dirt and chose instead to hunt for gold in bedrock crevices. They dug 'coyote holes' into the sides of surrounding hills, creating tunnels 'that sometimes extended hundreds of feet,' in order to get at the bedrock. A large company of miners pooled resources and built a wing dam and flume that diverted water from the riverbed, where they expected to find 'rich diggings' in the bedrock. Of 'the dreadful flume,' as Louise calls it, she wrote: 'The machinery keeps up the most dismal moaning and shrieking, painfully suggestive of a suffering child.'

In her third letter, Louise paints a picture of the setting in which the miners worked, describing Rich Bar as 'a tiny valley, about eight-hundred yards in length and thirty in width...hemmed in by lofty hills, almost perpendicular, draperied to their very summits with beautiful fir trees; the blue bosomed 'Plumas' or Feather River...undulating along their base.' Here, the mining town sprang up suddenly, 'as if a fairy's wand had been waved above the bar.' There were 'about forty tenements...round tents, square tents, plank hovels, log cabins, etc. - the residences varying in elegance and convenience from the palatial splendor of 'The Empire' down to a 'local habitation,' formed of pine boughs and covered with old calico shirts.'

The people populating Rich Bar and Indian Bar varied as much as their houses. Besides white Americans and Californios (the Spanish-speaking residents who Clapp called 'Spaniards'), there were Swedes, Chilenos, Frenchmen, Mexicans, Indians, Hawaiians, Englishmen, Italians, Germans, American blacks and mulattos. The mulattos included Humbolt-owner Ned 'Paganini' (as Louise nicknamed him) and the legendary mountain man and trailblazer Jim Beckwourth. Louise describes Beckwourth in her eighth letter:

He is fifty years of age, perhaps, and speaks several languages to perfection. As he has been a wanderer for many years and for a long time was a principal chief of the Crow Indians, his adventures are extremely interesting. He chills the blood of the green young miners, who, unacquainted with the arts of war and subjugation, congregate around him [to hear] the cold-blooded manner in which he relates the Indian fights that he has been engaged in.

Unlike Jim Beckwourth, most men at Rich and Indian bars could not speak more than one language fluently, although some Americans seem to have tried. In her 14th letter, Louise wrote: 'Nothing is more amusing than to observe the different styles in which...Americans talk at the unfortunate Spaniard.' She adds that 'mistakes made on the other side are often quite as amusing.' Fayette's colleague, Dr. Canas, told Louise of a Chileno who heard an American use the words'some bread' when purchasing said item, and immediately afterward informed his friends that the English word for bread was the same as the Spanish word for hat - sombrero. Unfortunately, the humor in such misunderstandings was often overlooked. Alcohol, gambling losses, and envy of a neighbor's mining success contributed to ill will. Yet things remained relatively peaceful through the winter of 1851-52.

In February 1852, provisions were becoming scarce. The rancheros who had been driving beef herds into the valley and the mule drivers who brought in onions, potatoes, butter and coffee could not get through the deep snow that covered the hills surrounding the bars. So the Clapps and their neighbors lived for three months on flour, dark ham, salted mackerel, and rusty pork. And when the snow finally melted, spring floods commenced, sweeping away flume machinery, log bridges, long toms, cradles, a newly finished sawmill and several men. By mid-May, the waters calmed down and fresh provisions arrived. So did a large number of mostly American newcomers. On May 25, Louise noted: 'Hundreds of people have arrived upon our Bar within the last few days; drinking saloons are springing up in every direction; the fluming operations are rapidly progressing, and all looks favorably for a busy and prosperous summer.' Some of these newcomers had fought in the Mexican-American War and tended to perceive Spanish-speaking people as enemies.

Meanwhile, Mexicans at the mines expressed growing frustration over the lack of justice where they were concerned. In her 16th letter, Louise writes sardonically:

A few evenings ago, a Spaniard was stabbed by an American. It seems that the presumptuous foreigner had the impertinence to ask very humbly and meekly of that most noble representative of the stars and stripes, if the latter would pay him a few dollars which he had owed him for some time. His high mightiness, the Yankee, was not going to put up with any such impertinence, and the poor Spaniard received, for answer, several inches of cold steel in his breast, which inflicted a very dangerous wound. Nothing was done and very little was said about this atrocious affair.

She goes on to explain that at Rich Bar, 'they have passed a set of resolutions...one of which is to the effect that no foreigner shall work the mines on that Bar. This has caused nearly all the Spaniards [Californios] to immigrate upon Indian Bar.' Two years earlier, the California Legislature had passed a law requiring all foreigners to pay a $20-a-month tax (later reduced to $4) for the right to stake a claim and mine it.

On the Fourth of July, tensions between Californios and Americans exploded. While Dr. and Mrs. Clapp joined other sober Americans in celebrating Independence Day with speeches, poetry, music and dancing at the Empire on Rich Bar, drunken celebrants made the rounds at Indian Bar. When the Clapps returned to their cabin at Indian Bar, a man gave them an 'excited account' of an American who had been knifed during a melee. Louis Clapp wrote about it in her 19th letter:

He said...Domingo - a tall, majestic-looking Spaniard, a perfect type of the novelistic bandit of Old Spain - had stabbed Tom Somers, a young Irishman, but a naturalized citizen of the United States,...[and while] brandishing threateningly the long bloody knife with which he had inflicted the wound upon his victim...[had paraded] up and down the street unmolested. It seems that when Tom Somers fell, the Americans, being unarmed, were seized with a sudden panic and fled. There was a rumor (unfounded, as it afterwards proved) to the effect that the Spaniards had on this day conspired to kill all the Americans on the river. In a few moments, however, the latter rallied and made a rush at the murderer, who immediately plunged into the river and swam across to Missouri Bar; eight or shots were fired at him...not one of which hit him.

In the meanwhile,...Spaniards who...thought that the Americans had arisen against them...barricaded themselves in a drinking saloon, determined to defend themselves against the massacre which was fully expected would follow....In the bake shop, which stands next to our cabin, young Tom Somers lay straightened for the grave...while over his dead body a Spanish woman was weeping and moaning in the most piteous and heart-rending manner. The Rich Barians, who had heard a most exaggerated account of the rising of the Spaniards against the Americans, armed with rifles, pistols, clubs, dirks, etc., were rushing down the hill by hundreds. Each one added fuel to his rage by crowding into the little bakery, to gaze upon the blood-bathed bosom of the victim....Then arose the most fearful shouts of 'Down with the Spaniards'....'Don't let one of the murderous devils remain.'

The more sensible and sober of the Americans partly quieted the angry crowd. Still, Fayette Clapp wanted his wife to join two other women who lived on a nearby hill, where things would be safer should a serious fight erupt. Louise said she wanted to stay where she was, but finally, 'like a dutiful wife,' she went up the hill.

We three women, left entirely alone, seated ourselves upon a log overlooking the strange scene below. The Bar was a sea of heads, bristling with guns, rifles, and clubs....All at once, we were startled by the firing of a gun, and...saw a man [being] led into the log cabin, while another was carried, apparently lifeless, into a Spanish drinking saloon....Luckily for our nerves, a benevolent individual...came and told us what had happened.

It seems that an Englishman, the owner of a house of the vilest description, a person, who is said to have been the primary cause of all the troubles of the day, attempted to force his way through the line of armed men which had been formed at each side of the street....In his drunken fury, he tried to wrest a gun from one of them, which being accidentally discharged in the struggle, inflicted a severe wound upon a Mr. Oxley and shattered in the most dreadful manner the thigh of Sr. Pizarro....This frightful accident recalled the people to their senses....They elected a Vigilance Committee and authorized persons to go...arrest the suspected Spaniards.

The first act of the Committee was to try a Mejicana who had been foremost in the fray. She has always worn male attire, and on this occasion, armed with a pair of pistols, she fought like a very fury. Luckily, inexperienced in the use of fire-arms, she wounded no one. She was sentenced to leave the Bar by day-light....The next day, the Committee tried five or six Spaniards....Two of them were sentenced to be whipped, the remainder to leave the Bar that evening; the property of all to be confiscated....Oh Mary! Imagine my anguish when I heard the first blow fall upon those wretched men. I had never thought that I should be compelled to hear such fearful sounds, and, although I immediately buried my head in my shawl, nothing can efface from memory the disgust and horror....One of these unhappy persons was a very gentlemanly young Spaniard, who implored for death in the most moving terms. He appealed to his judges in the most eloquent manner - as gentlemen, as men of honor; representing to them that to be deprived of life was nothing in comparison with the never-to-be-effaced stain of the vilest convict's punishment to which they had sentenced him. Finding all his entreaties disregarded, he swore a most solemn oath, that he would murder every American that he should chance to meet alone, and as he is a man of the most dauntless courage, and rendered desperate by a burning sense of disgrace...he will doubtless keep his word.

The above account probably inspired the flogging scene in The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta, by Yellow Bird, aka John Rollin Ridge. Historian Joseph Henry Jackson notes in his book Bad Company that the Shirley letters were in Ferdinand Ewer's possession when Ridge researched his book, and that he frequently visited Ewer's office.

Not long after the floggings, Louise reported that a hanging and an attempted suicide had occurred at the mines. The first involved a man accused of murdering and robbing his employer. The second involved a Henry Cook, who apparently slit his own throat. After Dr. Clapp tended his wound, Cook decided to accuse Ned, owner of the Humbolt, of attempted murder. Ned's friends came to his defense, and the charge was dropped, but tempers were high. Dr. Clapp was nearly mobbed for having bound the wound of a man they, according to Louise Capp, 'insisted upon shooting...reasoning [that]...'a man so hardened as to raise his hand against his own life will never hesitate to murder another!" In the end, the vigilantes decided to exile Cook instead.

Meanwhile, Señor Pizarro's wounded leg festered. It was amputated, but he did not regain his strength. Sick with dysentery, he died soon afterward. Oxley remained bedridden for weeks but eventually recovered, no thanks to 'the Moguls,' whom Louise Clapp refers to as'sleep killers.' The Moguls, actually members of the Vigilance Committee, apparently believed they were above the law. They began to 'parade the streets all night, howling, shouting, breaking into houses, taking wearied miners out of their beds and throwing them into the river....Nearly every night they built bonfires fearfully near some rag shanty, thus endangering the lives (or I should rather say the property - for as it is impossible to sleep, lives are emphatically safe) of the whole community. They retire about five o'clock in the morning; previously...posting notices to the effect, and that they will throw anyone who may disturb them into the river.'

In fall, the population began to decline swiftly. Louise noted that the flume miners, who had spent $2,000 to build a wing dam'six feet high and three-hundred feet in length, upon which thirty men labored nine days and a half,' had collected $41.70 in gold; 'nearly every person on the river received the same treatment from Dame Nature....Shopkeepers, restaurants, and gambling houses...were in the same moneyless condition.' Fayette had lost $1,000 in a prospecting investment, causing Louise to call mining 'Nature's lottery.'

Few people wanted to brave another winter on the bars, including the Clapps. In her last letter, dated November 21, 1852, Louise couldn't help 'fretting...at the dreadful prospect of being compelled to spend the winter here.' Yet when the day of departure came, she hesitated. 'My heart is heavy at the thought of departing forever from this place. I like this wild and barbarous life; I leave it with regret....Yes, Molly, smile if you will at my folly; but I go from the mountains with a deep heart sorrow. I look kindly to this existence, which to you seems so sordid and mean. Here, at least, I have been contented....You would hardly recognize the feeble and half-dying invalid, who drooped languidly out of sight, as night shut down between your straining gaze and the good ship Manilla...in the person of your now perfectly healthy sister.' Fayette Clapp, too, was perfectly healthy, but San Francisco again did not agree with him.

In 1853, Fayette sailed to Hawaii without Louise. In 1854, he showed up in Massachusetts. A year later, he headed west again, this time to Illinois. Louise chose to remain in San Francisco, where she taught school. She filed for divorce there in 1856. Although she kept Fayette's last name, she apparently added an 'e' to it, making her Louise A.K.S. Clappe. By the time the Civil War broke out, Fayette had moved to Columbia, Mo., and remarried.

Louise retired from teaching in 1878 and went to live in New York City, where she continued to write and lecture until 1897, when she moved into a retirement home founded by Bret Harte's nieces, Anna and Nina Knault, in Hanover Township, N.J. She died there on February 9, 1906. Although the California Gold Rush, which started 150 years ago, produced its share of heartfelt letters, the 'Dame Shirley' letters remain the biggest bonanza in the bunch.

This article was written by Lori Lee Wilson and originally appeared in the August 1999 issue of Wild West.p>For more great articles be sure to subscribe to magazine today!

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'Really, everybody ought to go to the mines just to see how little it takes to make people comfortable in the world,' Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clapp wrote from the mines in California, to her sister Molly in New England.

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Facts, Summary and HistoryNet Articles about the Battle Of Gettysburg during the American Civil War

Battle Summary: The Battle of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania (July 1-July 3, 1863), was the largest battle of the American Civil War as well as the largest battle ever fought in North America, involving around 85,000 men in the Union's Army of the Potomac under Major General George Gordon Meade and approximately 75,000 in the Confederacy's Army of Northern Virginia, commanded by General Robert Edward Lee. Casualties at Gettysburg totaled 23,049 for the Union (3,155 dead, 14,529 wounded, 5,365 missing). Confederate casualties were 28,063 (3,903 dead, 18,735 injured, and 5,425 missing), more than a third of Lee's army.

These largely irreplaceable losses to the South's largest army, combined with the Confederate surrender of Vicksburg, Mississippi, on July 4, marked what is widely regarded as a turning point-perhaps the turning point-in the Civil War, although the conflict would continue for nearly two more years and witness several more major battles, including Chickamauga, Spotsylvania Courthouse, Monocacy, Nashville, etc.

A Note on Military Ranks

Ranks shown for regular army Union officers at the Battle of Gettysburg are their ranks as commanders of U.S. Volunteers; their ranks in the U. S. Army were usually lower. Meade, for example, was a Major General of United States Volunteers (USV) but only a brigadier general in the regular army when he was placed in charge of the Army of the Potomac. "Old Snapping Turtle," as he was called, was brusque with subordinates and superiors alike and would not be promoted to major general in the regular army until August 18, 1864.

The Gettysburg Campaign

In the wake of Confederate victory at Chancellorsville, Virginia (May 1-4, 1863), Lee decided to attempt a second invasion of the North. This would take pressure off Virginia's farms during the growing season, especially in the "breadbasket of the Confederacy," the Shenandoah Valley. Additionally, any victories won on Northern soil would put political pressure on Abraham Lincoln's administration to negotiate a settlement to the war, or might lead to the South's long hoped-for military alliance with England and France.

The campaign began under a dark shadow: Lee's creative and aggressive corps commander, Lieutenant General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, had been mortally wounded by his own men at Chancellorsville. The Army of Northern Virginia reorganized from two corps to three, with Lt. Gen. Richard "Dick" Ewell replacing Jackson in the Second Corps and Lt. Gen. Ambrose Powell (A. P.) Hill commanding the newly formed Third Corps. Lieutenant General James Longstreet-Lee's "Old War Horse"-retained command of the First Corps. The Army of Northern Virginia was about to invade enemy territory with two of its three corps commanders newly appointed to their positions, and the secretive, self-reliant Jackson had done little to prepare them for this level of command.

This would be Lee's second incursion into the North. The previous one ended in the bloodiest single day in America's history, the Battle of Antietam (called the Battle of Sharpsburg in the South) in Maryland on September 17, 1862. Total casualties from that one-day battle exceeded 23,000.

In order to mask the army's movement up the Shenandoah Valley into western Maryland and central Pennsylvania, Lee depended upon his renowned cavalry leader J.E.B. "Jeb" Stuart. Upon crossing into Maryland, Stuart loosely interpreted Lee's ambiguous orders and began raiding Union supply trains. Cut off by the advancing Army of the Potomac, from June 25 until the night of July 2, Stuart lost all communication with the rest of the Confederate army, leaving Lee to operate blindly deep in enemy territory.

Meanwhile, on the Union side, the Army of the Potomac was still under the command of General Joe Hooker, who had lost the Chancellorsville battle, diminishing his reputation as "Fighting Joe." As reports arrived that the Confederates had crossed the Potomac and were on Northern soil, Hooker dispersed his army widely, trying to simultaneously protect the approaches to Washington, Philadelphia and Baltimore. He'd lost Lincoln's confidence, and the president made the difficult choice to replace an army commander in the face of an enemy invasion. On June 28, a military engineer, Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade-who had only been promoted to corps command less than six months earlier-was placed in charge of the Union's largest army. He immediately ordered his scattered corps to concentrate in a manner that would allow each to be quickly reinforced by another. He hoped to draw Lee into attacking him on high ground along Pipe Steam Creek.

As Meade's corps moved closer to each other, Lee's army was scattered, moving along multiple roads. He issued orders to his subordinates to not bring on a general engagement until the army could concentrate its forces. Fate had other plans.

Gettysburg: Day 1

On the morning of July 1, Major General Henry Heth, of A.P. Hill's Third Corps, sent his 7,500-man division down the Chambersburg Pike toward Gettysburg. Encountering resistance, they initially assumed it was more of the hastily assembled Pennsylvania Emergency Militia that they'd been skirmishing with during the campaign.

In reality, Colonel John Buford had deployed part of two brigades of Union cavalry as skirmishers in the brush along Willoughby's Run three miles west of town. Just two weeks previously, they'd been issued breech-loading carbines, and they used the guns' fast-loading capability to create the impression of a much larger force, slowing the advance of Hill's brigades for a time before falling back.

The Confederates followed them across the stream, only to meet a line of Union infantry on McPherson's Ridge. The Army of the Potomac was arriving piecemeal, and among the first to arrive was a brigade of Western regiments that had earned the nickname "Iron Brigade of the West." Confederates recognized these "fellows in the black hats" and realized they were in for a rougher day than expected.

Union major general John Reynolds, commander of the left wing of the Army of the Potomac (I, III and XI corps), arrived and took charge of the defense. His men fought tenaciously, and Reynolds was shot dead during the fighting.

From his headquarters at Taneytown, Meade dispatched Major General Winfield Scott Hancock to take command at Gettysburg-although Major General O. O. Howard was already on the field-and assess whether or not the battle should be fought there. Hancock, seeing the strong defensive position offered by the hills near Gettysburg, chose to stand, and Meade ordered the other corps to the little crossroads town.

By afternoon, Confederate reinforcements had also arrived, and the general engagement Lee hadn't wanted at this stage of the campaign was a fait accompli.

The Union's XI Corps was driven back through the town of Gettysburg, losing 4,000 men, and by evening was entrenching on Culp's and Cemetery hills south of town.

Lee expressed a desire for General Ewell to assault the hills without waiting for further reinforcement, but he failed to make it an express order. Ewell did not press his tired men forward, giving Meade time to reinforce the troops on the hills.

Day 2

James Longstreet's corps had arrived, and his 20,000 men were sent to outflank the Union left, which was anchored to the south by two eminences known as Little Round Top and Big Round Top. But the Federals had failed to place troops upon those hills, as Lee learned from an early morning reconnaissance report. Ewell was to make a demonstration against Culp's and Cemetery hills on the Union right and to use his own discretion about launching a full-scale attack.

Longstreet's men, moving toward their objective, had to reverse, countermarch and take a different route after Brigadier General Lafayette McLaws discovered the planned route would put them in full view of the Federals, negating any advantage of surprise. This cost valuable time but, as events turned out, a Union general was about to present them an unexpected opportunity.

All but one of Meade's seven corps were now on the field, deployed in a fish-hook shape with its center along Cemetery Ridge; the defensive positions on Culp's and Cemetery hills formed the hook at one end. The left was held by Major General Daniel Sickles, who owed his military rank to his political importance in the essential state of New York.

Dissatisfied with his position at the lower end of Cemetery Ridge, he took it upon himself to advance his III Corps nearly a half-mile west toward the Emmitsburg Pike and open high ground in a wheat field near a peach orchard. The move dangerously stretched his 10,000-man corps. Longstreet's men attacked Sickle's new position, and the fighting at rocky Devil's Den, the wheat field and the peach orchard was among the fiercest and bloodiest of the three days.

Meade, faced with Sickles' blunder, sent V Corps and part of the XI to reinforce him. New York's Irish Brigade received Last Rites from a Catholic priest before charging into the fray; 198 of them would not return from the desperate fighting in the hot, sultry afternoon.

Above the blood-soaked fields, a similar drama was playing out on Little Round Top. Around 4:30 p.m., men of Alabama, Texas and Arkansas, from John Bell Hood 's Division in Longstreet's Corps, began ascending the steep hill from the west. Had they arrived two hours earlier, they would have captured the heights unopposed, but by the time they arrived Meade's chief of engineers, Brig. Gen. Gouveneur K. Warren, had discovered the potentially disastrous situation and sent messages to Sickles, who could not send even a single regiment by that time.

One message found its way to Colonel Strong Vincent, commanding 3rd Brigade, 1st Division, of the Federals' V Corps. He double-timed his men and deployed them among the rocks and trees of Little Round Top's western and southern slopes. The fate of the Union Army, at that moment, rested on the shoulders of 1,350 men of the 83rd Pennsylvania, 44th New York, 16th Michigan and 20th Maine regiments. Vincent's orders were to "hold this ground at all costs!"

Nearly 650 Rebels of the 15th Alabama stormed into the saddle between the Round Tops around 6:00 p.m., and into the muzzles of Colonel Joshua Chamberlain 's 20th Maine. After an hour of intense fighting, Chamberlain's 300-plus men had nearly exhausted their 15,000 rounds of ammunition. He ordered a countercharge. The surprised Alabamians fell back and attempted to make a stand, but Company B of the 20th Maine, which had been detached to cover the regiment's flank, and fourteen of Hiram Berdan's Sharpshooters rose from behind a stone wall and charged the Confederates' flank. Convinced they were outnumbered, the men of the 15th and 47th Alabama retreated onto Big Round Top.

On the western slope, Colonel Vincent's other regiments also stood firm until part of the 16th Michigan was pushed back. Gouvenor Warren, receiving a plea for reinforcements, ordered the 140th New York Zouaves to charge, and they broke the Rebels' line long enough for more reinforcements to arrive.

By the time the sun went down on the second day at Gettysburg, the Union left still held, but III Corps would no longer be a significant factor in the battle, and V Corps had been badly mauled. Meanwhile, a desperate contest was taking place on the slope of Cemetery Hill.

Ewell's troops had advanced from around the town of Gettysburg to assault Culp's and Cemetery hills. For an hour they struggled across rough ground while Union batteries threw shot and shell among them, but when they got far enough up the slopes, the Federals could not depress their barrels enough to fire into them, and the Rebels routed infantry of the XI Corps. Union regiments pulled from one area of Cemetery Hill to plug a gap created by the retreat created their own gap, and Confederate infantry poured through.

Down on Cemetery Ridge, Winfield Hancock sent the 14th Indiana and 7th West Virginia regiments to reinforce Cemetery Hill. Arriving after dark, they formed up and charged into the Rebels who were fighting with artillerymen around the Union guns. The Confederates fell back. In one of the ironic events of the war, the 7th West Virginia, which had been the 7th Virginia (Union) until June 20 when West Virginia was admitted as a state, fought hand to hand with the 7th Virginia of the Confederacy, capturing a nephew of their own regimental commander.

The long day of bloodshed finally ended. Meade called together his commanders for a council of war. He'd already sent a message to the War Department stating that he intended to stay and fight; he may have called the council in order to make sure no one would do the next day what Sickles had done. Meade's army had been attacked on the left and the right; that fact, combined with other intelligence he'd received, led him to believe his center would be the target the next day.

Read more about General Lee's plan for Gettysburg Day 2

Day 3

Throughout the war, Robert E. Lee had always sought a way to "get at those people over there." His aggressiveness had served the Confederate cause well on many battlefields, but on July 3, 1863, it led to disaster.

Despite the passionate arguments of Longstreet, Lee instructed his "Old War Horse" to strike the Union center on Cemetery Ridge, using the divisions of Brig. Gen. James Johnston Pettigrew, Maj. Gen. Isaac Ridgeway Trimble, and the recently arrived division of Maj. Gen. George Pickett. In all, approximately 15,000 men were to advance three-quarters of a mile across open ground, climb fences along the roads, and charge up the gradual but steep slope of Cemetery Ridge to assail a force of about 6,500, but the Federals had reinforcements close by.

At 1:00 in the afternoon, a prolonged artillery barrage by the Confederates, utilizing an unprecedented number of guns spread two miles wide, preceded the assault, intended to silence the Union's cannons and weaken the infantry. Most of its shells went high, plunging to earth behind the Federals' line, though some found their mark. One nearly struck Meade, standing outside his headquarters.

For a time, Federal guns replied, until the order came down to conserve ammunition for the attack that was obviously coming. When the Union cannons fell silent, Lee's artillery chief, Col. Edward Porter Alexander, sent word for Longstreet to bring up his men.

Pettigrew's division of four brigades formed the left of the attack line, with two of Trimble's brigades behind them and to their right for support. Pickett's men stepped out on the right.

The advance was disordered by terrain and by flanking fire on Pettigrew's left as it neared the Union line. Pickett's advance drifted left, exposing his right to enemy fire. Through shot, shell, canister and rifle fire, the long Confederate line surged forward. Near the Union center, it broke through temporarily until reinforcements drove it back. As the survivors straggled back to Confederate lines at Seminary Ridge, many of them passed Robert E. Lee, who told them, "It is my fault."

The day also saw cavalry action, as the horsemen of brigadier generals George Custer and David Gregg stymied Stuart's attempt to get into the Union rear..

Aftermath

On July 4, Lee started a 27-mile-long train of hospital wagons down the road to Virginia. His army halted at the flooded Potomac River and entrenched for another battle, but Meade's army, too, was battered and exhausted and had consumed much of its ammunition. The Army of the Potomac did not pursue, for which Meade would be soundly criticized. He remained in command of that army for the rest of the war, even after Ulysses S. Grant was promoted to lieutenant general, placed over all Northern armies and attached himself to the Army of the Potomac. Lee offered his resignation to Confederate president Jefferson Davis, but it was refused and he, too, remained in command for the rest of the war.

Notable Facts about the Battle of Gettysburg

Ammunition at Gettysburg: An estimated 569 tons of ammunition was fired during the three days of fighting.

Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was delivered November 19, 1863, at the dedication of the "Soldiers' National Cemetery" at Gettysburg. The speech was extremely short by the standards of the day and received scant notice at the time, but its concise, powerful wording has made it one of the best-known public addresses in all of history. Contrary to popular myth, Lincoln did not scribble the speech on the back of an envelope on his way to Gettysburg but wrote several drafts. The last bodies would not be retrieved from battlefield graves and reinterred in the cemetery until months after the dedication ceremonies.

John Buford, whose cavalry fired the first shots of the battle, died December 16, 1863. His death is thought to have resulted from typhoid fever and a body weakened by exhaustion. He received a deathbed promotion to major general, post-dated to July 1, 1863.

Civilians at Gettysburg were left to deal with the thousands of wounded. Homes and public buildings became hospitals, and diseases born of infection and unsanitary conditions made living in the town risky. Volunteers came from the North and the South, however, to aid in caring for the wounded, burying the dead, and piling and burning carcasses of horses and mules killed in the fighting.

During the battle, a random bullet went through the door of a house, striking and killing 20-year-old Mary Virginia (Jenny) Wade. She was the only civilian killed during the battle.

Banner image by Brian King.

Articles Featuring Gettysburg From History Net Magazines

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Battle Summary: The Battle of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania (July 1-July 3, 1863), was the largest battle of the American Civil War as well as the largest battle ever fought in North America, involving around 85,000 men in the Union's Army of the Potomac under Major General George Gordon Meade and approximately 75,000 in the Confederacy's Army of Northern Virginia, commanded by General Robert Edward Lee.

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Table of Contents

1. Battle of Appomattox Court House

2. Lee Surrenders to Grant

3. The Final Battle of the Civil War?

The Battle of Appomattox Court House was fought on April 9, 1865, near the town of Appomattox Court House, Virginia, and led to Confederate General Robert E. Lee's surrender of his Army of Northern Virginia to Union General Ulysses S. Grant. Days earlier, Lee had abandoned the Confederate capital of Richmond and the city of Petersburg; his goal was to rally the remnants of his beleaguered troops, meet Confederate reinforcements in North Carolina and resume fighting. But the resulting Battle of Appomattox Court House, which lasted only a few hours, effectively brought the four-year Civil War to an end.

Battle of Appomattox Court House
WATCH: Appomattox Court House
In retreat from the Union army's Appomattox campaign, which began in March 1865, the Army of Northern Virginia stumbled westward through the Virginia countryside stripped of food and supplies. At one point, Union cavalry forces under General Philip Sheridan had outrun General Lee's troops, blocking their retreat and taking approximately 6,000 prisoners at Sayler's Creek.

Confederate desertions were mounting daily, and by April 8 the Rebels were almost completely surrounded. Nonetheless, early on the morning of April 9, Confederate troops led by Major General John B. Gordon mounted a last-ditch offensive that was initially successful. Soon, however, the Confederates saw that they were hopelessly outnumbered by two corps of Union soldiers who had marched all night to cut off the Confederate advance.

Later that morning, Lee-cut off from all provisions and all support-famously declared that "there is nothing left me to do but to go and see Gen. Grant, and I would rather die a thousand deaths." But Lee also knew his remaining troops, numbering about 28,000, would quickly turn to pillaging the countryside in order to survive.

With no remaining options, Lee sent a message to General Ulysses Grant announcing his willingness to surrender the Army of Northern Virginia. The two war-weary generals met in the front parlor of the Wilmer McLean home at one o'clock that afternoon.

Lee Surrenders to Grant

Lee and Grant, both of whom held the highest rank in their respective armies, had known each other slightly during the Mexican-American War (1846-48) and began their dialogue by exchanging awkward personal inquiries. Characteristically, Grant had arrived in his mud-splattered field uniform while Lee had turned out in full dress attire, complete with sash and sword.

Did you know? In 1869, the house where Lee surrendered to Grant was sold at public auction after owner Wilmer McLean defaulted on his loan repayments. In the ensuing years, the house had a series of owners before it was reconstructed and opened to the public by the National Park Service in 1949.

Lee asked for the terms of surrender, and Grant hurriedly wrote them out. Generously, all officers and men were to be pardoned, and they would be sent home with their private property-most important to the men were the horses, which could be used for a late spring planting. Officers would keep their side arms, and Lee's starving men would be given Union rations.

Quieting a band that had begun to play in celebration, Grant told his officers, "The war is over. The Rebels are our countrymen again." Although scattered resistance continued for several weeks-the final skirmish of the Civil War occurred on May 12 and 13 at the Battle of Palmito Ranch near Brownsville, Texas-for all practical purposes the Civil War had come to an end.

The Final Battle of the Civil War?

News of the surrender traveled slowly. Although scattered resistance continued for several weeks-there were six battles that took place after Appomattox, with the final skirmish of the Civil War occurring on May 12 and 13 at the Battle of Palmito Ranch near Brownsville, Texas-for all practical purposes, the Civil War had come to an end.

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Appomattox Court House - Definition, Date & Location

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The Appomattox Court House, located in Virginia, is where Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in April 1865, bringing an end to the Civil War.

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Reconstruction (1865–1877): Lincoln’s Ten-Percent Plan: 1863–1865 | SparkNotes

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Reconstruction (1865–1877) quizzes about important details and events in every section of the book.

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Ten Percent Plan-
https://www.sparknotes.com/history/american/reconstruction/section1/
Wade-Davis Bill- https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=37
13th, 14th, 15th amendments- https://image.slidesharecdn.com/reconstructionunit-lesson1-131415amendments-ppt-150927164252-lva1-app6892/95/reconstruction-
unit-lesson-1-13-14-15-amendments-ppt-16-638.jpg?cb=1443372341
Plessy vs Ferguson/end of Reconstruction-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGvkOBxp0VY

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OurDocuments.gov. Featuring 100 milestone documents of American history from the National Archives. Includes images of original primary source documents, lesson plans, teacher and student competitions, and educational resources.

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Plessy .vs. Ferguson/end of Reconstruction

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Plessy .vs. Ferguson/end of Reconstruction

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Gold Rush- http://www.historynet.com/california-gold-rush
Homestead and Morrill-https://into-the-westah1.weebly.com/homestead-act-and-morrill-land.html
The Long Walk- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUKCA966BFc
Massacre at Wounded Knee-https://photos.legendsofamerica.com/sd-southwest/h5DF43918#h5df43918

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

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"If a Western Rip Van Winkle had fallen asleep in 1869 and awakened in 1896, he would not have recognized the lands that the railroads had touched. Bison had yielded to cattle; mountains had been blasted and bored. Great swaths of land that had once whispered grass now screamed corn and wheat. Nation-states had conquered Indian peoples, slaughtering some of them and confining and controlling most of them. Population had increased across much of this vast region, and there were growing cities along its edges. A land that had once run largely north-south now ran east-west. Each change could have been traced back to the railroads." - Richard White, Railroaded

Unprecedented Urbanization

Between 1820 and 1860, the visual map of the United States was transformed by unprecedented urbanization and rapid territorial expansion. These changes mutually fueled the Second Industrial Revolution which peaked between 1870 and 1914. Between the annexation of Texas (1845), the British retreat from Oregon country, and The Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo (1848) which cemented Mexican cession of the Southwest to the United States, territorial expansion exponentially rewrote the competing visions free-soilers, European immigrants, industrial capitalists, and Native Americans held for the future of the American Empire.

Need for Railroads

The need for massive industry was obvious: in order to reach California's burgeoning port cities like San Francisco and to expedite the extraction of gold from the mines, railroad tracks would need to be laid across the plains to reach the Pacific and open up trade networks. Questions abounded about the character this new American territory would take: would it be reliant on slave labor and fulfill Jefferson's original vision of an agrarian republic? Would corporations or the federal government lay down the required infrastructure to 'tame the West'? Still, others wondered if turning over the bison laden Plains to New York based corporations would stifle the American dream for America's second and third sons. Still, others believed the technological innovations of the Second Industrial Revolution was the unstoppable culmination of modern civilization propelling the fulfillment of Manifest Destiny. Questions of this nature were not new in American history. Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, Americans were forced to adjust to the implications of the First Industrial Revolution. 1750 to 1850 marked a century of heightened industrial activity centered around textiles. After the invention of steam power and the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1793, cotton could be shipped from the American South by New England ships to the vast textile factories of Great Britain, producing a reverse triangle trade around a single global commodity. These developments were hailed by some as "progress," but the pace, scale, and reliance of slave labor on these developments instilled in others a great sense of anxiety and fear.

Although the economic and social problems of the first Industrial Revolution distressed many, these concerns were set aside during the nation's bloody Civil War (1861-1865).

The following maps demonstrate the advancement of the railroad before the Civil War (as always, click to enlarge image):

American Economic Growth

In the aftermath of the Civil War and Reconstruction, the American economy grew considerably as it entered "The Second Industrial Revolution," generally recognized as the period between 1870 and 1914. The U.S. was awash in an abundance of natural resources from its newly acquired territories, a growing supply of labor immigrating from Europe, and the migration of emancipated African Americans North and West, an expanding market for manufactured goods, and the availability of capital for investment.

The Second Industrial Revolution took local communities and their new products out of the shadow of large regional agricultural based economies which was assisted by new labor forces and production techniques. During the Second Industrial Revolution, innovations in transportation, such as roads, steamboats, the Eerie Canal, and most notably railroads, linked distant, previously isolated communities together.

Transporting Products

For the first time, goods from the American interior could be shipped directly to the Atlantic, and vice versa. Being able to ship products great distances transformed the nature of economic activity in the United States. Before the development of this elaborate transportation and communication system, economies were localized and often based on a barter system. The transportation revolution opened up new markets for farmers, industrialists, and bankers who could now bring crops cotton in the Mississippi River Valley, wheat in the Midwest, and manufactured goods in upstate New York into a global market based on credit. Similarly, the expansion of the railroad brought a dramatic reduction in the time and money it took to move heavy goods, creating new opportunities for wealth at a time when two-thirds of all Americans still resided on farms.

Government Involvement

The federal government actively participated in this growth by promoting industrial and agricultural development. High tariffs were enacted to protect American industry from foreign competition, land was granted to railroad companies to encourage construction, and the army was employed to forcibly remove Indians from western land desired by farmers and mining companies. The rapid growth of factory production, mining, and railroad construction all boosted the new industrial economy and stood in stark contrast to the previous small farm and artisan workshop economy of the pre-Civil War era.

By 1913, the United States produced one-third of the world's industrial out put-more than the total of Great Britain, France, and Germany combined. The living standards and the purchasing power of money increased rapidly, as new technologies played an ever-increasing role in the daily lives of working- and middle-class citizens. Between 1870 and 1920, almost 11 million Americans moved from farm to city, and another 25 million immigrants arrived from overseas. By 1920, for the first time in American history, the census revealed more people lived in cities than on farms.

Interconnected Growth

Inventions during the Second Industrial Revolution were interconnected. The railroad spurred the growth of the telegraph machine. Telegraph lines and railroad lines inextricably bound together as telegraph polls dotted the distance of railroad lines. The telegraph, and later the telephone, ushered in the era of instant communication and brought about, in the words of cultural historian Stephen Kern, "the annihilation of distance." This was a profound change for Americans. The "local" shot outward to the "national" and even "international" as a new sense of world unity was established through these new technologies. These technologies also increased the pace of life and the manner in which people worked and lived.

Major Technological Advances of the Second Industrial Revolution:

* 1870s - Automatic signals, air brakes, and knuckle couplers on the railroads; the Bessemer and then the open-hearth process in the steel mills; the telephone, electric light, and typewriter.
* 1880s - The elevator and structural steel for buildings, leading to the first "skyscrapers."
* 1890s - The phonograph and motion pictures; the electric generator, contributing to modern household items such as refrigerators and washing machines and gradually replaced water and steam powered engines; and the internal combustion engine, which made possible the first automobiles and the first airplane flight by the Wright brothers in 1903.

Unstable Growth

The economic growth during this time period was extraordinary but unstable. The world economy experienced harsh depressions in 1873 and again in 1897. Businesses competed intensely with each other and corporations battled to gain control of industries. Countless companies failed and others were bought up by larger corporations which eventually ruled the marketplace.

For those who were able to capitalize on these technological advancements, the Second Industrial Revolution was highly profitable. During the Depression of 1873, the soon-to-be industry giant, Andrew Carnegie established a steel company which controlled every phase of business from raw materials to transportation, manufacturing, and distribution.

Carnegie Fortune

By the 1890s, Carnegie dominated the steel industry and had accumulated a fortune worth millions. His steel factories were the most technologically advanced in the world, although this honor came at a price for his workers. Carnegie ran his companies with a dictatorial hand; his factories operated around the clock and workers were burdened with long hours. Yet, at the same time, Carnegie believed that the rich had a moral obligation to promote the advancement of society and he distributed much of his wealth to various philanthropies, especially towards the creation of public libraries throughout the country.

Like Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller also accumulated enormous amounts of wealth, although his came through domination of the oil industry.

Beating the Competition

Rockefeller annihilated rival oil firms through committed competition, secret deals with railroad companies, and fixed prices and production quotas. He bought out competing oil refineries and managed all aspects of the operation, including drilling, refining, storage, and distribution. Before long, Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company controlled a majority of the nation's oil industry. Like Carnegie, Rockefeller publicly supported a number of philanthropies, yet privately domineered over his workers and bitterly fought their efforts to organize and unionize.

The Second Industrial Revolution fueled the Gilded Age, a period of great extremes: great wealth and widespread poverty, great expansion and deep depression, new opportunities and greater standardization. Economic insecurity became a basic way of life as the depressions of the 1870s and 1890s put millions out of work or reduced pay. Those who remained in the industrial line of work experienced extremely dangerous working conditions, long hours, no compensation for injuries, no pensions, and low wages. But for a limited minority of workers, the industrial system established new forms of freedom. Skilled workers received high wages in industrial work and oversaw a great deal of the production process. Economic independence now required a technical skill rather than ownership of one's own shop and tools. It was labeled "progress" by its proponents, but those who worked the floor at the factory knew it came at a price.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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The Second Industrial Revolution, 1870-1914 - US History Scene

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"If a Western Rip Van Winkle had fallen asleep in 1869 and awakened in 1896, he would not have recognized the lands that the railroads had touched. Bison had yielded to cattle; mountains had been blasted and bored. Great swaths of land that had once whispered grass now screamed corn and wheat.

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Second Revolutionary War-http://ushistoryscene.com/article/second-industrial-revolution/
Major inventions- https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/06/forget-edison-this-is-how-historys-greatest-inventions-really-happened/258525/
Rise of Big business- https://3yaxqw1hoybz1qcak31ysc9f-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/pullmancartoonwb.jpg
Labor Movement- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewu-v36szlE

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The world's most famous inventors are household names. As we all know, Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, Alexander Graham Bell invented the phone, and Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin.

Except they didn't. The ideas didn't spring, Athena-like, fully formed from their brains. In fact, they didn't spring fully formed from anybody's brains. That is the myth of the lonely inventor and the eureka moment.

"Simultaneous invention and incremental improvement are the way innovation works, even for radical inventions," Mark A. Lemley writes in his fascinating paper The Myth of the Sole Inventor. Lemley's paper concentrates on the history and problems of patents. But he also chronicles the history of the 19th and 20th century's most famous inventors -- with an emphasis on how their inventions were really neither theirs, nor inventions. Here is a super-quick summary of his wonderful distillation of the last 200 years in collaborative innovation.

COTTON GIN

The fabric cotton comes from cotton fibers that mix with seeds in the pods of cotton plants. To make the fabric, therefore, you have to separate the fibers from the seeds. For centuries this was done mostly by hand, until Eli Whitney "invented" the cotton gin in 1793. But various forms of roller gins (i.e. technologies for separating fibers from seeds) had been around for thousands of years. Five years earlier, in 1788, Joseph Eve developed his own mechanized self-feeding roller gin. Whitney's true innovation was to improve existing cotton gins by "replacing rollers with coarse wire teeth that rotated through slits to pull the fiber from the seed." If this insight was a breakthrough, the glory goes to Whitney only he was faster than his competitors. In 1795, John Barcley filed a patent on a gin featuring circles of teeth -- awfully similar to Whitney's wire-tooth model (see left). In short, the modern cotton gin was a eureka moment that multiple inventors experienced nearly simultaneously and was expedited by their competition.

As the tale goes, Samuel Morse was having dinner with friends and debating electromagnetism (like you do) when he realized that if an electrical signal could travel instantly across a wire, why couldn't information do the same? Like most fun eureka stories,

it's a fib. The telegraph was invented by not only Morse, but also Charles Wheatstone, Sir William Fothergill Cooke, Edward Davy, and Carl August von Steinhiel so near to each other that the British Supreme Court refused to issue one patent. It was Joseph Henry, not Morse, who discovered that coiling wire would strengthen electromagnetic induction. Of Morse's key contribution -- the application of Henry's electromagnets to boost signal strength -- Lemley writes that "it is not even clear that he fully understood how that contribution worked."

Like Morse, Alexander Graham Bell invented a technology that would later bear his name. But how much did he deserve it? The problem that Bell solved was to turn electrical signals into sounds. But this was such an obvious extension of the telegraph that there were many people working on it. Philip Reis had already designed a sound transmitter in 1860, and Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz (one guy) had already built a receiver. Bell's real contribution was "to vary the strength of the current to capture variations in voice and sound," Lemley writes. In this tweak, he was racing against Thomas Edison. Even Bell's final product -- which combined transmitter, fluctuating current, and receiver -- had company. Elisha Gray filed a patent application on the exact same day as Bell, only to lose the patent claim in court. Lemly's conclusion: "Bell's iconic status owes as much to his victories in court and in the marketplace as at the lab bench."

LIGHT-BULB

As just about everyone is taught, Thomas Edison invented the light-bulb. And as just about everyone later learns, Thomas Edison in no way invented the light-bulb. Electric lighting existed before him, incandescent light bulbs existed before him, and when other inventors got wind of Edison's tinkerings, they roundly sued him for patent infringement. So what did Edison actually do? He discovered that a special species of bamboo had a higher resistance to electricity than carbonized paper, which means it could more efficiently produce light. Edison got rich off the bamboo, and filthy disgusting rich from superior manufacturing and marketing of his product. But within a generation other inventors had developed better filaments and today's light-bulbs

Most of these stories here are about how we mistake incremental improvements for eureka moments. But the story of the movie projector is simpler. It's basically a story about theft. Francis Jenkins built what we consider the ur-instrument of the motion-picture industry with a projector that showed strips of films for 1/24th of a second, creating the illusion of moving pictures. But his financial backer stole the Jenkins prototype and sold it to a theater chain, which called it the "Edison Vitascope" for no better reason than the word Edison was familiar and useful for branding. That Edison was tinkering with his own movie projector is true, but besides the point. His legacy here was mostly the work of a thief.

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Forget Edison: This is How History's Greatest Inventions Really Happened

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The world's most famous inventors are household names. As we all know, Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, Alexander Graham Bell invented the phone, and Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. Except they didn't. The ideas didn't spring, Athena-like, fully formed from their brains. In fact, they didn't spring fully formed from anybody's brains.

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The Labor Movement in the United States | History

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American Imperialism- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfsfoFqsFk4
Immigration of the growth of Cities-https://www.apstudynotes.org/us-history/topics/growth-of-
cities/
Political corruption -https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-ushistory/chapter/the-progressive-era/
Womens rights-https://www.cesi.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/20120229_womensday_01_03_2012_001-600x600.jpg

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American Imperialism: Crash Course US History #28

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Start reading at the New immigration subtitle Mr. Green

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Growth of Cities - AP U.S. History Topic Outlines - Study Notes

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100% Free AP Test Prep website that offers study material to high school students seeking to prepare for AP exams. Enterprising students use this website to learn AP class material, study for class quizzes and tests, and to brush up on course material before the big exam day.

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The Progressive Era

The Progressive Era was a period of social activism and political reform in the United States that flourished from the 1890s to the 1920s.

Learning Objectives

List the primary causes championed by the Progressive movement, and some of the movement's major outcomes

Key Takeaways

Key Points

Characteristics of the Progressive Era include purification of the government, modernization, a focus on family and education, prohibition, and women's suffrage.

Many Progressives sought to rid the government of corruption, and muckraking became a particular type of journalism that exposed waste, corruption, and scandal on a national level.

Two of the most important outcomes of the Progressive Era were the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Amendments, the first of which outlawed the manufacturing, sale, or transport of alcohol, and the second of which enfranchised women with the right to vote.

The national political leaders of the Progressive Era included Theodore Roosevelt, Robert M. La Follette Sr., Charles Evans Hughes, and Herbert Hoover on the Republican side, and William Jennings Bryan, Woodrow Wilson, and Al Smith on the Democratic side.

Theodore Roosevelt is often cited as the first Progressive president, known for his trust -busting activities.

Progressives did little for civil rights or the plight of African Americans in the aftermath of Reconstruction, as the Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of many racist southern laws.

Key Terms

muckraker: A reform-oriented investigative journalist during the Progressive Era. The muckrakers' work called attention to the problems of the time, including poor industrial working conditions, poor urban living conditions, and unscrupulous business practices. Prominent muckrakers included novelist Upton Sinclair, photographer Jacob Riis, and journalists Ida M. Tarbell and Lincoln Steffens.

progressivism: The political ideology that favors rational governmental action to improve society. It arose in response to industrialism and dominated American politics for the first two decades of the twentieth century.

Eighteenth Amendment: This constitutional amendment established prohibition of alcohol in 1920.

Nineteenth Amendment: This constitutional amendment, ratified in 1920, granted women the right to vote and forbade any suffrage restrictions based on gender.

The Progressive Era was a period of widespread social activism and political reform across the United States, from the 1890s to 1920s. The main objective of the Progressive movement was eliminating corruption in government. The movement primarily targeted political machines and their bosses. By taking down these corrupt representatives in office, a further means of direct democracy would be established. They also sought regulation of monopolies ("trust-busting") and corporations through antitrust laws. These antitrust laws were seen as a way to promote equal competition for the advantage of legitimate competitors. The main statutes are the Sherman Act of 1890, the Clayton Act of 1914, and the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914.

Many Progressives supported prohibition in the United States in order to destroy the political power of local bosses based in saloons. At the same time, women's suffrage was promoted to bring a "purer" female vote into the arena. These two issues in the movement brought about constitutional change. The Eighteenth Amendment, passed in late 1917, banned the manufacturing, sale, and transport of alcohol, while the Nineteenth Amendment, passed in 1919, gave women the right to vote.

Another theme was building an Efficiency movement in every sector that could identify old ways that needed modernizing, and that could bring to bear scientific, medical, and engineering solutions. A key part of the Efficiency movement was scientific management, or "Taylorism." Although scientific management as a distinct theory or school of thought was obsolete by the 1930s, most of its themes are still important parts of industrial engineering and management today. These include analysis, synthesis, logic, rationality, empiricism, work ethic, efficiency and elimination of waste, and standardization of best practices.

Many activists joined efforts to reform local government, public education, medicine, finance, insurance, industry, railroads, churches, and many other areas. Progressives transformed, professionalized, and made "scientific" the social sciences, especially history, economics, and political science. In academic fields, the day of the amateur author gave way to the research professor who published in the new scholarly journals and presses.

Initially the movement operated chiefly at local levels; later, it expanded to state and national levels. Progressives drew support from the middle class, and supporters included many lawyers, teachers, physicians, ministers, and business people. Some Progressives strongly supported scientific methods as applied to economics, government, industry, finance, medicine, schooling, theology, education, and even the family. They closely followed advances underway at the time in western Europe and adopted numerous policies, such as a major transformation of the banking system through the creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913. Reformers felt that old-fashioned ways meant waste and inefficiency, and they eagerly sought out the "one best system."

Leaders in the Progressive Era

National Progressive political leaders included Theodore Roosevelt, Robert M. La Follette Sr., and Charles Evans Hughes on the Republican side, and William Jennings Bryan, Woodrow Wilson, and Al Smith on the Democratic side. Many others, from politicians to social activists, business owners to philosophers, and preachers to reporters, contributed to the Progressive movement. The following are examples of a few major figures:

Following the assassination of President McKinley in September 1901, Theodore Roosevelt, at age 42, succeeded to the office, becoming the youngest U.S. president in history. Leading his party and country into the Progressive Era, he championed his "Square Deal" domestic policies, promising the average citizen fairness, broken trusts, railroads regulations, and pure food and drugs. Making conservation a top priority, he established a myriad of new national parks, forests, and monuments intended to preserve the nation's natural resources. In foreign policy, he focused on Central America, where he began construction of the Panama Canal. His successful efforts to end the Russo-Japanese War won him the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize.

Susan B. Anthony (February 15, 1820-March 13, 1906) was an American social reformer and feminist who played a pivotal role in the women's suffrage movement. In 1851, she met Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who became her lifelong friend and coworker in social-reform activities, primarily in the field of women's rights. In 1852, they founded the New York Women's State Temperance Society after Anthony was prevented from speaking at a temperance conference because she was a woman. In 1878, Anthony and Stanton arranged for Congress to be presented with an amendment giving women the right to vote. Popularly known as the "Anthony Amendment" and introduced by Senator Aaron A. Sargent (R-CA), it became the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920.

Upton Sinclair (September 20, 1878-November 25, 1968) was an American author who wrote nearly 100 books and other works across a number of genres. In 1906, Sinclair acquired particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle , which exposed conditions in the U.S. meat-packing industry and caused a public uproar that contributed, in part, to the passage a few months later of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. In 1919, he published The Brass Check, a muckraking exposé of American journalism that publicized the issue of yellow journalism and the limitations of the "free press" in the United States. Four years after the publication of The Brass Check, the first code of ethics for journalists was created. Writing during the Progressive Era, Sinclair describes the world of industrialized American from both the working man's point of view and the industrialist's. Novels such as King Coal (1917), The Coal War (published posthumously), Oil! (1927), and The Flivver King (1937) describe the working conditions of the coal, oil, and auto industries at the time.

The Varieties of Progressivism

Progressive-Era reformers sought to use the federal government to make sweeping changes in politics, education, economics, and society.

Learning Objectives

Describe the theory behind Progressivism

Key Takeaways

Key Points

Progressivism arose as a response to the vast changes brought about by modernization.

Progressives believed that the Constitution was a set of loose guidelines and that the scope of the federal government should extend into society to protect it from things such as trusts.

Despite Progressives' stances on federal aid and intervention, they sought support from local governments to lead the way in social and economic reforms.

Education was democratized during this era: Progressive educators, such as John Dewey, wanted every child to have an education and sought to create effective standardized tests to measure how children were learning.

Progressives agreed that regulating business was important, but they disagreed about whether that would be best served by breaking up monopolies or by allowing them to exist with increased regulation.

Key Terms

progressivism: A philosophy that asserts that advancements in science, technology, economic development, and social organization are vital to improve the human condition.

Progressivism

American Progressivism is defined as a broadly based reform movement that reached the height of influence in the early twentieth century and that was largely middle class and reformist in nature. Progressivism arose as a response to the vast changes brought about by modernization, such as the growth of large corporations and railroads, and fears of corruption in American politics. Emerging at the end of the nineteenth century, Progressive reformers established much of the tone of American politics throughout the first half of the century.

Politically, Progressives of this era belonged to a wide range of parties and had leaders from the Democratic and Republican parties, as well as from the Bull-Moose Republicans, Lincoln-Roosevelt League Republicans (in California), and the United States Progressive Party. Rather than affiliating with a dominant party, American Progressives shared a common goal of wielding federal power to pursue a sweeping range of social, environmental, political, and economic reforms. The pursuit of trust-busting (breaking up very large monopolies) was chief among these aims, as was garnering support for labor unions, public health programs, decreased corruption in politics, and environmental conservation.

Core Principles

Many of the core principles of the Progressive movement focused on the need for efficiency and the elimination of corruption and waste. Purification to eliminate waste and corruption was a powerful element, as was the Progressives' support of worker compensation, improved child labor laws, minimum wage legislation, limited work hours, graduated income tax, and women's suffrage. Historian William Leuchtenburg describes the Progressives thusly:

The Progressives believed in the Hamiltonian concept of positive government, of a national government directing the destinies of the nation at home and abroad. They had little but contempt for the strict construction of the Constitution by conservative judges, who would restrict the power of the national government to act against social evils and to extend the blessings of democracy to less favored lands. The real enemy was particularism, state rights, limited government.

For Progressive reformers, the Constitution represented a loose set of guidelines for political governance, rather than acting as a strict authority on the political development of the United States or on the scope of federal power. More, not less, regulation was necessary to ensure that society operated efficiently, and therefore, most Progressives believed that the federal government was the only suitable power to combat trusts, monopolies, poverty, deficits in education, and economic problems.

City Management

Although they argued for more federal intervention in local affairs (especially in urban centers), most Progressives typically concentrated on reforming municipal and state governments to create better ways to provide services as cities grew rapidly. The result was "municipal administration," which effectively managed legal processes, market transactions, bureaucratic administration, and urban reform.

One example of Progressive reform was the rise of the city-manager system, in which salaried, professional engineers ran the day-to-day affairs of city governments under guidelines established by elected city councils. Additionally, many cities created municipal "reference bureaus" that conducted surveys of government departments looking for waste and inefficiency. After in-depth surveys, local and even state governments were reorganized to reduce the number of officials and to eliminate overlapping areas of authority among departments. City governments also were reorganized to reduce the power of local ward bosses and to increase the powers of the city council.

Education

Early Progressive thinkers, such as John Dewey and Lester Ward, placed a universal and comprehensive system of education at the top of the Progressive agenda, reasoning that if a democracy were to be successful, the general public needed to be educated. Progressives advocated to expand and improve public and private education at all levels. Modernization of society, they believed, necessitated the compulsory education of all children, even if parents objected. Progressives turned to educational researchers to evaluate the reform agenda by measuring numerous aspects of education, which later led to standardized testing. Child-labor laws were designed to prohibit children from entering the workforce before a certain age, further compelling children into the public schools. Many educational reforms and innovations generated during this period continued to influence debates and initiatives in American education for the remainder of the twentieth century.

Economic Theory

Many Progressives hoped that by regulating large corporations, they could liberate human energies from the restrictions imposed by industrial capitalism. Yet the Progressive movement was divided over which of the following solutions should be used to regulate corporations:

Pro-labor Progressives such as Samuel Gompers argued that industrial monopolies were unnatural economic institutions that suppressed the competition necessary for progress and improvement. U.S. antitrust law is the body of laws that prohibits anti-competitive behavior (monopolies) and unfair business practices. Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft supported trust-busting. During their presidencies, the otherwise conservative Taft brought down 90 trusts in four years while Roosevelt took down 44 in 7 1/2 years in office.

Progressives such as Benjamin Parke DeWitt argued that in a modern economy, large corporations and even monopolies were both inevitable and desirable. With their massive resources and economies of scale, large corporations offered the United States advantages that smaller companies could not offer. Yet, these large corporations might abuse their great power. The federal government should allow these companies to exist but regulate them for the public interest. President Theodore Roosevelt generally supported this idea and was later to incorporate it as part of his political philosophy of "New Nationalism."

The Social Gospel

The Social Gospel movement applied Christian ethics to social problems.

Learning Objectives

Explain the concept of the Social Gospel

Key Takeaways

Key Points

The Social Gospel movement applied Christian ethics to social problems.

Social justice issues were especially important to Social Gospel reformers.

Social Gospel workers were post-millennialist, believing that Christ would return to Earth after humankind had worked through its sins.

Many new churches were established during this period, including Christian Science and Jehovah's Witnesses.

Key Terms

Social Gospel: A Protestant Christian intellectual movement that was most prominent in the early twentieth century United States and Canada that applied Christian ethics to social problems.

Lord's Prayer: The prayer taught by Jesus Christ to his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount.

The Social Gospel movement is a Protestant Christian intellectual movement that was most prominent in the early twentieth century United States and Canada. The movement applied Christian ethics to social problems, especially issues of social justice such as excessive wealth, poverty, alcoholism, crime, racial tensions, slums, bad hygiene, child labor, inadequate labor unions, poor schools, and the danger of war. Theologically, the Social Gospellers sought to operationalize the Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6:10): "Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven." Social Gospellers typically were post-millennialist; that is, they believed that the Second Coming could not happen until humankind rid itself of social evils by human effort. Social Gospel leaders were predominantly associated with the liberal wing of the Progressive movement, and most were theologically liberal, although they were typically conservative when it came to their views on social issues.

Important Social Gospel leaders include Richard T. Ely, Josiah Strong, Washington Gladden, and Walter Rauschenbusch.

Religious Progressivism

In the United States prior to World War I, the Social Gospel was the religious wing of the Progressive movement, which had the aim of combating injustice, suffering, and poverty in society. Denver, Colorado, was a center of Social Gospel activism. Thomas Uzzell led the Methodist People's Tabernacle from 1885 to 1910. He established a free dispensary for medical emergencies, an employment bureau for job seekers, a summer camp for children, night schools for extended learning, and English language classes. From 1884 to 1894, Myron Reed of the First Congregational Church served as a spokesman for labor unions on issues such as worker's compensation. His middle-class congregation encouraged Reed to move on when he became a Socialist, and he organized a nondenominational church. The Baptist minister Jim Goodhart set up an employment bureau, and provided food and lodging for tramps and hobos at the mission he ran. He became city chaplain and director of public welfare of Denver in 1918. Besides these Protestants, Reform Jews and Catholics helped build Denver's social welfare system in the early twentieth century.

The Reverend Mark A. Matthews (1867-1940) of Seattle's First Presbyterian Church was a leading city reformer who investigated red-light districts and crime scenes, and denounced corrupt politicians, businessmen, and saloon keepers. With 10,000 members, his church was the largest Presbyterian Church in the country, and he was selected the national moderator in 1912. He build a model church, with night schools, unemployment bureaus, a kindergarten, an anti-tuberculosis clinic, and the nation's first church-owned radio station. Matthews was the most influential clergymen in the Pacific Northwest, and one of the most active Social Gospellers in America.

The South had its own version of the Social Gospel that focused especially on prohibition. Other reforms included outlawing public swearing, boxing, dogfights, and similar affronts to their moral sensibilities. By 1900, says historian Edward Ayers, the white Baptists, although they were the most conservative of all of the denominations in the South, became steadily more concerned with social issues, taking stands on, "temperance, gambling, illegal corruption, public morality, orphans, and the elderly."

The Social Gospel affected much of Protestant America. The Presbyterians described its goals in 1910 by proclaiming the following: "The great ends of the church are the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind; the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God; the maintenance of divine worship; the preservation of truth; the promotion of social righteousness; and the exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world."

New Churches

In 1879, Mary Baker Eddy introduced Christian Science, which gained a national following. In 1880, the Salvation Army denomination arrived in America. Although its theology was based on ideals expressed during the Second Great Awakening, it also focused on poverty and social improvement. The Society for Ethical Culture, established in New York in 1876 by Felix Adler, attracted Reform Jewish followers. Charles Taze Russell founded the Bible Students movement, which later split into the "Jehovah's Witnesses" of today.

Social Criticism

The end of the Gilded Age witnessed rising levels of social criticism from a new kind of investigative journalist called a "muckraker."

Learning Objectives

Identify journalistic social criticism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

Key Takeaways

Key Points

The 1890s and early 1900s witnessed a profound social and political reaction to the Gilded Age, the period between the early 1870s and late 1890s that was characterized by excesses and corruption.

Muckrakers were journalists who exposed social ills and corporate and political corruption.

Journalists, such as Jacob Riis and Ida B. Wells, were among the first to bring attention to poor living conditions in cities, the plight of immigrants, and racial injustice.

Key Terms

muckraking: A journalist who investigates and publishes truthful "watchdog" reports in order to advocate for reforms.

progressivism: The political ideology that favors rational governmental action to improve society. It arose in response to industrialism and dominated American politics for the first two decades of the twentieth century.

The 1890s and early 1900s witnessed a profound social and political reaction to the excesses and corruption of the Gilded Age. Journalists and other writers began bringing social issues to the attention of the American public.

Muckrakers

The term "muckraker" was used during the Progressive Era to characterize reform -minded American journalists who largely wrote for popular magazines. The modern characterization of this type of journalism is "investigative," and investigative journalists today are often informally called "muckrakers." During the Progressive Era, these journalists relied on their own reporting and often worked to expose social ills and corporate and political corruption. Muckraking magazines-notably McClure's-took on corporate monopolies and crooked political machines while raising public awareness of chronic urban poverty, unsafe working conditions, and social issues such as child labor. The term "muckrakers" is a reference to a character in John Bunyan's classic Pilgrim's Progress, "the Man with the Muck-rake," who rejected salvation to focus on filth. The term became popular after President Theodore Roosevelt referred to the character in a 1906 speech; Roosevelt acknowledged that, "the men with the muck rakes are often indispensable to the well-being of society; but only if they know when to stop raking the muck..." The muckrakers themselves proudly adopted the label.

The muckrakers appeared at a moment when journalism was undergoing changes in style and practice. In response to the exaggerated facts and sensationalism of yellow journalism, objective journalism, as exemplified by The New York Times under Adolph Ochs after 1896, reported facts with the intention of being impartial and a newspaper of record. The growth of wire services also had contributed to the spread of the objective reporting style. Muckraking publishers, such as Samuel S. McClure, emphasized factual reporting but also aimed for a mixture of, "reliability and sparkle" to interest a mass audience. In contrast with objective reporting, muckrakers saw themselves primarily as reformers and were politically engaged. Journalists of the previous eras were not linked to a single political, populist movement, whereas the muckrakers were associated with Progressive reforms. Muckrakers continued some of the investigative exposures and sensational traditions of yellow journalism, but instead wrote to change society.

Julius Chambers

Julius Chambers of the New York Tribune is considered by many to be the original muckraker. Chambers undertook a journalistic investigation of Bloomingdale Asylum in 1872, having himself committed with the help of some of his friends and his newspaper's city editor. His intent was to obtain information about the alleged abuse of inmates. The publication of articles and accounts of the experience in the Tribune led to the release of 12 patients who were not mentally ill, to a reorganization of the staff and administration of the institution, and eventually, to a change in the lunacy laws. This later led to the publication of Chambers's book A Mad World and Its Inhabitants (1876). From this point onward, Chambers was frequently invited to speak about the rights of the mentally ill and the need for proper facilities for their accommodation, care, and treatment.

Jacob Riis

Journalists began to respond to the excesses of the Gilded Age toward the end of the period. One of the most notable was Jacob August Riis (May 3, 1849-May 26, 1914). Riis was a Danish-American social reformer, muckraker, and social documentary photographer. He is well known for using his photographic and journalistic passion to bring attention and aid to New York City's impoverished citizens; they would became the subject of most of his prolific writings and photography. His most famous work, How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York (1890) documented squalid living conditions in New York City slums in the 1880s. It served as a basis for future muckraking journalism by exposing New York City's upper and middle classes to the slums. This work inspired many reforms of working-class housing immediately after publication, and it has continued to have a lasting impact in today's society. With the help of humanitarian Lawrence Veiller, Riis endorsed the implementation of "model tenements" in New York. While living there, Riis's personal experience with poverty led him to become a police reporter, writing about the quality of life in the slums.

Ida B. Wells

Ida Bell Wells-Barnett (July 16, 1862-March 25, 1931) was an African-American journalist, newspaper editor, and (along with her husband, newspaper owner Ferdinand L. Barnett) an early leader in the civil-rights movement. She documented lynching in the United States, exposing it as a means of controlling and/or punishing blacks who dared compete with whites. She was active in the women's rights and women's suffrage movements, establishing several notable women's organizations. Wells was a skilled, persuasive rhetorician who traveled internationally on lecture tours.

The pamphlets Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases and A Red Record documented her research on a lynching. Having examined many accounts of lynching based on the alleged, "rape of white women," Wells concluded that Southerners concocted rape as an excuse to hide their real motivation for lynchings: black economic progress, which threatened not only white Southerners' pocketbooks, but also their ideas about black inferiority. She wrote an article that suggested that despite the myth that white women were sexually at risk for attacks by black men, most liaisons between black men and white women were consensual.

Early Efforts in Urban Reform

Early efforts in urban reform were driven by poor conditions exposed by tragedies such as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.

Learning Objectives

Evaluate the significance of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire

Key Takeaways

Key Points

The Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory burned in March 1911, resulting in a horrible loss of life.

The casualties of the fire were caused in large part by unsafe working conditions, and the prominence of the fire led to many reform laws.

The fire and its aftermath spurred the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union.

Key Terms

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire: The deadliest industrial disaster in New York's history, killing 146 garment workers who were locked inside the factory.

International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union: One of the first U.S. workers' organizations to have a primarily female membership; it was deeply involved in the aftermath of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire on March 25, 1911, was the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of New York City and resulted in the fourth-highest loss of life from an industrial accident in U.S. history. The fire caused the deaths of 146 garment workers, who died from the fire, smoke inhalation, or falling or jumping to their deaths. Most of the victims were recent Jewish and Italian immigrant women aged 16 to 23; of the victims whose ages are known, the oldest victim was Providenza Panno at 43, and the youngest were Kate Leone and "Sara" Rosaria Maltese at 14.

Because the managers had locked the doors to the stairwells and exits-a common practice at the time to prevent pilferage and unauthorized breaks-many of the workers who could not escape the burning building jumped to the streets below from the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors. The fire led to legislation requiring improved factory safety standards and helped spur the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, which fought for better working conditions for sweatshop workers.

Impact and Legacy of the Fire

The company's owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, who survived the fire by fleeing to the building's roof when the fire began, were indicted on charges of first- and second-degree manslaughter in mid-April; the pair's trial began on December 4, 1911. The jury acquitted the two men of first- and second-degree manslaughter, but they were found liable of wrongful death during a subsequent 1913 civil suit in which plaintiffs were awarded compensation in the amount of $75 per deceased victim. The insurance company paid Blanck and Harris about $60,000 more than the reported losses, or about $400 per casualty.

In New York City, a Committee on Public Safety was formed, headed by noted social worker Frances Perkins, to identify specific problems and lobby for new legislation, such as the bill to grant workers shorter hours in a work week, known as the "54-Hour Bill." The New York State Legislature then created the Factory Investigating Commission to, "investigate factory conditions in this and other cities and to report remedial measures of legislation to prevent hazard or loss of life among employees through fire, unsanitary conditions, and occupational diseases." Their findings led to 38 new laws regulating labor in New York State, and gave the commission members a reputation as leading progressive reformers working on behalf of the working class.

International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union

The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) was once one of the largest labor unions in the United States, one of the first U.S. unions to have a primarily female membership, and a key player in the labor history of the 1920s and 1930s.

The ILGWU experienced a sudden upsurge in membership as the result of two successful mass strikes in New York City. The first, in 1909, was known as the "Uprising of the 20,000" and lasted 14 weeks. It was largely spontaneous, sparked by a short walkout of workers of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, involving only about 20 percent of the workforce. That, however, only prompted the rest of the workers to seek help from the union. The firm locked out its employees when it learned what was happening. The news of the strike spread quickly to all of the New York garment workers. At a series of mass meetings, after the leading figures of the American labor movement spoke in general terms about the need for solidarity and preparedness, Clara Lemlich rose to speak about the conditions she and other women worked under. She demanded an end to talk and called for a strike of the entire industry. Approximately 20,000 out of the 32,000 workers in the shirtwaist trade walked out during the next two days.

The union also became more involved in electoral politics, in part as a result of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. The fire had various effects on the community. It further radicalized some; at the memorial meeting held in the Metropolitan Opera House on April 2, 1911, Rose Schneiderman addressed an audience largely made up of the well-heeled members of the Women's Trade Union League (WTUL) and said the following:

I would be a traitor to these poor burned bodies if I came here to talk good fellowship. We have tried you good people of the public and we have found you wanting. The old Inquisition had its rack and its thumbscrews and its instruments of torture with iron teeth. We know what these things are today; the iron teeth are our necessities, the thumbscrews are the high-powered and swift machinery close to which we must work, and the rack is here in the firetrap structures that will destroy us the minute they catch on fire... I can't talk fellowship to you who are gathered here. Too much blood has been spilled. I know from my experience it is up to the working people to save themselves. The only way they can save themselves is by a strong working-class movement.

The Settlement House Movement

The Settlement House movement was a reform that intended for the rich and the poor to live together in interdependent communities.

Learning Objectives

Examine the development of the Settlement House movement

Key Takeaways

Key Points

The main objective of the movement was the establishment of " settlement houses " in poor urban areas, where volunteer middle-class " settlement workers " would live.

Volunteer settlement workers moved into houses in hopes of sharing knowledge and culture with, and alleviating the poverty of, their lower-income neighbors.

By 1913, there were 413 settlements in 32 states.

The most famous settlement house in America was Chicago's Hull House, founded by the social reformer Jane Addams.

Key Terms

Settlement House: A residence established in a poor urban area during the turn of the twentieth century with the objective of promoting interdependent interactions among the rich and poor.

Settlement Worker: A volunteer from a middle-class background who lived in a lower-income neighborhood and who shared knowledge and culture with the less advantaged in the hopes of alleviating poverty.

Hull House: A settlement house, located in the Near West Side of Chicago, Illinois, that was cofounded in 1889 by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr.

Settlement Houses

The Settlement House movement was a reformist social movement that began in the 1880s and peaked around the 1920s in England and the United States. Its objective was to get the rich and poor in society to live more closely together in an interdependent community. It established "settlement houses" in poor urban areas, where volunteer middle-class "settlement workers" would live in hopes of sharing knowledge and culture with, and alleviating the poverty, of their low-income neighbors. By 1913, there were 413 settlements in 32 states.

The movement started in London in the mid-nineteenth century. Settlement houses often offered food, shelter, and basic and higher education that was provided by virtue of charity on the part of wealthy donors, the residents of the city, and (for education) scholars who volunteered their time. Victorian England, increasingly concerned with poverty, gave rise to the movement whereby those connected to universities settled students in slum areas to live and work alongside local people.

Lenox Hill Neighborhood House, founded in 1894; Henry Street Settlement, founded in 1893; and University Settlement House, founded in 1886 (and the oldest in the United States) were important sites for social reform. United Neighborhood Houses of New York was the federation of 35 settlement houses in New York City. These and other settlement houses inspired the establishment of settlement schools to serve isolated rural communities in Appalachia. The settlement-house concept was continued by Dorothy Day's Catholic Worker hospitality houses in the 1930s.

Hull House

The most famous settlement house in the United States is Chicago's Hull House, founded in 1889 by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr after they had visited Toynbee Hall in 1888. Located in the Near West Side of Chicago, Illinois, Hull House opened its doors to recently arrived European immigrants. By 1911, Hull House had grown to 13 buildings. In 1912, the Hull House complex was completed with the addition of a summer camp, the Bowen Country Club. With its innovative social, educational, and artistic programs, Hull House became the standard bearer for the movement that had grown, by 1920, to nearly 500 settlement houses nationally.

The Hull mansion and several subsequent acquisitions were continuously renovated to accommodate the changing demands of the association. The original building and one additional building, which has been moved 200 yards, survives today. Addams followed the example of Toynbee Hall, which was founded in 1885 in the East End of London as a center for social reform. She described Toynbee Hall as, "a community of university men who, while living there, held their recreational clubs and social gatherings at the settlement house... among the poor people and in the same style they would in their own circle."

Hull House became, at its inception in 1889, "a community of university women" whose main purpose was to provide social and educational opportunities for working-class people, many of whom were recent European immigrants living in the surrounding neighborhood. The "residents," as volunteers at Hull were called, held classes in literature, history, art, domestic activities (such as sewing), and many other subjects. Hull House also held concerts that were free to everyone, offered free lectures on current issues, and operated clubs for both children and adults.

Hull House conducted careful studies of the community of Near West Side, Chicago, which became known as "The Hull House Neighborhood." These studies enabled the Hull House residents to confront the establishment, and to eventually partner with them in the design and implementation of programs intended to improve opportunities for the large immigrant population.

Jane Addams

A founder of Hull House, Jane Addams (September 6, 1860-May 21, 1935), along with being a pioneer American settlement activist/reformer, was also a social worker, public philosopher, sociologist, author, and leader in women's suffrage and world peace. In the Progressive Era, when presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson identified themselves as reformers and social activists, Addams was one of the most prominent reformers. She helped America address and focus on issues that were of concern to mothers, such as the needs of children, local public health, and world peace. She said that if women were to be responsible for cleaning up their communities and making them better places to live, they needed to be able to vote to do so effectively. Addams became a role model for middle-class women who volunteered to uplift their communities. She is increasingly being recognized as a member of the American Pragmatist school of philosophy.

Toward a Welfare State

Maternalist reforms provided assistance for mothers and children, expanding the American welfare state.

Learning Objectives

Summarize the development of the American welfare state

Key Takeaways

Key Points

Welfare programs in the United States began to grow and expand to new arenas during the early twentieth century.

Maternalist reforms in the United States were laws providing for state assistance for mothers with young children who did not have the financial support of a male member of the household.

These reforms arose from the belief that government has an obligation and an interest in protecting and improving the living standards of women and children.

The Children's Bureau, established by William Howard Taft, was the first national government office in the world to focus on issues concerning mothers and children.

The Sherwood Act awarded pensions to all veterans.

Key Terms

Sherwood Act: The first important U.S. pension law in the twentieth century. It awarded pensions to all veterans.

Children's Bureau: A federal agency within the Department of Health and Human Services, created in 1912. During the Progressive Era, it was tasked with the comprehensive observation and management of children's well-being.

Maternalist Reforms: A series of laws providing for state assistance for mothers with young children who did not have the financial support of a male member of the household.

History of Welfare in the United States

Colonial legislatures and later state governments adopted legislation patterned after the English "poor" laws. Aid to veterans, free grants of land, and pensions for widows and handicapped veterans, have been offered in all U.S. wars. Following World War I, provisions were made for a full-scale system of hospital and medical-care benefits for veterans. By 1929, workers' compensation laws were in effect in all but four states. These state laws made industry and businesses responsible for compensating workers or their survivors when workers were injured or killed in connection with their jobs. Retirement programs for mainly state and local governments date back to the nineteenth century and paid teachers, police officers, and firefighters. All of these social programs were far from universal and varied considerably from one state to another.

Prior to the Great Depression, the United States had social programs that mostly centered around individual efforts, family efforts, church charities, business workers compensation, life insurance, and sick leave programs, as well as on some state tax supported social programs. The misery and poverty of the Great Depression threatened to overwhelm all of these programs. The severe depression of the 1930s made federal action almost a necessity, as neither the states, local communities, and businesses and industries, nor private charities had the financial resources to cope with the growing need among the American people. Beginning in 1932, the federal government first made loans, then grants, to states to pay for direct relief and work relief. After that, special federal emergency relief such as the Civilian Conservation Corps and other public-works programs were started. In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration proposed to Congress federal social-relief programs and a federally sponsored retirement program. Congress followed with the passage of the 37 page Social Security Act, signed into law August 14, 1935, and "effective" by 1939-just as World War II began. This program was expanded several times over the years.

Maternalist Reforms

One unique trend in the history of welfare in the United States were maternalist reforms. Beginning in the Progressive Era, experiments in public policy took the form of laws providing for state assistance for mothers with young children who did not have the financial support of a male member of the household. These laws provided financial reimbursements and set limits on the maximum working hours for women. These reforms arose from the belief that government has an obligation and interest in protecting and improving the living standards of women and children.

"Maternalism" is defined by some experts as a variety of ideologies that, "exalted women's capacities to mothers and extended to society as a whole the values of care, nurturance, and morality," and was intended to improve the quality of life of women and children. To improve the conditions of women and children, these policies attempted to reconcile the conflicting roles placed on women during this time period. As single mothers were responsible for both supporting their families and raising children, government assistance would reduce the probability that they could be charged with neglecting their "home duties."

The Children's Bureau was established by President William Howard Taft in 1912. It was the first national government office in the world that focused solely on the well-being of children and their mothers. The legislation creating the agency was signed into law on April 9, 1912. Taft appointed Julia Lathrop as the first head of the bureau. Lathrop, a noted maternalist reformer, was the first woman ever to head a government agency in the United States. In 1921, Lathrop stepped down as director, and the noted child-labor reformer Grace Abbott was appointed to succeed her. The Children's Bureau played a major role in the passage and administration of the Sheppard-Towner Act, the first federal grants-in-aid act for state-level children's health programs.

The Sherwood Act of May 11, 1912, was the first important U.S. pension law in the twentieth century. It awarded pensions to all veterans. Veterans of the Mexican-American War and Union veterans of the Civil War could receive pensions automatically at age 62, regardless of disability.

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The Progressive Era was a period of social activism and political reform in the United States that flourished from the 1890s to the 1920s. List the primary causes championed by the Progressive movement, and some of the movement's major outcomes Key Points Characteristics of the Progressive Era include purification of the government, modernization, a focus on family and education, prohibition, and women's suffrage.

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 The Assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand

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 The Assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Technology of WWI (Include trench warfare)

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Technology of WWI (Include trench warfare)

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by A. Torrey McLean
Reprinted with permission from Tar Heel Junior Historian, Spring 1993.
Tar Heel Junior Historian Association, NC Museum of History

See also: WWI: Life on the Western Front

One of the saddest facts about World War I is that millions died needlessly because military and civilian leaders were slow to adapt their old-fashioned strategies and tactics to the new weapons of 1914. New technology made war more horrible and more complex than ever before. The United States and other countries felt the effects of the war for years afterwards.

The popular image of World War I is soldiers in muddy trenches and dugouts, living miserably until the next attack. This is basically correct. Technological developments in engineering, metallurgy, chemistry, and optics had produced weapons deadlier than anything known before. The power of defensive weapons made winning the war on the western front all but impossible for either side.

When attacks were ordered, Allied soldiers went "over the top," climbing out of their trenches and crossing no-man's-land to reach enemy trenches. They had to cut through belts of barbed wire before they could use rifles, bayonets, pistols, and hand grenades to capture enemy positions. A victory usually meant they had seized only a few hundred yards of shell-torn earth at a terrible cost in lives. Wounded men often lay helpless in the open until they died. Those lucky enough to be rescued still faced horrible sanitary conditions before they could be taken to proper medical facilities. Between attacks,the snipers, artillery, and poison gas caused misery and death.

Airplanes, products of the new technology, were primarily made of canvas, wood, and wire. At first they were used only to observe enemy troops. As their effectiveness became apparent, both sides shot planes down with artillery from the ground and with rifles, pistols, and machine guns from other planes. In 1916, the Germans armed planes with machine guns that could fire forward without shooting off the fighters' propellers. The Allies soon armed their airplanes the same way, and war in the air became a deadly business. These light, highly maneuverable fighter planes attacked each other in wild air battles called dogfights. Pilots who were shot down often remained trapped in their falling, burning planes, for they had no parachutes. Airmen at the front did not often live long. Germany also used its fleet of huge dirigibles, or zeppelins, and large bomber planes to drop bombs on British and French cities. Britain retaliated by bombing German cities.

Back on the ground, the tank proved to be the answer to stalemate in the trenches. This British invention used American-designed caterpillar tracks to move the armored vehicle equipped with machine guns and sometimes light cannon. Tanks worked effectively on firm, dry ground, in spite of their slow speed, mechanical problems, and vulnerability to artillery. Able to crush barbed wire and cross trenches, tanks moved forward through machine gun fire and often terrified German soldiers with their unstoppable approach.

Chemical warfare first appeared when the Germans used poison gas during a surprise attack in Flanders, Belgium, in 1915. At first, gas was just released from large cylinders and carried by the wind into nearby enemy lines. Later, phosgene and other gases were loaded into artillery shells and shot into enemy trenches. The Germans used this weapon the most, realizing that enemy soldiers wearing gas masks did not fight as well. All sides used gas frequently by 1918. Its use was a frightening development that caused its victims a great deal of suffering, if not death.

Both sides used a variety of big guns on the western front, ranging from huge naval guns mounted on railroad cars to short-range trench mortars. The result was a war in which soldiers near the front were seldom safe from artillery bombardment. The Germans used super-long-range artillery to shell Paris from almost eighty miles away. Artillery shell blasts created vast, cratered, moonlike landscapes where beautiful fields and woods had once stood.

Perhaps the most significant technological advance during World War I was the improvement of the machine gun, a weapon originally developed by an American, Hiram Maxim. The Germans recognized its military potential and had large numbers ready to use in 1914. They also developed air-cooled machine guns for airplanes and improved those used on the ground, making them lighter and easier to move. The weapon's full potential was demonstrated on the Somme battlefield in July 1916 when German machine guns killed or wounded almost 60,000 British soldiers in only one day.

At sea, submarines attacked ships far from port. In order to locate and sink German U-boats, British scientists developed underwater listening devices and underwater explosives called depth charges. Warships became faster and more powerful than ever before and used newly invented radios to communicate effectively. The British naval blockade of Germany, which was made possible by developments in naval technology, brought a total war to civilians. The blockade caused a famine that finally brought about the collapse of Germany and its allies in late 1918. Starvation and malnutrition continued to take the lives of German adults and children for years after the war.

The firing stopped on November 11, 1918, but modern war technology had changed the course of civilization. Millions had been killed, gassed, maimed, or starved. Famine and disease continued to rage through central Europe, taking countless lives. Because of rapid technological advances in every area, the nature of warfare had changed forever, affecting soldiers, airmen, sailors, and civilians alike.
A. Torrey McLean, a former United States Army officer who served in Vietnam, studied World War I for more than thirty years, personally interviewing a number of World War I veterans.

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by A. Torrey McLean Reprinted with permission from Tar Heel Junior Historian, Spring 1993. Tar Heel Junior Historian Association, NC Museum of History See also: WWI: Life on the Western Front One of the saddest facts about World War I is that millions died needlessly because military and civilian leaders were slow to adapt their old-fashioned strategies and tactics to the new weapons of 1914.

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America’s role in WWI (Entering the war/fighting in France)

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America’s role in WWI (Entering the war/fighting in France)

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How was peace established at the end of World War I?

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How was peace established at the end of World War I?

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The End of World War I

The armistice that ended World War I went into effect at 11 a.m. on November 11, 1918. After four and a half years, the war was finally over, but the results remained. Devastation was everywhere. People's homes and lands were destroyed. Large areas of France had been reduced to rubble. Cities, like Flanders and Ypres in Belgium, were nearly wiped off the map.

The war's human toll was even more devastating. Millions of soldiers for the Allied Powers of Great Britain, France, and the United States were killed, wounded, or missing. The Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and Bulgaria lost even more men. Countless civilians also lost their lives or loved ones. Now, in 1918, the Allied Powers emerged victorious, and they were ready to make Germany pay.

Peace Negotiations

The Paris Peace Conference opened on January 18, 1919, with the goal of developing a treaty that would punish Germany and meet the goals of the various Allied Powers. Negotiating the treaty, which would be known as the Treaty of Versailles, was a long and complex process. At first, the Council of Ten, consisting of the heads of state and foreign ministers of ten Allied Powers, tried to hammer out a deal. The Council soon proved to be too large, and its members had too many conflicting opinions. By March, the treaty negotiations were being handled by the Big Four, namely, the United States, Great Britain, France, and Italy. Italy soon dropped out of the process when its representative became angry that his demands for more territory were rejected.

Only the Big Three were left: the United States, led by President Woodrow Wilson; Great Britain, led by Prime Minister David Lloyd George; and France, led by Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau. Each of these men had a different view of what peace should look like and how Germany should be treated. Wilson was interested in building a world trade network, avoiding war in the future, proposing his Fourteen Points for a better world, and avoiding harsh treatment of Germany. George was also looking ahead to potential world trade, but he wanted Germany to pay reparations. Clemenceau, whose country suffered some of the worst damage during the war, desired large-scale reparations from Germany and a demilitarized zone between France and Germany in case of future German aggression.

The Terms of the Treaty of Versailles

After months of debate and lots of hard work, the Big Three created a treaty with the following provisions:

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end of wwi: the treaty of versailles & the league of nations - video & lesson transcript | study.com

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End of WWI: the Treaty of Versailles & the League of Nations - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

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The armistice that ended World War I went into effect at 11 a.m. on November 11, 1918. After four and a half years, the war was finally over, but the results remained. Devastation was everywhere. People's homes and lands were destroyed. Large areas of France had been reduced to rubble.

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Some textbooks address the implications of these changes. As a powerful symbol of modernity, the automobile represented individual freedom, mobility, and independence. The car also linked the profound economic changes (especially the rise of big business) to the pursuit of personal happiness through consumption.

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The Assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand-https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/archduke-ferdinand-assassinated
Technology of WWI- https://www.ncpedia.org/wwi-technology-and-weapons-war
America's role in WWI- https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/rise-to-world-power/us-in-wwi/v/united-states-enters-world-war-i
How was peace established at the end of WWI- https://study.com/academy/lesson/end-of-wwi-the-treaty-of-versailles-the-league-of-nations.html
Rise of the automobile- https://teachinghistory.org/history-content/beyond-the-textbook/24073
18th Amendment- http://origins.osu.edu/sites/origins.osu.edu/files/milestones-2013-12-repeal-of-18th-amendment.jpg

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1. Black Tuesday/Stock Market Crash of 1929- https://www.thebalance.com/thmb/TiS7QrM_0Xd15DBjnkr2dEKSBe4=/300x200/filters:saturation(0.2):brightness(10):contrast(5):no_upscale():format(webp)/GettyImages-51311238-585d7e163df78ce2c31d3706.jpg

2. Business Cycle/Causes of the Great Depression-  https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/BusinessCycles.html

3. President Roosevelt’s New Deal/Plan for Ending the Great Depression-  https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/new-deal

4. The Dust Bowl- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-rBhbkvtm0

5. The Rise of Totalitarianism in Europe in the 1930s- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uk_6vfqwTA

6. America’s Involvement in WWII- https://www2.gwu.edu/~erpapers/teachinger/glossary/world-war-2.cfm

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The United States and all other modern industrial economies experience significant swings in economic activity. In some years, most industries are booming and unemployment is low; in other years, most industries are operating well below capacity and unemployment is high. Periods of economic prosperity are typically called expansions or booms; periods of economic decline are called recessions or depressions. The combination of expansions and recessions, the ebb and flow of economic activity, is called the business cycle.

Business cycles as we know them today were codified and analyzed by Arthur Burns and Wesley Mitchell in their 1946 book Measuring Business Cycles. One of Burns and Mitchell's key insights was that many economic indicators move together. During an expansion, not only does output rise, but also employment rises and unemployment falls. New construction also typically increases, and inflation may rise if the expansion is particularly brisk. Conversely, during a recession, the output of goods and services declines, employment falls, and unemployment rises; new construction also declines. In the era before World War II, prices also typically fell during a recession (i.e., inflation was negative); since the 1950s prices have continued to rise during downturns, though more slowly than during expansions (i.e., the rate of inflation falls). Burns and Mitchell defined a recession as a period when a broad range of economic indicators falls for a sustained period, roughly at least half a year.

Business cycles are dated according to when the direction of economic activity changes. The peak of the cycle refers to the last month before several key economic indicators-such as employment, output, and retail sales- begin to fall. The trough of the cycle refers to the last month before the same economic indicators begin to rise. Because key economic indicators often change direction at slightly different times, the dating of peaks and troughs is necessarily somewhat subjective. The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is an independent research institution that dates the peaks and troughs of U.S. business cycles. Table 1 shows the NBER monthly dates for peaks and troughs of U.S. business cycles since 1890. Recent research has shown that the NBER's reference dates for the period before World War I are not truly comparable with those for the modern era because they were determined using different methods and data. Figure 1 shows the unemployment rate since 1948, with periods that the NBER classifies as recessions shaded in gray. Clearly, a key feature of recessions is that they are times of rising unemployment.

In many ways, the term "business cycle" is misleading. "Cycle" seems to imply that there is some regularity in the timing and duration of upswings and downswings in economic activity. Most economists, however, do not think there is. As Figure 1 shows, expansions and recessions occur at irregular intervals and last for varying lengths of time. For example, there were three recessions between 1973 and 1982, but, then the 1982 trough was followed by eight years of uninterrupted expansion. The 1980 recession lasted just six months, while the 1981 recession lasted sixteen months. For describing the swings in economic activity, therefore, many modern economists prefer the term "short-run economic fluctuations" to "business cycle."

Causes of Business Cycles

Just as there is no regularity in the timing of business cycles, there is no reason why cycles have to occur at all. The prevailing view among economists is that there is a level of economic activity, often referred to as full employment, at which the economy could stay forever. Full employment refers to a level of production in which all the inputs to the production process are being used, but not so intensively that they wear out, break down, or insist on higher wages and more vacations. When the economy is at full employment, inflation tends to remain constant; only if output moves above or below normal does the rate of inflation systematically tend to rise or fall. If nothing disturbs the economy, the full-employment level of output, which naturally tends to grow as the population increases and new technologies are discovered, can be maintained forever. There is no reason why a time of full employment has to give way to either an inflationary boom or a recession.

Business cycles do occur, however, because disturbances to the economy of one sort or another push the economy above or below full employment. Inflationary booms can be generated by surges in private or public spending. For example, if the government spends a lot to fight a war but does not raise taxes, the increased demand will cause not only an increase in the output of war matériel, but also an increase in the take-home pay of defense workers. The output of all the goods and services that these workers want to buy with their wages will also increase, and total production may surge above its normal, comfortable level. Similarly, a wave of optimism that causes consumers to spend more than usual and firms to build new factories may cause the economy to expand more rapidly than normal. Recessions or depressions can be caused by these same forces working in reverse. A substantial cut in government spending or a wave of pessimism among consumers and firms may cause the output of all types of goods to fall.

Another possible cause of recessions and booms is monetary policy. The Federal Reserve System strongly influences the size and growth rate of the money stock, and thus the level of interest rates in the economy. Interest rates, in turn, are a crucial determinant of how much firms and consumers want to spend. A firm faced with high interest rates may decide to postpone building a new factory because the cost of borrowing is so high. Conversely, a consumer may be lured into buying a new home if interest rates are low and mortgage payments are therefore more affordable. Thus, by raising or lowering interest rates, the Federal Reserve is able to generate recessions or booms.

Figure 1. Unemployment Rate and Recessions

Source: The data are from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Note: The series graphed is the seasonally adjusted civilian unemployment rate for those age sixteen and over. The shaded areas indicate recessions.

This description of what causes business cycles reflects the Keynesian or new Keynesian view that cycles are the result of nominal rigidities. Only when prices and inflationary expectations are not fully flexible can fluctuations in overall demand cause large swings in real output. An alternative view, referred to as the new classical framework, holds that modern industrial economies are quite flexible. As a result, a change in spending does not necessarily affect real output and employment. For example, in the new classical view a change in the stock of money will change only prices; it will have no effect on real interest rates and thus on people's willingness to invest. In this alternative framework, business cycles are largely the result of disturbances in productivity and tastes, not of changes in aggregate demand.

The empirical evidence is strongly on the side of the view that deviations from full employment are often the result of spending shocks. Monetary policy, in particular, appears to have played a crucial role in causing business cycles in the United States since World War II. For example, the severe recessions of both the early 1970s and the early 1980s were directly attributable to decisions by the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates. On the expansionary side, the inflationary booms of the mid-1960s and the late 1970s were both at least partly due to monetary ease and low interest rates. The role of money in causing business cycles is even stronger if one considers the era before World War II. Many of the worst prewar depressions, including the recessions of 1908, 1921, and the Great Depression of the 1930s, were to a large extent the result of monetary contraction and high real interest rates. In this earlier era, however, most monetary swings were engendered not by deliberate monetary policy but by financial panics, policy mistakes, and international monetary developments.

Historical Record of Business Cycles

Table 2 shows the peak-to-trough decline in industrial production, a broad monthly measure of manufacturing and mining activity, in each recession since 1890. The industrial production series used was constructed to be comparable over time. Many other conventional macroeconomic indicators, such as the unemployment rate and real GDP, are not consistent over time. The prewar versions of these series were constructed using methods and data sources that tended to exaggerate cyclical swings. As a result, these conventional indicators yield misleading estimates of the degree to which business cycles have moderated over time.

Source: The industrial production data for 1919-2004 are from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. The series before 1919 is an adjusted and smoothed version of the Miron-Romer index of industrial production. This series is described in the appendix to "Remeasuring Business Cycles" by Christina D. Romer.

Note: The peak-to-trough decline is calculated using the actual peaks and troughs in the industrial production series. These turning points often differ from the NBER dates by a few months, and occasionally by as much as a year.

The empirical record on the duration and severity of recessions over time reflects the evolution of economic policy. The recessions of the pre-World War I era were relatively frequent and quite variable in size. This is consistent with the fact that before World War I, the government had little influence on the economy. Prewar recessions stemmed from a wide range of private-sector-induced fluctuations in spending, such as investment busts and financial panics, that were left to run their course. As a result, recessions occurred frequently, and some were large and some were small.

After World War I the government became much more involved in managing the economy. Government spending and taxes as a fraction of GDP rose substantially in the 1920s and 1930s, and the Federal Reserve was established in 1914. Table 2 makes clear that the period between the two world wars was one of extreme volatility. The declines in industrial production in the recessions of 1920, 1929, and 1937 were larger than in any recessions in the pre- World War I and post-World War II periods. A key factor in these extreme fluctuations was the replacement, by the 1920s, of some of the private-sector institutions that had helped the U.S. economy weather prewar fluctuations with government institutions that were not yet fully functional. The history of the interwar era is perhaps best described as a painful learning period for the Federal Reserve. The downturn of the mid-1940s obviously reflects the effect of World War II. The war generated an incredible boom in economic activity, as production surged in response to massive government spending. The end of wartime spending led to an equally spectacular drop in industrial production as the economy returned to more normal levels of labor and capital utilization.

Recessions in the early postwar era were of roughly the same average severity as those before World War I, although they were somewhat less frequent than in the earlier period and were more consistently of moderate size. The decreasing frequency of downturns reflects progress in economic policymaking. The Great Depression brought about large strides in the understanding of the economy and the capacity of government to moderate cycles. The Employment Act of 1946 mandated that the government use the tools at its disposal to stabilize output and employment. And indeed, economic policy since World War II has almost certainly counteracted some shocks and hence prevented some recessions. In the early postwar era, however, policymakers tended to carry expansionary policy too far, and in the process caused inflation to rise. As a result, policymakers, particularly the Federal Reserve, felt compelled to adopt contractionary policies that led to moderate recessions in order to bring inflation down. This boom-bust cycle was a common feature of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.

Recessions in the United States have become noticeably less frequent and severe since the mid-1980s. The nearly decade-long expansions of the 1980s and 1990s were interrupted by only very mild recessions in 1990 and 2001. Economists attribute this moderation of cycles to a number of factors, including the increasing importance of services (a traditionally stable sector of the economy) and a decline in adverse shocks, such as oil price increases and fluctuations in consumer and investor sentiment. Most economists believe that improvements in monetary policy, particularly the end of overexpansion followed by deliberate contraction, have been a significant factor as well.

In addition to reductions in the frequency and severity of downturns over time, the effects of recessions on individuals in the United States and other industrialized countries almost surely have been lessened in recent decades. The advent of unemployment insurance and other social welfare programs means that recessions no longer wreak the havoc on individuals' standards of living that they once did.

About the Author

Christina D. Romer is a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and co-director of the Program in Monetary Economics at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Further Reading

Burns, Arthur F., and Wesley C. Mitchell. Measuring Business Cycles. New York: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1946.

Friedman, Milton, and Anna Jacobson Schwartz. A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960. Princeton: Princeton University Press for NBER, 1963.

Romer, Christina D. "Changes in Business Cycles: Evidence and Explanations." Journal of Economic Perspectives 13 (Spring 1999): 23-44.

Romer, Christina D. "Remeasuring Business Cycles." Journal of Economic History 54 (September 1994): 573-609.

Related Links

Financial Crisis of 2008, from the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics.

Bubbles, from the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics.

Stock Market, from the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics.

Edward C. Prescott biography, from the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics.

Jan Tinbergen biography, from the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics.

Ludwig von Mises biography, from the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics.

Robert P. Murphy, The Importance of Capital in Economic Theory. May 2014.

Boettke on the Austrian Perspective on Business Cycles and Monetary Policy. EconTalk, January 2009.

Don Boudreaux on Macroeconomics and Austrian Business Cycle Theory. EconTalk, April 2009.

Shlaes on the Great Depression. EconTalk, June 2007.

Lucas on Growth, Poverty, and Business Cycles. EconTalk, February 2007.

Ramey on Stimulus and Multipliers. EconTalk, October 2011.

Gene Epstein on Gold, the Fed, and Money. EconTalk, June 2008.

Robert Solow on Growth and the State of Economics. EconTalk, October 2014.

Bob Lucas, Nobel Laureate and professor of economics at the University of Chicago talks about wealth and poverty, what affects living standards around the world and over time, the causes of business cycles and the role of the money in our economy. Along the way, he talks about Jane Jacobs, immigration, and Milton Friedman's influence on his career.

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The United States and all other modern industrial economies experience significant swings in economic activity. In some years, most industries are booming and unemployment is low; in other years, most industries are operating well below capacity and unemployment is high. Periods of economic prosperity are typically called expansions or booms; periods of economic decline are ...

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New Deal - Programs, Social Security & FDR

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

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The rise of Totalitarianism in Europe in the 1930s

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The rise of Totalitarianism in Europe in the 1930s

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The roots of World War II, which eventually pitted Germany, Japan, and Italy (the Axis) against the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union (the Allies), lay in the militaristic ideologies and expansionist policies of Nazi Germany, Italy, and Japan.