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FireShot Capture 5 - bering land bridge pictures - Google Search_ - https___www.google.com_search

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American Indians' Cultural Network presents history, culture, archeology, empires, tribes, arts and crafts, jewelry, expeditions to the Indian country.

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The Renaissance was a fervent period of European cultural, artistic, political and economic "rebirth" following the Middle Ages. Generally described as taking place from the 14th century to the 17th century, the Renaissance promoted the rediscovery of classical philosophy, literature and art. Some of the greatest thinkers, authors, statesmen, scientists and artists in human history thrived during this era, while global exploration opened up new lands and cultures to European commerce. The Renaissance is credited with bridging the gap between the Middle Ages and modern-day civilization.

From Darkness to Light: The Renaissance Begins

During the Middle Ages, a period that took place between the fall of ancient Rome in 476 A.D. and the beginning of the 14th century, Europeans made few advances in science and art.

Also known as the "Dark Ages," the era is often branded as a time of war, ignorance, famine and pandemics such as the Black Death.

Some historians, however, believe that such grim depictions of the Middle Ages were greatly exaggerated, though many agree that there was relatively little regard for ancient Greek and Roman philosophies and learning at the time.

Humanism

During the 14th century, a cultural movement called humanism began to gain momentum in Italy. Among its many principles, humanism promoted the idea that man was the center of his own universe, and people should embrace human achievements in education, classical arts, literature and science.

In 1450, the invention of the Gutenberg printing press allowed for improved communication throughout Europe and for ideas to spread more quickly.

As a result of this advance in communication, little-known texts from early humanist authors such as those by Francesco Petrarch and Giovanni Boccaccio, which promoted the renewal of traditional Greek and Roman culture and values, were printed and distributed to the masses.

Additionally, many scholars believe advances in international finance and trade impacted culture in Europe and set the stage for the Renaissance.

Medici Family

The Renaissance started in Florence, Italy, a place with a rich cultural history where wealthy citizens could afford to support budding artists.

Members of the powerful Medici family, which ruled Florence for more than 60 years, were famous backers of the movement.

Great Italian writers, artists, politicians and others declared that they were participating in an intellectual and artistic revolution that would be much different from what they experienced during the Dark Ages.

The movement first expanded to other Italian city-states, such as Venice, Milan, Bologna, Ferrara and Rome. Then, during the 15th century, Renaissance ideas spread from Italy to France and then throughout western and northern Europe.

Although other European countries experienced their Renaissance later than Italy, the impacts were still revolutionary.

Renaissance Geniuses

Some of the most famous and groundbreaking Renaissance intellectuals, artists, scientists and writers include the likes of:

Renaissance Art, Architecture and Science

Art, architecture and science were closely linked during the Renaissance. In fact, it was a unique time when these fields of study fused together seamlessly.

For instance, artists like da Vinci incorporated scientific principles, such as anatomy into their work, so they could recreate the human body with extraordinary precision.

Architects such as Filippo Brunelleschi studied mathematics to accurately engineer and design immense buildings with expansive domes.

Scientific discoveries led to major shifts in thinking: Galileo and Descartes presented a new view of astrology and mathematics, while Copernicus proposed that the Sun, not the Earth, was the center of the solar system.

Renaissance art was characterized by realism and naturalism. Artists strived to depict people and objects in a true-to-life way.

They used techniques, such as perspective, shadows and light to add depth to their work. Emotion was another quality that artists tried to infuse into their pieces.

Some of the most famous artistic works that were produced during the Renaissance include:

The Mona Lisa (Da Vinci)

The Last Supper (Da Vinci)

Statue of David (Michelangelo)

The Birth of Venus (Botticelli)

The Creation of Adam (Michelangelo)

Renaissance Exploration

While many artists and thinkers used their talents to express new ideas, some Europeans took to the seas to learn more about the world around them. In a period known as the Age of Discovery, several important explorations were made.

Voyagers launched expeditions to travel the entire globe. They discovered new shipping routes to the Americas, India and the Far East, and explorers trekked across areas that weren't fully mapped.

Famous journeys were taken by Ferdinand Magellan, Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci (after whom America is named), Marco Polo, Ponce de Leon, Vasco Núñez de Balboa, Hernando De Soto and other explorers.

Renaissance Religion

Humanism encouraged Europeans to question the role of the Roman Catholic church during the Renaissance.

As more people learned how to read, write and interpret ideas, they began to closely examine and critique religion as they knew it. Also, the printing press allowed for texts, including the Bible, to be easily reproduced and widely read by the people, themselves, for the first time.

In the 16th century, Martin Luther, a German monk, led the Protestant Reformation - a revolutionary movement that caused a split in the Catholic church. Luther questioned many of the practices of the church and whether they aligned with the teachings of the Bible.

As a result, a new form of Christianity, known as Protestantism, was created.

End of the Renaissance

Scholars believe the demise of the Renaissance was the result of several compounding factors.

By the end of the 15th century, numerous wars had plagued the Italian peninsula. Spanish, French and German invaders battling for Italian territories caused disruption and instability in the region.

Also, changing trade routes led to a period of economic decline and limited the amount of money that wealthy contributors could spend on the arts.

Later, in a movement known as the Counter-Reformation, the Catholic church censored artists and writers in response to the Protestant Reformation. Many Renaissance thinkers feared being too bold, which stifled creativity.

Furthermore, in 1545, the Council of Trent established the Roman Inquisition, which made humanism and any views that challenged the Catholic church an act of heresy punishable by death.

By the early 17th century, the Renaissance movement had died out, giving way to the Age of Enlightenment.

Debate Over the Renaissance

While many scholars view the Renaissance as a unique and exciting time in European history, others argue that the period wasn't much different from the Middle Ages and that both eras overlapped more than traditional accounts suggest.

Also, some modern historians believe that the Middle Ages had a cultural identity that's been downplayed throughout history and overshadowed by the Renaissance era.

While the exact timing and overall impact of the Renaissance is sometimes debated, there's little dispute that the events of the period ultimately led to advances that changed the way people understood and interpreted the world around them.

Sources

The Renaissance, History World International.
The Renaissance - Why it Changed the World, The Telegraph.
Facts About the Renaissance, Biography Online.
Facts About the Renaissance Period, Interestingfacts.org.
What is Humanism? International Humanist and Ethical Union.
Why Did the Italian Renaissance End? Dailyhistory.org.
The Myth of the Renaissance in Europe, BBC.

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The Renaissance was a fervent period of European cultural, artistic, political and economic "rebirth" following the Middle Ages. Generally described as taking place from the 14th century to the 17th century, the Renaissance promoted the rediscovery of classical philosophy, literature and art.

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Boats and boating--Equipment and supplies

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The Spanish Empire

In fourteen-hundred and ninety-two, do you know what happened?

The Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile rallied their forces and defeated the last Moorish stronghold on the peninsula at Granada. Oh, and Columbus also sailed the ocean blue.

These two events are actually related: while the rest of Europe was enjoying the wealth and growth of the Renaissance, the Spanish kingdoms had been fighting a nearly 800-year religious war. So, Ferdinand and Isabella were anxious to catch up, and agreed to finance the voyage of a Genoese sailor named Christopher Columbus so that the now-unified Spain could gain access to trade routes with Asia. The result would be the world's first global empire, stretching across the Americas, Europe, and parts of Asia. This may not exactly be the 1492 nursery rhyme you grew up with, but it's a history that has impacted us all.

The Spanish Empire in the Americas

The Spanish Empire's history begins with the 1492 voyage of Christopher Columbus. Columbus embarked on his voyage intending to land in Japan. However, rather than finding Asia, Columbus landed on the island now containing Haiti and the Dominican Republic, which he named Hispaniola. This arrival marked the beginning of Spain's conquest of the Americas.

We can see three principal phases of the Spaniards' conquest of the New World. First came the conquest of the Caribbean. Columbus brought back intriguing new foods and products, things like cacao and tobacco and tales of gold, which prompted waves of Spanish ships to set sail for the West Indies. Thanks to Spain's role in defending the Catholic faith, in 1494 the Pope ratified the Treaty of Tordesillas, giving Spain exclusive rights to any lands discovered across the Atlantic other than part of Brazil.

The 800-year religious conflict in Spain ended in 1492. Afterward, Spanish culture was highly militarized, and young Spaniards sought violent adventure as means to social and economic status. These men came to the Caribbean, fought the local Carib and Arawak people nearly to extinction, and built Spanish-style farms on the islands. By 1510, the island of Cuba was nearly pacified and under the control of Spanish explorer Diego de Velázquez. The island became one of the most important economic and cultural centers of the Spanish Caribbean. It was from Cuba that Ponce de León left to explore Florida in 1513, and that a young Spaniard named Hernán Cortés set sail in 1519.

Spanish Conquests of the Americas

After hearing rumors of a treasure-filled continent to the west of the Caribbean, Velázquez hired Cortés to plan an expedition, but then cancelled it due to fear that Cortés would steal the glory. Cortés left anyway, sneaking out of the harbor at night. He landed on the coast of Mexico, founded the city of Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz to formally incorporate the land into the Spanish Empire, and started marching inland. As the Spanish conquistadors worked their way into the Aztec Empire, they built alliances with the enemies of the Aztecs. Most notable were the Tlaxcalans, feared warriors who composed the majority of Cortés' nearly 150,000 Amerindian soldiers.

After defeating the Aztec Empire in 1521, Mexico became the cultural and administrative center of the Spanish Americas. From here, the Spanish pushed north into what is now the United States, and south throughout Central America. The abundance of gold and other trade items also inspired other conquests, notably Francisco Pizarro's 1532 conquest of the Inca Empire in Peru. Even though the Inca armies wouldn't be fully subdued until 1572, this signaled Spain's entrance into South America.

The Spanish Empire in Decline

From the 16th-18th century, the Spanish empire seemed nearly untouchable. However, after the United States declared independence in 1776, most of Spain's American colonies followed suit, declaring independence around 1810 when Spain itself was invaded by France. They lost their last major colonies of the Americas, Cuba and Puerto Rico, at the very end of the 19th century as a result of the Spanish-American War.

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spanish colonies in america & africa | study.com

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Spanish Colonies in America & Africa | Study.com

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In fourteen-hundred and ninety-two, do you know what happened? The Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile rallied their forces and defeated the last Moorish stronghold on the peninsula at Granada. Oh, and Columbus also sailed the ocean blue.

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-https://padlet-uploads.storage.googleapis.com/305282785/835bbc1d05c71234d26b16f7ac334feb/FireShot_Capture_5___bering_land_bridge_pictures___Google_Search____https___www_google_com_search.png
--https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olSYqknFnBw
-http://www.american-indians.net/cultures.html

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-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fvXZzcrEcc
https://study.com/academy/lesson
-/spanish-colonies-in-america-africa.html,.
-https://acadiensis.wordpress.com/2018/09/19/excerpt-homelands-and-empires-indigenous-spaces-imperial-fictions-and-competition-for-territory-in-northeastern-north-america-1690-1763/

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FireShot Capture 10 - A Bio. of America_ Growth and Empire -_ - https___www.learner.org_series_bio

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-https://padlet-uploads.storage.googleapis.com/305282785/79a8782ed6db19fde8b943b1ce20d904/FireShot_Capture_10___A_Bio__of_America__Growth_and_Empire______https___www_learner_org_series_bio.png
-https://slideplayer.com/slide/6064058/
-https://www.loc.gov/collections/continental-congress-and-constitutional-convention-from-1774-to-1789/articles-and-essays/timeline/1764-to-1765/
-https://www.history.com/topics/american-revolution/boston-massacre

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Colonist affected by the Great Awakening and the Enlightenment

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Colonist affected by the Great Awakening and the Enlightenment

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america’s enlightenment and great awakening

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America's Enlightenment and Great Awakening - ppt video online download

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Literacy The American Colonies were the most literate society in the world (90% of males in NE, 40% of females) Literacy throughout varied from 35-50%. England averaged about 30%. Despite widespread literacy books were fairly rare; people were moved by persons who had the power of the spoken word.

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Quartering Act. The British further angered American colonists with the Quartering Act, which required the colonies to provide barracks and supplies to British troops.

Stamp Act. Parliament's first direct tax on the American colonies, this act, like those passed in 1764, was enacted to raise money for Britain. It taxed newspapers, almanacs, pamphlets, broadsides, legal documents, dice, and playing cards. Issued by Britain, the stamps were affixed to documents or packages to show that the tax had been paid.

Organized Colonial Protest. American colonists responded to Parliament's acts with organized protest. Throughout the colonies, a network of secret organizations known as the Sons of Liberty was created, aimed at intimidating the stamp agents who collected Parliament's taxes. Before the Stamp Act could even take effect, all the appointed stamp agents in the colonies had resigned. The Massachusetts Assembly suggested a meeting of all the colonies to work for the repeal of the Stamp Act. All but four colonies were represented. The Stamp Act Congress passed a "Declaration of Rights and Grievances," which claimed that American colonists were equal to all other British citizens, protested taxation without representation, and stated that, without colonial representation in Parliament, Parliament could not tax colonists. In addition, the colonists increased their nonimportation efforts.

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1764 to 1765 | Timeline | Articles and Essays | Documents from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention, 1774-1789 | Digital Collections | Library of Congress

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Timeline 1764 Sugar Act. Parliament, desiring revenue from its North American colonies, passed the first law specifically aimed at raising colonial money for the Crown. The act increased duties on non-British goods shipped to the colonies.Currency Act. This act prohibited American colonies from issuing their own currency, angering many American colonists.Beginnings of Colonial Opposition.

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Why Did the Boston Massacre Happen?

Tensions ran high in Boston in early 1770. More than 2,000 British soldiers occupied the city of 16,000 colonists and tried to enforce Britain's tax laws, like the Stamp Act and Townshend Acts. American colonists rebelled against the taxes they found repressive, rallying around the cry, "no taxation without representation."

Skirmishes between colonists and soldiers-and between patriot colonists and colonists loyal to Britain (loyalists)-were increasingly common. To protest taxes, patriots often vandalized stores selling British goods and intimidated store merchants and their customers.

On February 22, a mob of patriots attacked a known loyalist's store. Customs officer Ebenezer Richardson lived near the store and tried to break up the rock-pelting crowd by firing his gun through the window of his home. His gunfire struck and killed an 11-year-old boy named Christopher Seider and further enraged the patriots.

Several days later, a fight broke out between local workers and British soldiers. It ended without serious bloodshed but helped set the stage for the bloody incident yet to come.

How Many Died After Violence Erupted?

On the frigid, snowy evening of March 5, 1770, Private Hugh White was the only soldier guarding the King's money stored inside the Custom House on King Street. It wasn't long before angry colonists joined him and insulted him and threatened violence.

At some point, White fought back and struck a colonist with his bayonet. In retaliation, the colonists pelted him with snowballs, ice and stones. Bells started ringing throughout the town-usually a warning of fire-sending a mass of male colonists into the streets. As the assault on White continued, he eventually fell and called for reinforcements.

In response to White's plea and fearing mass riots and the loss of the King's money, Captain Thomas Preston arrived on the scene with several soldiers and took up a defensive position in front of the Custom House.

Worried that bloodshed was inevitable, some colonists reportedly pleaded with the soldiers to hold their fire as others dared them to shoot. Preston later reported a colonist told him the protestors planned to "carry off [White] from his post and probably murder him."

The violence escalated, and the colonists struck the soldiers with clubs and sticks. Reports differ of exactly what happened next, but after someone supposedly said the word "fire," a soldier fired his gun, although it's unclear if the discharge was intentional.

Once the first shot rang out, other soldiers opened fire, killing five colonists-including Crispus Attucks, a local dockworker of mixed racial heritage-and wounding six. Among the other casualties of the Boston Massacre was Samuel Gray, a rope maker who was left with a hole the size of a fist in his head. Sailor James Caldwell was hit twice before dying, and Samuel Maverick and Patrick Carr were mortally wounded.

Boston Massacre Fueled Anti-British Views

Within hours, Preston and his soldiers were arrested and jailed and the propaganda machine was in full force on both sides of the conflict.

Preston wrote his version of the events from his jail cell for publication, while Sons of Liberty leaders such as John Hancock and Samuel Adams incited colonists to keep fighting the British. As tensions rose, British troops retreated from Boston to Fort William.

Paul Revere encouraged anti-British attitudes by etching a now-famous engraving depicting British soldiers callously murdering American colonists. It showed the British as the instigators though the colonists had started the fight.

It also portrayed the soldiers as vicious men and the colonists as gentlemen. It was later determined that Revere had copied his engraving from one made by Boston artist Henry Pelham.

John Adams Defends the British

It took seven months to arraign Preston and the other soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre and bring them to trial. Ironically, it was American colonist, lawyer and future President of the United States John Adams who defended them.

Adams was no fan of the British but wanted Preston and his men to receive a fair trial. After all, the death penalty was at stake and the colonists didn't want the British to have an excuse to even the score. Certain that impartial jurors were nonexistent in Boston, Adams convinced the judge to seat a jury of non-Bostonians.

During Preston's trial, Adams argued that confusion that night was rampant. Eyewitnesses presented contradictory evidence on whether Preston had ordered his men to fire on the colonists.

But after witness Richard Palmes testified that, "...After the Gun went off I heard the word 'fire!' The Captain and I stood in front about half between the breech and muzzle of the Guns. I don't know who gave the word to fire," Adams argued that reasonable doubt existed; Preston was found not guilty.

The remaining soldiers claimed self-defense and were all found not guilty of murder. Two of them-Hugh Montgomery and Matthew Kilroy-were found guilty of manslaughter and were branded on the thumbs as first offenders per English law.

To Adams' and the jury's credit, the British soldiers received a fair trial despite the vitriol felt towards them and their country.

Aftermath of the Boston Massacre

The Boston Massacre had a major impact on relations between Britain and the American colonists. It further incensed colonists already weary of British rule and unfair taxation and roused them to fight for independence.

Yet perhaps Preston said it best when he wrote about the conflict and said, "None of them was a hero. The victims were troublemakers who got more than they deserved. The soldiers were professionals...who shouldn't have panicked. The whole thing shouldn't have happened."

Over the next five years, the colonists continued their rebellion and staged the Boston Tea Party, formed the First Continental Congress and defended their militia arsenal at Concord against the redcoats, effectively launching the American Revolution. Today, the city of Boston has a Boston Massacre site marker at the intersection of Congress Street and State Street, a few yards from where the first shots were fired.

Sources

After the Boston Massacre. John Adams Historical Society.
Boston Massacre Trial. National Park Service: National Historical Park of Massachusetts.
Paul Revere's Engraving of the Boston Massacre, 1770. The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
The Boston Massacre. Bostonian Society Old State House.
The Boston "Massacre." H.S.I. Historical Scene Investigation.

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Boston Massacre: Causes, Date & Facts | HISTORY

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The Boston Massacre was a deadly riot that occurred on March 5, 1770, on King Street in Boston between American colonists and British soldiers. It helped pave the way for the American Revolution.

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Paul Revere's ride/Lexington and Concord

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Paul Revere's ride/Lexington and Concord

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https://dumielauxepices.net/sites/default/files/ride-clipart-paul-revere%27s-741554-6687864.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKJMWHCUoiw

https://www.history.com/topics/american-revolution/battle-of-saratoga

https://www.nps.gov/york/learn/historyculture/after-yorktown.htm

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What you might not know about the Declaration of Independence - Kenneth C. Davis

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Battle of Quebec

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

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

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

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

First Battle of Saratoga: Freeman's Farm

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

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

Battle of Bemis Heights

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

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

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

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

Benedict Arnold

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

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

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

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

Saratoga National Historical Park

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

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

Who Won the Battle of Saratoga?

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

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

Significance of the Battle of Saratoga

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

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

Sources

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

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Battle of Saratoga - Definition, Significance & Date

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

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After Yorktown: 1781-1783 - Yorktown Battlefield Part of Colonial National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service)

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Finally, on January 20, 1783, all parties reached agreement and an armistice was declared. A change of British government and minor modifications to the French and Spanish treaties, as well as Anglo-Dutch negotiations, delayed the final ratification of the Treaty of Paris until September 3, but on that day the War for American Independence officially concluded.

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

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

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

Who Wrote the Articles of Confederation?

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

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

Ratification of the Articles of Confederation

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

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

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

Weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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https://www.history.com/topics/early-us/articles-of-confederation

https://www.thoughtco.com/great-compromise-of-1787-3322289

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ie6mvIDU2y4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bf3CwYCxXw

http://constitutionus.com/

https://blogs-images.forbes.com/wlf/files/2011/12/first-amendment.jpg

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The Great Compromise of 1787, also known as the Sherman Compromise, was an agreement reached during the Constitutional Convention of 1787 between delegates of the states with large and small populations that defined the structure of Congress and the number of representatives each state would have in Congress according to the United States Constitution. Under the agreement proposed by Connecticut delegate Roger Sherman, Congress would be a "bicameral" or two-chambered body, with each state getting a number of representatives in the lower chamber (the House) proportional to its population and two representatives in the upper chamber (the Senate).

Key Takeaways: Great Compromise

Perhaps the greatest debate undertaken by the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 centered on how many representatives each state should have in the new government's lawmaking branch, the U.S. Congress. As is often the case in government and politics, resolving a great debate required a great compromise-in this case, the Great Compromise of 1787. Early in the Constitutional Convention, delegates envisioned a Congress consisting of only a single chamber with a certain number of representatives from each state.

Weeks before the Constitutional Convention convened on July 16, 1787, the framers had already made several important decisions about how the Senate should be structured. They rejected a proposal to have the House of Representatives elect senators from lists submitted by the individual state legislatures and agreed that those legislatures should elect their senators. In fact, until the ratification of the 17th Amendment in 1913, all U.S. Senators were appointed by the state legislatures rather than elected by the people.

By the end of its first day in session, the convention had already set the minimum age for senators at 30 and the term length at six years, as opposed to 25 for House members, with two-year terms. James Madison explained that these distinctions, based on "the nature of the senatorial trust, which requires greater extent of information and stability of character," would allow the Senate "to proceed with more coolness, with more system, and with more wisdom than the popular[ly elected] branch."

However, the issue of equal representation threatened to destroy the seven-week-old convention. Delegates from the large states believed that because their states contributed proportionally more in taxes and military resources, they should enjoy proportionally greater representation in the Senate as well as in the House. Delegates from small states argued-with similar intensity-that all states should be equally represented in both houses.

When Roger Sherman proposed the Great Compromise, Benjamin Franklin agreed that each state should have an equal vote in the Senate in all matters-except those involving revenue and spending.

Over the Fourth of July holiday, delegates worked out a compromise plan that sidetracked Franklin's proposal. On July 16, the convention adopted the Great Compromise by a suspenseful margin of one vote. Many historians have noted that without that vote, there would likely have been no U.S. Constitution today.

Representation

The burning question was, how many representatives from each state? Delegates from the larger, more populous states favored the Virginia Plan, which called for each state to have a different number of representatives based on the state's population. Delegates from smaller states supported the New Jersey Plan, under which each state would send the same number of representatives to Congress.

Delegates from the smaller states argued that, despite their lower populations, their states held equal legal status to that of the larger states, and that proportional representation would be unfair to them. Delegate Gunning Bedford, Jr. of Delaware notoriously threatened that the small states could be forced to "find some foreign ally of more honor and good faith, who will take them by the hand and do them justice."

However, Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts objected to the small states' claim of legal sovereignty, stating that

"we never were independent States, were not such now, and never could be even on the principles of the Confederation. The States and the advocates for them were intoxicated with the idea of their sovereignty."

Sherman's Plan

Connecticut delegate Roger Sherman is credited with proposing the alternative of a "bicameral," or two-chambered Congress made up of a Senate and a House of Representatives. Each state, suggested Sherman, would send an equal number of representatives to the Senate, and one representative to the House for every 30,000 residents of the state.

At the time, all the states except Pennsylvania had bicameral legislatures, so the delegates were familiar with the structure of Congress proposed by Sherman.

Sherman's plan pleased delegates from both the large and small states and became known as the Connecticut Compromise of 1787, or the Great Compromise.

The structure and powers of the new U.S. Congress, as proposed by the delegates of the Constitutional Convention, were explained to the people by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison in the Federalist Papers.

Apportionment and Redistricting

Today, each state is represented in Congress by two Senators and a variable number of members of the House of Representatives based on the state's population as reported in the most recent decennial census. The process of fairly determining the number of members of the House from each state is called " apportionment."

The first census in 1790 counted 4 million Americans. Based on that count, the total number of members elected to the House of Representatives grew from the original 65 to 106. The current House membership of 435 was set by Congress in 1911.

Redistricting to Ensure Equal Representation

To ensure fair and equal representation in the House, the process of " redistricting " is used to establish or change the geographic boundaries within the states from which representatives are elected.

In the 1964 case of Reynolds v. Sims, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that all of the congressional districts in each state must all have roughly the same population.

Through apportionment and redistricting, high population urban areas are prevented from gaining an inequitable political advantage over less populated rural areas.

For example, if New York City were not split into several congressional districts, the vote of a single New York City resident would carry more influence on the House than all of the residents in the rest of the State of New York combined.

How the 1787 Compromise Impacts Modern Politics

While the populations of the states varied in 1787, the differences were far less pronounced than they are today. For example, the 2020 population of Wyoming at 549,914 pales in comparison to California's 39.78 million. As a result, one then-unforeseen political impact of the Great Compromise is that states with smaller populations have disproportionately more power in the modern Senate. While California is home to almost 70% more people than Wyoming, both states have two votes in the Senate.

"The founders never imagined ... the great differences in the population of states that exist today," said political scientist George Edwards III of Texas A&M University. "If you happen to live in a low-population state you get a disproportionately bigger say in American government."

Due to this proportionate imbalance of voting power, interests in smaller states, such as coal mining in West Virginia or corn farming in Iowa, are more likely to benefit from federal funding through tax breaks and crop subsidies.

The Framer's intent to "protect" the smaller states through equal representation in the Senate also manifests itself in the Electoral College, as each state's number of electoral votes is based on its combined number of representatives in the House and Senate. For example, in Wyoming, the state with the smallest population, each of its three electors represents a far smaller group of people than each of the 55 electoral votes cast by California, the most populous state.

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The Great Compromise of 1787, also known as the Sherman Compromise, was an agreement reached during the Constitutional Convention of 1787 between delegates of the states with large and small populations that defined the structure of Congress and the number of representatives each state would have in Congress according to the United States Constitution.

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Separation of Powers and Checks and Balances: Crash Course Government and Politics #3

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begun and held at the City of New-York, on Wednesday the fourth of March, one thousand seven hundred and eighty nine.
THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.

RESOLVED by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, two thirds of both Houses concurring, that the following Articles be proposed to the Legislatures of the several States, as amendments to the Constitution of the United States, all, or any of which Articles, when ratified by three fourths of the said Legislatures, to be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of the said Constitution; viz.

ARTICLES in addition to, and Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, proposed by Congress, and ratified by the Legislatures of the several States, pursuant to the fifth Article of the original Constitution.

Article the first. .... After the first enumeration required by the first Article of the Constitution, there shall be one Representative for every thirty thousand, until the number shall amount to one hundred, after which, the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall be not less than one hundred Representatives, nor less than one Representative for every forty thousand persons, until the number of Representatives shall amount to two hundred, after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall not be less than two hundred Representatives, nor more than one Representative for every fifty thousand persons.

Article the second. .... No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened. see Amendment XXVII

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begun and held at the City of New-York, on Wednesday the fourth of March, one thousand seven hundred and eighty nine.

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The Golden Age: 1860-1932

Despite outward indicators of prosperity, the Gilded Age (late 1860s to 1896) was an era characterized by turmoil and political contention.

Learning Objectives

Describe major economic and political developments during the "Gilded Age" of American history and identify what led to these developments

Key Takeaways

Key Points

The term "The Gilded Age" was coined by writers Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, which satirized what they believed to be an era of serious social problems obscured by a thin veneer of prosperity.

The Gilded Age was a time of enormous growth that attracted millions from Europe.

Gilded Age politics, called the Third Party System, was characterized by intense competition between the two parties, with minor parties coming and going, especially on issues of concern to prohibitionists, labor unions and farmers.

The Fourth Party System lasted from about 1896 to 1932, and was dominated by the Republican Party; it is generally referred to as the Progressive Era.

Key Terms

Third Party System: A period in American political history from about 1854 to the mid-1890s that featured profound developments in issues of nationalism, modernization, and race.

Reconstruction: A period in U.S. history from 1865 to 1877, during which the nation tried to resolve the status of the ex-Confederate states, the ex-Confederate leaders, and the Freedmen (ex-slaves) after the American Civil War.

In United States history, the Gilded Age was the period following the Civil War, running from the late 1860s to about 1896 when the next era began, the Progressive Era. The term was coined by writers Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, which satirized what they believed to be an era of serious social problems obscured by a thin veneer of prosperity.

The Gilded Age was a time of enormous growth that attracted millions of European immigrants. Railroads were the major industry, but the factory system, mining, and labor unions also gained in importance. Despite the growth, there was serious cause for concern, which manifested in two major nationwide depressions, known as the Panic of 1873 and the Panic of 1893. Furthermore, most of the growth and prosperity came in the North and West - states that had been part of the Union. States in the South, part of the defeated Confederate States of America, remained economically devastated; their economies became increasingly tied to cotton and tobacco production, which suffered low prices. African Americans in the south experienced the worst setbacks, as they were stripped of political power and voting rights.

During the 1870s and 1880s, the U.S. economy rose at the fastest rate in its history, with real wages, wealth, gross domestic product (GDP), and capital formation all increasing rapidly. Between 1865 and 1898, the output of wheat increased by 256%, corn by 222%, coal by 800% and miles of railway track by 567%. Thick national networks for transportation and communication were created. The corporation became the dominant form of business organization, and a managerial revolution transformed business operations. By the beginning of the 20 th century, per capita income and industrial production in the United States led the world, with per capita incomes double that of Germany or France, and 50% higher than Britain.

Politics in the Gilded Age

Gilded Age politics, called the Third Party System, were characterized by rampant corruption and intense competition between the two parties (with minor parties coming and going), especially on issues of Prohibitionist, labor unions and farmers. The Democrats and Republicans fought over control of offices as well as major economic issues. The dominant political issues included rights for African Americans, tariff policies and monetary policies. Reformers worked for civil service reform, prohibition and women's suffrage, while philanthropists built colleges and hospitals, and the many religious denominations exerted a major sway in both politics and everyday life.

Voter turnout was very high and often exceeded 80% or even 90% in some states as the parties were adamant about rallying their loyal supporters. Competition was intense and elections were very close. In the South, lingering resentment over the Civil War meant that most states would vote Democrat. After the end of Reconstruction in 1877, competition in the South took place mainly inside the Democratic Party. Nationwide, voter turnout fell sharply after 1900.

The Third Party System (1854-1890s)

The Third Party System lasted from about 1854 to the mid-1890s, and featured profound developments in issues of nationalism, modernization, and race. It was dominated by the new Republican Party (also known as the Grand Old Party or GOP), which claimed success in saving the Union, abolishing slavery and enfranchising the freedmen, while adopting many Whiggish modernization programs such as national banks, railroads, high tariffs, homesteads, social spending (such as on greater Civil War veteran pension funding), and aid to land grant colleges. While most elections from 1874 through 1892 were extremely close, the opposition Democrats won only the 1884 and 1892 presidential elections. The northern and western states were largely Republican, save for closely balanced New York, Indiana, New Jersey, and Connecticut. After 1874, the Democrats took control of the "Solid South. "

The Fourth Party System (1896-1932)

The Fourth Party System lasted from about 1896 to 1932, and was dominated by the Republican Party, excepting the 1912 split in which Democrats held the White House for eight years. American history texts usually call it the Progressive Era, and it included World War I and the start of the Great Depression. The period featured a transformation from the issues of the Third Party System, instead focusing on domestic issues such as regulation of railroads and large corporations ("trusts"), the money issue (gold versus silver), the protective tariff, the role of labor unions, child labor, the need for a new banking system, corruption in party politics, primary elections, direct election of senators, racial segregation, efficiency in government, women's suffrage, and control of immigration. Foreign policy centered on the 1898 Spanish-American War, Imperialism, the Mexican Revolution, World War I, and the creation of the League of Nations.

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Despite outward indicators of prosperity, the Gilded Age (late 1860s to 1896) was an era characterized by turmoil and political contention.

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Sent by President Thomas Jefferson to find the Northwest Passage, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led the most important expedition in American history. This extraordinary film tells the remarkable story of the entire Corps of Discovery - not just of the two Captains, but the young army men, French-Canadian boatmen, Clark's African-American slave, and the Shoshone woman named Sacagawea, who brought along her infant son. As important to the story as these many characters, however, was the land itself, and the promises it held.

The mission of the Corps of Discovery was to explore the uncharted West. Beginning February 28, 1803 It would be led by Meriwether Lewis, and Lewis' friend, William Clark. Over the next four years, the Corps of Discovery would travel thousands of miles, experiencing lands, rivers and peoples that no Americans ever had before. Ken Burns' LEWIS & CLARK re-creates the 1803 journey to locate the Northwest Passage. The explorers found a varied landscape and a dizzying diversity of Indian peoples.

Premiered: November 4, 1997

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Lewis and Clark | Ken Burns | PBS | Watch Lewis and Clark Documentary | Ken Burns | PBS

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Enter the world of Meriwether Lewis, William Clark and the rest of the Corps of Discovery. Full film now streaming.

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The War of 1812 - Crash Course US History #11

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https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless -politicalscience/chapter/the history-of-political-parties/

https://perfectessaysonline.com/sites/default/files/purchase.jpg

https://www.pbs.org/lewisandclark/inside/index.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMXqg2PKJZU

https://www.britannica.com/event/Monroe-Doctrine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ensb3L2mUxI

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Why was the Monroe Doctrine important?

What were the basic tenets of the Monroe Doctrine?

What motives were behind the Monroe Doctrine?

Who worked on the Monroe Doctrine?

How did the Monroe Doctrine change over time?

Monroe Doctrine, (December 2, 1823), cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy enunciated by Pres. James Monroe in his annual message to Congress. Declaring that the Old World and New World had different systems and must remain distinct spheres, Monroe made four basic points: (1) the United States would not interfere in the internal affairs of or the wars between European powers; (2) the United States recognized and would not interfere with existing colonies and dependencies in the Western Hemisphere; (3) the Western Hemisphere was closed to future colonization; and (4) any attempt by a European power to oppress or control any nation in the Western Hemisphere would be viewed as a hostile act against the United States:

In the wars of the European powers in matters relating to themselves we have never taken any part, nor does it comport with our policy so to do. It is only when our rights are invaded or seriously menaced that we resent injuries or make preparation for our defense....

With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere. But with the governments who have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.

The origin and framing of the Monroe Doctrine

The doctrine was an outgrowth of concern in both Britain and the United States that the Continental powers would attempt to restore Spain's former colonies, in Latin America, many of which had become newly independent nations. The United States was also concerned about Russia's territorial ambitions in the northwest coast of North America. As a consequence, George Canning, the British foreign minister, suggested a joint U.S.-British declaration forbidding future colonization in Latin America. Monroe was initially favourable to the idea, and former presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison concurred. But Secretary of State John Quincy Adams argued that the United States should issue a statement of American policy exclusively, and his view ultimately prevailed.

American History and Politics Quiz

The first draft of the message included a reproof of the French for their invasion of Spain, an acknowledgment of Greek independence in the revolt against Turkey, and some further indications of American concern in European affairs. Adams argued for the better part of two days against such expressions, which were finally eliminated from the message.

Adams noted in his diary,

The ground that I wish to take is that of earnest remonstrance against the interference of the European powers by force in South America, but to disclaim all interference on our part with Europe; to make an American cause, and adhere inflexibly to that.

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Monroe Doctrine | History, Summary, & Significance

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Monroe Doctrine, U.S. foreign policy enunciated by President James Monroe in 1823 that the U.S. would not interfere in European affairs and wars or with existing colonies in the Western Hemisphere. European intervention in the hemisphere (closed to future colonization) would be seen as a hostile act against the U.S.

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Andrew Jackson rose to national prominance as a General during the War of 1812.

The presidential election of 1828 brought a great victory for Andrew Jackson. Not only did he get almost 70 percent of the votes cast in the electoral college, popular participation in the election soared to an unheard of 60 percent. This more than doubled the turnout in 1824; Jackson clearly headed a sweeping political movement. His central message remained largely the same from the previous election, but had grown in intensity. Jackson warned that the nation had been corrupted by "special privilege," characterized especially by the policies of the Second Bank of the United States. The proper road to reform, according to Jackson, lay in an absolute acceptance of majority rule as expressed through the democratic process. Beyond these general principles, however, Jackson's campaign was notably vague about specific policies. Instead, it stressed Jackson's life story as a man who had risen from modest origins to become a successful Tennessee planter. Jackson's claim to distinction lay in a military career that included service as a young man in the Revolutionary War, several anti-Indian campaigns, and, of course, his crowning moment in the Battle of New Orleans at the end of the War of 1812.

Jackson's election marked a new direction in American politics. He was the first westerner elected president, indeed, the first president from a state other than Virginia or Massachusetts. He boldly proclaimed himself to be the "champion of the common man" and believed that their interests were ignored by the aggressive national economic plans of Clay and Adams. More than this, however, when Martin Van Buren followed Jackson as president, it indicated that the Jacksonian movement had long-term significance that would outlast his own charismatic leadership.

Andrew Jackson is known to have harbored animosity for Native Americans. During his administration, many tribes were moved to reservations in the Oklahoma Territory.

Van Buren, perhaps even more than Jackson, helped to create the new Democratic party that centered upon three chief qualities closely linked to Jacksonian Democracy. First, it declared itself to be the party of ordinary farmers and workers. Second, it opposed the special privileges of economic elites. Third, to offer affordable western land to ordinary white Americans, Indians needed to be forced further westward. The Whig party soon arose to challenge the Democrats with a different policy platform and vision for the nation. Whigs' favored active government support for economic improvement as the best route to sustained prosperity. Thus, the Whig-Democrat political contest was in large part a disagreement about the early Industrial Revolution. Whigs defended economic development's broad benefits, while Democrats stressed the new forms of dependence that it created. The fiercely partisan campaigns waged between these parties lasted into the 1850s and are known as the Second Party System, an assuredly modern framework of political competition that reached ordinary voters as never before with both sides organizing tirelessly to carry their message directly to the American people.

A "mob" descended upon Andrew Jackson at the White House to celebrate his victory in the election of 1828. Public parties were regular occurrences during Jackson's administration.

A new era of American politics began with Jackson's election in 1828, but it also completed a grand social experiment begun by the American Revolution. Although the Founding Fathers would have been astounded by the new shape of the nation during Jackson's presidency, just as Jackson himself had served in the American Revolution, its values helped form his sense of the world. The ideals of the Revolution had, of course, been altered by the new conditions of the early nineteenth century and would continue to be reworked over time. Economic, religious, and geographic changes had all reshaped the nation in fundamental ways and pointed toward still greater opportunities and pitfalls in the future. Nevertheless, Jacksonian Democracy represented a provocative blending of the best and worst qualities of American society. On the one hand it was an authentic democratic movement that contained a principled egalitarian thrust, but this powerful social critique was always cast for the benefit of white men. This tragic mix of egalitarianism, masculine privilege, and racial prejudice remains a central quality of American life and to explore their relationship in the past may help suggest ways of overcoming their haunting limitations in the future.

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Jacksonian Democracy and Modern America [ushistory.org]

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Andrew Jackson rose to national prominance as a General during the War of 1812. The presidential election of 1828 brought a great victory for Andrew Jackson. Not only did he get almost 70 percent of the votes cast in the electoral college, popular participation in the election soared to an unheard of 60 percent.

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https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/jacksonian-democracy

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Indian-Removal-Act

https://media.nationalgeographic.org/assets/photos/000/315/31543.jpg

https://www.uswars.net/texas-revolutionary-war/

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/civil-war-era/sectional-tension-1850s/v/manifest-destiny

https://www.pbs.org/video/latino-americans-mexican-american-war/

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This article was most recently revised and updated by

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

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

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

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Adam Augustyn.

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

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

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In 1810, Mexico received its independence from Spain. In 1824, with the Mexican government wishing to settle the mostly-empty northern region, Moses Austin was invited to settle a colony of Americans in east Texas. The only conditions were that the Americans convert to Catholicism, renounce their American citizenship, become "Mexicanized," and either free or leave behind their slaves. Most of these requests were ignored, and not easily enforceable. After the death of Austin, his son Sam Austin became the de-facto leader of the Texans. The Tejanos (American residents of Texas) wished for increased trade with the United States, more self-rule, and slavery. When met with the "Napoleon of the West," the new Mexican President-General Santa Anna, by 1835, increased tensions between the central government in Mexico City and the distant region of Texas were at the brink of war.

The Texas revolution occurred as a result of a series of events that began long before the first shots fired in Gonzales on October 2, 1835, and finally ending at the battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836. The actual battle of San Jacinto lasted less than twenty minutes, but it was in the making for six years. It had its prelude in the oppressive Mexican edict of April 6, 1830, prohibiting further emigration of Anglo-Americans from the United States to Texas; in the disturbance at Anahuac and in the battle of Velasco, in 1832; in the imprisonment of Stephen F. Austin, the "Father of Texas," in Mexico in 1834. Immediate preliminaries were the skirmish over a cannon at Gonzales; the capture of Goliad; the "Grass Fight", and the siege and capture of San Antonio . . . all in late 1835 and early 1836. The Texas Declaration of Independence at Washington-on-the-Brazos on March 2, 1836, officially signalized the revolution.

After The Texans Won The War, They Began To Create An Independent Nation But They Really Wanted Texas To Join The U.S. This Didn't Happen At First Because Texas Was A Slave State, And Mexico Didn't Recognize Texas As An Independent Nation. So Many U.S. Citizens Rejected Texas Because Of Slavery And The Fact That They Didn't Want To Start A War With Mexico. Eventually, The U.S. Joined With Texas And Texas Sold Of Its Land To Help The U.S. Pay Texas Debts To Other Countries. This Outraged Mexico, And For Other Reasons (Manifest Destiny) The U.S. Went To War With Mexico, The Mexican, American War.

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In 1810, Mexico received its independence from Spain. In 1824, with the Mexican government wishing to settle the mostly-empty northern region, Moses Austin was invited to settle a colony of Americans in east Texas. The only conditions were that the Americans convert to Catholicism, renounce their American citizenship, become "Mexicanized," and either free or leave behind their slaves.

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Latino Americans
Clip: Season 1 | 2m 29s

In 1846 the US went to war with Mexico over disputed territory on the Texas boarder. President James Polk wanted to push all the way to the Pacific. Mexico surrendered in 1848 and with the addition of the seized lands, the United States doubled in size. The Mexicans that were now living in the US were offered citizenship and were told their rights would be protected under the Treaty of Hildago.

Aired: 09/16/13

Rating: NR

Problems Playing Video? Report a Problem |

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Latino Americans Clip: Season 1 | 2m 29s In 1846 the US went to war with Mexico over disputed territory on the Texas boarder. President James Polk wanted to push all the way to the Pacific. Mexico surrendered in 1848 and with the addition of the seized lands, the United States doubled in size.

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Coal, Steam, and The Industrial Revolution: Crash Course World History #32

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The Industrial Revolution
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhL5DCizj5c
Interchangeable Parts
https://blog.partsmarket.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/car_disassembled-882x576.jpg
The Rise of Organized Labor
http://www.ushistory.org/us/37.asp
The Transportation Revolution
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-ushistory1os2xmaster/chapter/on-the-move-the-transportation-revolution/
Eli Whitney's Cotton Gin
https://www.sussexvt.k12.de.us/science/The%20History%20of%20the%20World%201500-1899/Eli%20Whitney%20Invents%20the%20Cotton%20Gin.htm
The Life Of A Slave
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYqllZ3kdrc

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Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Describe the development of improved methods of nineteenth-century domestic transportation

Identify the ways in which roads, canals, and railroads impacted Americans' lives in the nineteenth century

Americans in the early 1800s were a people on the move, as thousands left the eastern coastal states for opportunities in the West. Unlike their predecessors, who traveled by foot or wagon train, these settlers had new transport options. Their trek was made possible by the construction of roads, canals, and railroads, projects that required the funding of the federal government and the states.

New technologies, like the steamship and railroad lines, had brought about what historians call the transportation revolution. States competed for the honor of having the most advanced transport systems. People celebrated the transformation of the wilderness into an orderly world of improvement demonstrating the steady march of progress and the greatness of the republic. In 1817, John C. Calhoun of South Carolina looked to a future of rapid internal improvements, declaring, "Let us . . . bind the Republic together with a perfect system of roads and canals." Americans agreed that internal transportation routes would promote progress. By the eve of the Civil War, the United States had moved beyond roads and canals to a well-established and extensive system of railroads.

One key part of the transportation revolution was the widespread building of roads and turnpikes. In 1811, construction began on the Cumberland Road, a national highway that provided thousands with a route from Maryland to Illinois. The federal government funded this important artery to the West, beginning the creation of a transportation infrastructure for the benefit of settlers and farmers. Other entities built turnpikes, which (as today) charged fees for use. New York State, for instance, chartered turnpike companies that dramatically increased the miles of state roads from one thousand in 1810 to four thousand by 1820. New York led the way in building turnpikes.

Canal mania swept the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century. Promoters knew these artificial rivers could save travelers immense amounts of time and money. Even short waterways, such as the two-and-a-half-mile canal going around the rapids of the Ohio River near Louisville, Kentucky, proved a huge leap forward, in this case by opening a water route from Pittsburgh to New Orleans. The preeminent example was the Erie Canal, which linked the Hudson River, and thus New York City and the Atlantic seaboard, to the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River Valley.

With its central location, large harbor, and access to the hinterland via the Hudson River, New York City already commanded the lion's share of commerce. Still, the city's merchants worried about losing ground to their competitors in Philadelphia and Baltimore. Their search for commercial advantage led to the dream of creating a water highway connecting the city's Hudson River to Lake Erie and markets in the West. The result was the Erie Canal. Chartered in 1817 by the state of New York, the canal took seven years to complete. When it opened in 1825, it dramatically decreased the cost of shipping while reducing the time to travel to the West. Soon $15 million worth of goods (more than $200 million in today's money) was being transported on the 363-mile waterway every year.

Explore the Erie Canal on ErieCanal.org via an interactive map. Click throughout the map for images of and artifacts from this historic waterway.

The success of the Erie Canal led to other, similar projects. The Wabash and Erie Canal, which opened in the early 1840s, stretched over 450 miles, making it the longest canal in North America. Canals added immensely to the country's sense of progress. Indeed, they appeared to be the logical next step in the process of transforming wilderness into civilization.

Visit Southern Indiana Trails to see historic photographs of the Wabash and Erie Canal:

As with highway projects such as the Cumberland Road, many canals were federally sponsored, especially during the presidency of John Quincy Adams in the late 1820s. Adams, along with Secretary of State Henry Clay, championed what was known as the American System, part of which included plans for a broad range of internal transportation improvements. Adams endorsed the creation of roads and canals to facilitate commerce and develop markets for agriculture as well as to advance settlement in the West.

Starting in the late 1820s, steam locomotives began to compete with horse-drawn locomotives. The railroads with steam locomotives offered a new mode of transportation that fascinated citizens, buoying their optimistic view of the possibilities of technological progress. The Mohawk and Hudson Railroad was the first to begin service with a steam locomotive. Its inaugural train ran in 1831 on a track outside Albany and covered twelve miles in twenty-five minutes. Soon it was traveling regularly between Albany and Schenectady.

Toward the middle of the century, railroad construction kicked into high gear, and eager investors quickly formed a number of railroad companies. As a railroad grid began to take shape, it stimulated a greater demand for coal, iron, and steel. Soon, both railroads and canals crisscrossed the states, providing a transportation infrastructure that fueled the growth of American commerce. Indeed, the transportation revolution led to development in the coal, iron, and steel industries, providing many Americans with new job opportunities.

The expansion of roads, canals, and railroads changed people's lives. In 1786, it had taken a minimum of four days to travel from Boston, Massachusetts, to Providence, Rhode Island. By 1840, the trip took half a day on a train. In the twenty-first century, this may seem intolerably slow, but people at the time were amazed by the railroad's speed. Its average of twenty miles per hour was twice as fast as other available modes of transportation.

By 1840, more than three thousand miles of canals had been dug in the United States, and thirty thousand miles of railroad track had been laid by the beginning of the Civil War. Together with the hundreds of steamboats that plied American rivers, these advances in transportation made it easier and less expensive to ship agricultural products from the West to feed people in eastern cities, and to send manufactured goods from the East to people in the West. Without this ability to transport goods, the market revolution would not have been possible. Rural families also became less isolated as a result of the transportation revolution. Traveling circuses, menageries, peddlers, and itinerant painters could now more easily make their way into rural districts, and people in search of work found cities and mill towns within their reach.

A transportation infrastructure rapidly took shape in the 1800s as American investors and the government began building roads, turnpikes, canals, and railroads. The time required to travel shrank vastly, and people marveled at their ability to conquer great distances, enhancing their sense of the steady advance of progress. The transportation revolution also made it possible to ship agricultural and manufactured goods throughout the country and enabled rural people to travel to towns and cities for employment opportunities.

https://www.openassessments.org/assessments/970

Review Question

What were the benefits of the transportation revolution?

Answer to Review Question

The Cumberland Road made transportation to the West easier for new settlers. The Erie Canal facilitated trade with the West by connecting the Hudson River to Lake Erie. Railroads shortened transportation times throughout the country, making it easier and less expensive to move people and goods.

Glossary

Cumberland Road a national highway that provided thousands with a route from Maryland to Illinois

Erie Canal a canal that connected the Hudson River to Lake Erie and markets in the West

Mohawk and Hudson Railroad the first steam-powered locomotive railroad in the United States

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By the end of this section, you will be able to: Describe the development of improved methods of nineteenth-century domestic transportation Identify the ways in which roads, canals, and railroads impacted Americans' lives in the nineteenth century Americans in the early 1800s were a people on the move, as thousands left the eastern coastal states for opportunities in the West.

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Born into a rich farming family in 1765, Eli Whitney revolutionized the cotton industry in the south and increased the demand for slave labor with the invention of his cotton gin. The cotton gin allowed farmers to quickly get the seeds out of the picked cotton and changed the production of the cotton into a highly profitable enterprise. Despite the invention and success of the machine, Whitney lost much of his fortune defending legal battles over patent infringements leaving him broke and forcing him to close his shop. The machine was operated by a crank and used a series of hooks to pull the cotton through a screen that prevented the seeds for passing through. Whitney supposedly got the idea after watching a cat trying to get a chicken out of its coupe and only pulling out the feathers. Whitney had hoped to patent the idea so that he could charge farmers a two-fifths share to separate their cotton rather than selling the machine, a idea similar to the grist mills where grains were ground into flour.The seeds could then be replanted or disposed of if they were damaged.

The cotton gin (short for engine meaning machine) was able to crank out over fifty pounds of cotton a day, a far cry from the few pounds a person could pick through.

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Born into a rich farming family in 1765, Eli Whitney revolutionized the cotton industry in the south and increased the demand for slave labor with the invention of his cotton gin. The cotton gin allowed farmers to quickly get the seeds out of the picked cotton and changed the production of the cotton into a highly profitable enterprise.

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Immigration in the United States in the 1800's:
http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/timeline/riseind/immgnts/
Second Great awakening:
https://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Second_Great_Awakening
Abolitionist Movement Prior to the Civil War:
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/civil-war-era/sectional-tension-1850s/a/abolition
Women’s Rights Movement in the 1800s:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fM1czS_VYDI
Compromise of 1850:
https://thewayofimprovement.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/compromise.jpeg?w=676
Kansas Nebraska Acts:
http://www.historyplace.com/lincoln/kansas.htm
Lincoln Douglas Debates:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LljCzkPasuk
Compromise of 1850:
https://thewayofimprovement.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/compromise.jpeg?w=676
The Election of 1860:9
https://historic-lamott-pa.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/1970/01/popularvotechart.gif

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Immigration in the United States in the 1800's

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Immigration in the United States in the 1800's

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

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

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

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

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

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Overview | Rise of Industrial America, 1876-1900 | U.S. History Primary Source Timeline | Classroom Materials at the Library of Congress | Library of Congress

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

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Charles G. Finney, evangelist, was hired as Professor of Theology at Oberlin College and later served as Oberlin's president. He was an influential evangelist during the Second Great Awakening religious movement.

The Second Great Awakening was a U.S. religious revival that began in the late eighteenth century and lasted until the middle of the nineteenth century. While it occurred in all parts of the United States, it was especially strong in the Northeast and the Midwest.

By the late 1700s, many people in the U.S. no longer regularly attended church services. This occurred for several reasons. Some believed that God did not play an important role in everyday life. God was also supposedly unconcerned with a person's church attendance; rather, God would judge the person on how he or she had lived his or her life on Earth. Other people had become too consumed with earning a living to have time to worship God. As a result of declining religious convictions, many religious faiths sponsored religious revivals. These revivals emphasized human beings' dependence upon God.

Most of the religious revivals occurred as camp meetings. Adherents and interested parties would spend several days hearing the word of God from various religious leaders. While these services were often very emotional, they did not become hysterical gatherings as many earlier revivals had become. They also served as social gatherings. Many people in the U.S. living on the frontier did not have regular contact with their neighbors. The revivals allowed these people an opportunity to hear God's word, but they also provided rural families an opportunity to talk and trade with one another.

Perhaps the most influential evangelist of the Second Great Awakening was Charles Finney. He began to spread his message in western New York during the early 1820s. In 1835, he became a professor of theology at Oberlin College in Ohio. He eventually served as Oberlin College's president.

Numerous religious groups benefited from the Second Great Awakening. Baptists and Methodists found the largest number of converts, swelling their numbers across the United States, including in Ohio. New religious groups also resulted from the revivals. These groups were unsatisfied with the already established faiths and created their own doctrines. Among these groups were the Mormons.

The revivals encouraged people to return to God. Many people in the U.S. were convinced to more actively dedicate their lives to God and to live in a godly manner. As a result, church attendance increased during the first half of the nineteenth century. A desire to reform the U.S. also arose out of the Second Great Awakening. The U.S. temperance and abolitionist movements were both greatly influenced by the revival movement and its messages. Additionally, women's involvement in the revival provided support for the women's rights movement.

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Charles G. Finney, evangelist, was hired as Professor of Theology at Oberlin College and later served as Oberlin's president. He was an influential evangelist during the Second Great Awakening religious movement. The Second Great Awakening was a U.S. religious revival that began in the late eighteenth century and lasted until the middle of the nineteenth century.

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Abolitionist Movement Prior to the Civil War

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Abolitionist Movement Prior to the Civil War

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Early abolition (article) | Khan Academy

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The abolition movement sought to end the practice of slavery in the United States.

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Women in the 19th Century: Crash Course US History #16

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The History Place - Abraham Lincoln: Kansas-Nebraska Act

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Sound Smart: The Lincoln-Douglass Debates | History

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The Fall Of Ft. Sumter:
https://media.nationalgeographic.org/assets/photos/000/351/35182_r646x471.jpg?6f4134d40077cd257cb78eea279b65bd4eb858d1
The Emancipation Proclamation:
https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation
Clara Barton ans The American Red Cross:
https://www.redcross.org/about-us/who-we-are/history/clara-barton.html
The Battle of Gettysburg:
https://study.com/academy/lesson/battle-of-gettysburg-facts-summary-significance.html
The Battle of Vicksburg:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sE1bYVwH1jM
Southern Surrender at Appomattox Courthouse:
https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/appomattox-court-house

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Emancipation Proclamation

Select Resources

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

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Learn about Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross who led the organization for 23 years.

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The Battle of Gettysburg

The Battle of Gettysburg was the largest and bloodiest battle ever fought in North America. During the first three days of July 1863, the Union Army of the Potomac and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia turned a small town in Southern Pennsylvania into the site of a struggle for the future of the United States. More than 50,000 men fell as casualties (men listed as killed, wounded, or missing/captured), a scale of suffering never seen before or since on American soil. According to many historians, Gettysburg was the turning point of the American Civil War. It was the Confederacy's best chance to achieve victory, and it breathed new life into the Union war effort.

Confederate Invasion

In the spring of 1863, Confederate forces under the command of General Robert E. Lee achieved a tremendous victory over Major General Joseph Hooker and the Army of the Potomac at the Battle of Chancellorsville in Virginia. The victory was so tremendous that Lee believed it could propel his army to undertake a bold strategic move.

Hundreds of miles away, Union soldiers under the command of Ulysses S. Grant were closing in on Vicksburg, Mississippi, a crucial point on the Mississippi River. If Vicksburg should fall, Union forces would have complete control of the Mississippi, effectively cutting the Confederacy in two. Lee knew that no matter what he did in the East, he likely could not help Vicksburg directly. Thus, he had to act quickly to offset Vicksburg's possible surrender. The Confederate general decided to repeat his strategy from the previous September, when he had invaded Maryland in an attempt to strike a war-winning blow. Lee decided it was time for his second excursion north of the Potomac River.

Lee began moving his army north in early June 1863. On June 9, while near Culpepper, Virginia, Confederate cavalry forces under Major General Jeb Stuart became engaged with Federal cavalry in the Battle of Brandy Station, the largest cavalry battle of the Civil War. By mid-June, Lee's army was north of the Potomac and headed toward Pennsylvania.

While Lee's army moved northward, the Army of the Potomac was struggling with the aftermath of defeat. Joseph Hooker was still in charge of the army, but the Lincoln Administration in Washington had little confidence in him. While Hooker moved north, he and General-in-Chief Henry Halleck argued over the status of Union troops stationed at Harpers Ferry. The dispute ultimately led Hooker to submit his resignation, which Halleck and Lincoln accepted.

On June 28, Major General George Gordon Meade took command of the Army of the Potomac. At this point, Lee's army was already in Pennsylvania, and Union forces were in Maryland moving north as quickly as possible.

Showdown at Gettysburg

When Lee learned of the quick Union advance, he began to consolidate his disparate columns together. Since Confederate cavalry Commander Jeb Stuart was not present with the army and was instead riding through the Northern countryside on reconnaissance and foraging missions, Lee did not have an accurate understanding of Union positions or strength. This ultimately led to the initial fight at Gettysburg on July 1, 1863.

While Confederate forces had already been in Gettysburg, it was on the morning of July 1 that the battle began in earnest. That morning, Union dismounted cavalry under the command of Brigadier General John Buford took position west of the town. Buford intended to hold any advancing Confederates long enough for Union infantry to arrive and take position at Gettysburg. That morning, a division of Confederate infantry advanced toward Buford, attempting to discern what sort of Union presence was in the town. Without Lee's full knowledge and approval, the Battle of Gettysburg was about to begin.

By mid-morning, while Buford's cavalry fought the Confederate infantry, the First Corps, Army of the Potomac, had arrived on the field, providing reinforcements for Buford's tired dismounted cavalry. Soon, the Federal Eleventh Corps had arrived on the field as well, taking position north of the town. With the battle quickly intensifying, Lee decided to fully commit his army to the action at Gettysburg.

By early afternoon, the rest of Lieutenant General A.P. Hill's Third Corps, along with Lieutenant General Richard Ewell's Second Corps, began attacking the Federal positions. This overwhelming force caused the Union positions north of town to begin to crumble. By nightfall, Federal forces had fallen back through the town of Gettysburg and taken position on Cemetery Hill and Cemetery Ridge, just south of Gettysburg. While July 1 had been a Confederate tactical victory, it ultimately forced Federal troops to strong defensive ground.

Day 2

Having achieved great success the day before, Lee decided to continue his attack on July 2, 1863; however, that morning, as more and more Federal forces arrived, the Union position had assumed the shape of a fishhook, occupying high ground south of Gettysburg. This formidable defensive ground caused Lee to consider attacking the Federal flanks. Lee decided to use Lieutenant General James Longstreet and the majority of his First Corps to move south and then attack north directly into what he believed to be the unprotected Union left flank.

On the opposite end of the Union line, Richard Ewell was to send attackers against Union positions on Culp's Hill. Lee's hope was that, with these two attacks, Longstreet would be able to roll up the Union flank, pushing Federal forces toward the bend in the line, pinching the Federal army between the two Confederate attacks; however, the day did not play out as Lee had planned.

The Confederate attack on July 2 did not begin until nearly four in the afternoon. By that time, something very important had occurred on the battlefield. Major General Dan Sickles, the commander of the Third Corps, Army of the Potomac, had advanced his men forward from their original position, occupying ground near the Emmitsburg Pike. Sickles made this move without orders from George Meade. Yet, before Meade could correct Sickles, the Confederate attack occurred, slamming directly into the altered Federal lines. Since the Confederate attack overlapped the Union flank, elements of Longstreet's corps soon found their way moving toward Big Round Top and Little Round Top, two hills that held the key to the southern edge of the battlefield.

Thanks to quick thinking by Brigadier General Gouverneur K. Warren, Union troops were rushed to the top of Little Round Top just in time to repel the Confederate advance. Other Union forces were thrust into the middle of the Confederate attack, fighting in places made famous by the level of killing that occurred there, such as the Peach Orchard, the Wheatfield, and Devil's Den.

While the fighting raged on the Federal left flank, Confederate forces under Richard Ewell tested the Union right on Culp's Hill and Cemetery Hill. After several determined attacks, the onset of darkness brought the fighting to a close. Across the battlefield that day, Confederates had come very close to victory, almost breaking the Union lines in several places. In the roughly seven hours of fighting that took place that afternoon, there were as many as 19,000 casualties, a staggering toll; however, George Meade's Army of the Potomac had held on.

Day 3

The final day of the Battle of Gettysburg was destined to endure in history. It was the day of the most famous assault of the entire American Civil War. Robert E. Lee began that fateful Friday, July 3, 1863, knowing that his men had come close to breaking the Union lines the day before. Lee's original plan that morning was to continue with the attacks on the Federal flanks; however, because of mixed communications, Confederate commanders did not proceed as Lee initially hoped. Thus, the Confederate General formulated a new plan.

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

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Battle of Gettysburg: Facts, Summary & Significance - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

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The Battle of Gettysburg was the largest and bloodiest battle ever fought in North America. During the first three days of July 1863, the Union Army of the Potomac and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia turned a small town in Southern Pennsylvania into the site of a struggle for the future of the United States.

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Here's Why the Battle of Vicksburg Was So Important

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Southern Surrender at Appomattox Courthouse

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Southern Surrender at Appomattox Courthouse

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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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The Civil War | The 13th Amendment | PBS

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The 13th Amendment formally abolished slavery.

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The 13th Amendment:
https://www.pbs.org/video/civil-war-13th-amendment/
The 14th Amendment:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Fourteenth-Amendment
The 15th Amendment:
https://guides.loc.gov/15th-amendment
The Election of 1876:
http://apushcanvas.pbworks.com/f/1876%20Map.jpg
Plessy vs. Ferguson:
https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/plessy-v-ferguson

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This article was most recently revised and updated by

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

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

The full text of the amendment is:

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Adam Augustyn.

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

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

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The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted African American men the right to vote by declaring that the "right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." Although ratified on February 3, 1870, the promise of the 15th Amendment would not be fully realized for almost a century. Through the use of poll taxes, literacy tests and other means, Southern states were able to effectively disenfranchise African Americans. It would take the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 before the majority of African Americans in the South were registered to vote.

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Research Guides: 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Primary Documents in American History: Introduction

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The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted African American men the right to vote by declaring that the "right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

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Plessy v. Ferguson: Background and Context

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

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

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

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

Black Resistance to Segregation

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

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

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

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

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

Supreme Court Ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson

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

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

In its ruling, the Court denied that segregated railroad cars for Black people were necessarily inferior. "We consider the underlying fallacy of [Plessy's] argument," Justice Henry Brown wrote, "to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it."

John Marshall Harlan's Dissent

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

Harlan argued in his dissent that segregation ran counter to the constitutional principle of equality under the law: "The arbitrary separation of citizens on the basis of race while they are on a public highway is a badge of servitude wholly inconsistent with the civil freedom and the equality before the law established by the Constitution," he wrote. "It cannot be justified upon any legal grounds."

Plessy v. Ferguson Significance

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

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

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

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

Sources

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

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Plessy v. Ferguson: Separate But Equal Doctrine | HISTORY

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

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On this day in 1890, in the final chapter of America's long Indian wars, the U.S. Cavalry kills 146 Sioux at Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota.

Throughout 1890, the U.S. government worried about the increasing influence at Pine Ridge of the Ghost Dance spiritual movement, which taught that Indians had been defeated and confined to reservations because they had angered the gods by abandoning their traditional customs. Many Sioux believed that if they practiced the Ghost Dance and rejected the ways of the white man, the gods would create the world anew and destroy all non-believers, including non-Indians. On December 15, 1890, reservation police tried to arrest Sitting Bull, the famous Sioux chief, who they mistakenly believed was a Ghost Dancer, and killed him in the process, increasing the tensions at Pine Ridge.

On December 29, the U.S. Army's 7th cavalry surrounded a band of Ghost Dancers under the Sioux Chief Big Foot near Wounded Knee Creek and demanded they surrender their weapons. As that was happening, a fight broke out between an Indian and a U.S. soldier and a shot was fired, although it's unclear from which side. A brutal massacre followed, in which it's estimated almost 150 Indians were killed (some historians put this number at twice as high), nearly half of them women and children. The cavalry lost 25 men.

The conflict at Wounded Knee was originally referred to as a battle, but in reality it was a tragic and avoidable massacre. Surrounded by heavily armed troops, it's unlikely that Big Foot's band would have intentionally started a fight. Some historians speculate that the soldiers of the 7th Cavalry were deliberately taking revenge for the regiment's defeat at Little Bighorn in 1876. Whatever the motives, the massacre ended the Ghost Dance movement and was the last major confrontation in America's deadly war against the Plains Indians.

Conflict came to Wounded Knee again in February 1973 when it was the site of a 71-day occupation by the activist group AIM (American Indian Movement) and its supporters, who were protesting the U.S. government's mistreatment of Native Americans. During the standoff, two Indians were killed, one federal marshal was seriously wounded and numerous people were arrested.

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U.S. Army massacres Indians at Wounded Knee

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On this day in 1890, in the final chapter of America's long Indian wars, the U.S. Cavalry kills 146 Sioux at Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. Throughout 1890, the U.S.

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Why The Dawes Act Matters - @MrBettsClass

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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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Transcontinental railroad: http://www.constructioncompany.com/graphics/rail11.jpg
Massacre at Wounded Knee:
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/u-s-army-massacres-indians-at-wounded-knee
Dawes General Allotment Act of 1887:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8SVqqCgH2Q
The Homestead and Morrill Acts:
https://into-the-westah1.weebly.com/homestead-act-and-morrill-land.html

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The Bessemer Process of Manufacturing Steel

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Inventions of the 1800's Timeline
Timeline Description: The latter half of the nineteenth century became known as the second Industrial Revolution. Many inventions came into play which would change the way people lived.

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inventions of the 1800's timeline of vents

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inventions of the 1800's timeline for kids

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Inventions of the 1800's Timeline Timeline Description: The latter half of the nineteenth century became known as the second Industrial Revolution. Many inventions came into play which would change the way people lived.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The industrial revolution stands out as a time of great prosperity and expansion as America entered the modern era. But what were the pitfalls of such rapid growth and who turned out to be the victims of the country's success?

Between 1860 and 1910 the population of the US tripled, and so too did the industrial work force. New types of commercial enterprise sprung up to stand alongside the pre-Civil War textile factories.

Naturally the demand for workers was high, but in this time of heightened immigration the supply of laborers keen to make their way in a new country was even higher. This helped empower industry bosses and meant working conditions were far from ideal.

However there were many who were unwilling to accept the way big business was run, especially since it was making profit at the expense of the little people. The first organization acting as a federation to encompass American unions was the National Labor Union which truly came into force after the Civil War but was reasonably short-lived.

The largest union of the time was the Order of the Knights of St. Crispin. Representing the shoe industry, the Order attempted to halt the rising trend for the mechanical or unskilled production line which looked set to replace master cobblers.

Inevitably the march of progress prevailed and the faster, more efficient machines soon took their place in the industry. The Knights of Labor union founded in 1869 took the movement to a new level drawing a national membership.

The ethos of the Knights was to include anyone involved in production, which helped its numbers swell. The union was well organized under the control of Terence Powderly and enlisted politics to help fight its various causes.

Events took a turn for the worse in 1886 when the Haymarket riot saw the message of the Knights overshadowed by the death of a police officer in a bomb blast. Public opinion turned against the anarchist movement in general and the union collapsed.

It was only after the advent of the American Federation of Labor, set up by Samuel Gompers in 1886 and acting as a national federation of unions for skilled workers, that the labor movement became a real force to be reckoned with and took on more of the shape we see today.

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The Early Labor Movement | History Detectives | PBS

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The industrial revolution stands out as a time of great prosperity and expansion as America entered the modern era. But what were the pitfalls of such rapid growth and who turned out to be the victims of the country's success? Between 1860 and 1910 the population of the US tripled, and so too did the industrial work force.

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The Bessemer Process:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTBkun-d2ZA
Growth of invention- Late 1800:
http://www.softschools.com/timelines/inventions_of_the_1800s_timeline/262/
The Rise of Big Businesses:
https://ehistory.osu.edu/exhibitions/1912/trusts/RiseBigBusiness
The Antitrust Movement:
https://ehistory.osu.edu/sites/ehistory.osu.edu/files/mmh/1912/Dept_Store_anti-monopoly.jpg
The Labor Movement:
https://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/feature/the-early-labor-movement/

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Printable Version At the beginning of the 19th century, the United States was a nation of farms and rural villages. The nation's four largest cities together contained only 180,000 persons and were the country's only cities with more than 10,000 inhabitants. Boston, which in 1800 contained just 25,000 inhabitants, looked much as it had prior to the Revolution. Its streets, still paved with cobblestones, were unlighted at night. Older gentlemen could still be seen dressed in three-cornered hats, knee-breeches, white-topped boots, ruffled shirts, and powdered wigs. New York was so small that Wall Street was considered to be uptown and Broadway was a country drive. New York's entire police force, which only patrolled the city at night, consisted of 2 captains, 2 deputies, and 72 assistants.

During the 1820s and 1830s, the nation's cities grew at an extraordinary rate. The urban population increased 60 percent a decade, five times as fast as that of the country as a whole. In 1810, New York City's population was less than 100,000. Two decades later it was more than 200,000. Western cities grew particularly fast. Between 1810 and 1830, Louisville's population climbed from 1,357 to 10,341.

The chief cause of the increase was the migration of sons and daughters away from farms and villages. The growth of commerce drew thousands of farm children to the cities to work as bookkeepers, clerks, and salespeople. The expansion of factories demanded thousands of laborers, mechanics, teamsters, and operatives. The need of rural areas for services available only in urban centers also promoted the growth of cities. Farmers needed their grain milled and their livestock butchered. In response, a grain processing and meat-packing industry sprouted up in "Porkopolis," Cincinnati. Manufacturers in Lexington produced hemp sacks and ropes for Kentucky farmers, and Louisville businesses cured and marketed tobacco.

Pittsburgh's growth illustrates these processes at work. Frontier farmers needed products made of iron, such as nails, horseshoes, and farm implements. Pittsburgh lay near western Pennsylvania's coal fields. Because it was cheaper to bring the iron ore to the coal supply for smelting than to transport the coal to the side of the iron mine, Pittsburgh became a major iron producer. Iron foundries and blacksmith shops proliferated. So did glass factories, which required large amounts of fuel to provide heat for glassblowing. As early as the 1820s, Pittsburgh had three newspapers, nine churches, three theaters, a piano maker, five glass factories, three textile mills, and a steam engine factory. Pittsburgh's population tripled between 1810 and 1830.

As urban areas grew many problems were exacerbated, including the absence of clean drinking water, the pressing need for cheap public transportation, and most importantly, poor sanitation. Sanitation problems led to heavy urban mortality rates and frequent typhoid, dysentery, typhus, cholera, and yellow fever epidemics.

Most city dwellers used outdoor privies, which emptied into vaults and cesspools that sometimes leaked into the soil and contaminated the water supply. Kitchen wastes were thrown into ditches; refuse was thrown into trash piles by the side of the streets. Every horse in a city deposited as much as 20 pounds of manure and urine on the streets each day. To help remove the garbage and refuse, many cities allowed packs of dogs, goats, and pigs to scavenge freely. The editor of one New York newspaper described the filth that plagued that city's streets in vivid terms: "The offal and filth, of which there are loads thrown from the houses in defiance of an ordinance which is never enforced, is scraped up with the usual deposits of mud and manure into big heaps and left for weeks together on the sides of the streets."

Following the War of 1812, elite urbanites began to enjoy such amenities as indoor toilets and coal-burning iron ranges. To provide light after darkness fell, Boston in 1822 introduced the first gas-fueled street lights, and individual households relied on new kinds of lamps burning whale oil or turpentine. The first urban stagecoach service (the forerunner of the public bus system) appeared in New York City in 1828. Then in the 1830s, the first full-time professional police forces in the United States were formed.

The cities' poorest inhabitants lived in slums. Slums appeared on New York's lower east side as early as 1815. By the 1840s, more than 18,000 men, women, and children were crowded into damp, unlighted, ill-ventilated cellars with 6 to 20 persons living in a single room. In 1849, Boston's Committee on Internal Health reported that men, women, and children lived "huddled together like brutes without regard to sex, age or a sense of decency, grown men and women sleeping together in the same apartment, and sometimes wife, brothers and sisters in the same bed." Despite growing public awareness of the problems of slums and urban poverty, conditions remained unchanged for several generations.

Copyright 2019 Digital History

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Printable Version At the beginning of the 19th century, the United States was a nation of farms and rural villages. The nation's four largest cities together contained only 180,000 persons and were the country's only cities with more than 10,000 inhabitants. Boston, which in 1800 contained just 25,000 inhabitants, looked much as it had prior to the Revolution.

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By Carmen Nigro, Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building

New York is not the only city with tenement buildings, but these particularly crowded multi-family dwellings have had a significant effect on New York City's character and history.

Tenement homes are part of the city's history, architectural look, and sociology, as well as the lifestyles of its current residents. The imprint and influence of the New York tenement are layered upon the city much like the apartments themselves are layered atop each other.

Tenement Defined and Legislated

The Oxford English Dictionary's primary definition of tenement is "a room or a set of rooms forming a separate residence within a house or block of apartments." It's a fairly all-inclusive definition that speaks to the historic definitions of tenement as well as its modern and colloquial connotations, which the dictionary also addresses with this: "a house divided into and rented out as separate residences, especially one that is run-down and overcrowded."
The term itself is legally neutral, but most people-especially in New York City-apply the connotation of run-down and overcrowded when using it.

In New York City, rapid growth and the imposition of the New York City street grid both played major roles in the look, density, and availability of housing for New Yorkers. In A History of Housing in New York City (also in electronic format), author Richard Plunz states "the relationship between housing and social class quickly became institutionalized with exaggerated differences between the upper and lower ends of the social spectrum."
Plunz explains that New York housing problems date back to the mid-19th century, and that "the horrors of the tenement were perfected in New York, but most reform legislation also originated there, as did most housing philanthropy." The legislation appeared as a series of "Tenement House Acts" in 1867, 1879, 1901, and 1919.

A tenement is legally defined in New York by the Tenement House Act of 1867 as "any house, building, or portion thereof, which is rented, leased, let or hired out to be occupied or is occupied, as the home or residence of more than three families living independently of one another and doing their own cooking upon the premises, or by more than two families upon a floor, so living and cooking and having a common right in the halls, stairways, yards, water-closets, or privies, or some of them." This definition applied to much of the available housing of the time, legally classifying those buildings as tenements.

General Timeline and History

Tenements originated from subdivided structures that originally had other purposes, such as single-family homes, with the usually substandard and small living quarters leased to the poor. In the 19th century, the primary housing available to New York's low-income residents were those subdivided buildings and self-built shanties, clustered together in different areas of the city.
New houses were not often built for the poor, and the affluent mostly built single-family homes for themselves. Tenements built specifically for housing the poor originated at some time between 1820 and 1850, and even the new buildings were considered overcrowded and inadequate.

By the end of the Civil War, "tenement" was a term for housing for the urban poor, with well-established connotations for unsafe and unsanitary conditions. With the city's population nearing one million people at the time, there were more than 15,000 tenement buildings in New York City, not yet including the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, or Staten Island.
The Manhattan grid allowed for lots measuring 25 feet by 100 feet, and tenements tended to occupy about 90 percent of these lots, allowing little to no room for natural light or air shafts. Buildings that did not occupy the entire lots often had "rear tenements" built into the yards behind them, providing even worse conditions than rooms of the buildings that faced the streets. It was all very dense, very crowded, and unregulated-conditions that fostered disease and inhumane living conditions, which soon caught the eye of reformers.

In 1865, the " Report of the Council of hygiene and public health of the Citizens' Association of New York upon the sanitary condition of the city" (available digitally via Sabin Americana) was published. This thorough analysis of the housing conditions of the time contained extraordinary detail and classified more than 65 percent of the city's population as living in substandard housing conditions.
The report was followed by the city's first comprehensive housing law, the aforementioned Tenement House Act of 1867. The law famously required fire escapes on buildings and windows in each room, but was largely ineffective in improving the lives of tenement dwellers. Additional Tenement House Acts brought more reforms in 1879, 1901, and 1919, with the 1901 law considered a pivotal point. Tenement houses built before were called "old law tenements;" any built after were called "new law tenements." In 1903, the Tenement House Department was finally organized and took over inspection of the tenements from the variety of city departments that previously had to enforce different sections of the laws.

Through the latter half of the 19th century, a variety of commissions, exhibits, and published works pushed the conditions of the tenements into the popular conscience and spurred legislators into enacting reform.
Numerous publications appeared, such asThe tenement house problem, in which statistics, diagrams, photographs, and eyewitness reports were used as persuasive arguments for housing reform. In particular, Jacob Riis' use of photography in How the Other Half Lives was effective in presenting the housing conditions to a wider public. Riis' work can be explored more thoroughly in this anthology of his work on biblioboard, and his papers at the NYPL can also be accessed.
Tenement dwellers were educated about changes to the laws that would affect their housing conditions with publications such as " The tenants' manual; a handbook of information for dwellers in tenement and apartment houses and for settlement and other workers" (also available digitally), which advocated for awareness of sanitation methods, legal matters, and even available recreation opportunities. Social workers and newspapers also helped publicize this information.

The tenement laws were challenged in courts and amendments, and a new "Multiple Dwelling Law" took shape in 1929. The laws regarding apartment housing in New York are currently called the "Multiple Dwelling Law" and are currently in force. From the 1930s to the 1960s, the concept of "Slum Clearance," summarized in this article, was the dominant policy surrounding New York's tenement houses. Slum clearance initiatives often had the backing of federal funding, and, initially, little opposition. By the 1950s, the impact of this policy led to many of the tenement buildings being demolished.

Tenements in Manhattan near the Williamburg Bridge, from photographs taken by NYC Tenement House Department inspectors; NYPL Digital Collections, Image ID: 3984322

Researching New York's Tenement Housing History

The New York Public Library holds multitudes of materials on our city's history. The scope ranges from the built environment to social conditions, from natural history to scientific discovery, and the amount of material available to research a cornerstone issue such as tenement housing is vast.
Our collections, primary and secondary sources, archives and monographs, digital and print, text and visual, are embedded in collections across the research libraries. These tremendous holdings are always available for researchers to access.

Tenements and elevated train tracks, Broadway at 13th St., Manhattan, from photographs taken by NYC Tenement House Department inspectors.

NYPL Digital Collections, Image ID: 3984413

Tenement Conditions Documented in Photographs

Photographs are terrific primary sources and, in the context of tenement house history, are particularly potent because of their use in the reform movement and the slum clearance programs. Some of the Library's digitized tenement photos include:

A rear tenement room in NYC, from photographs concerning labor, housing and social conditions in the United States by Lewis Hine.

NYPL Digital Collections, Image ID: 416558

A collection of photographic negatives taken by inspectors of the New York City Tenement House Department from 1902 to 1914 (just a few are featured in this post). It is comprised of roughly 8,000 glass plate negatives and 249 mounted plates, which were used by the Tenement House Department for exhibition purposes.
The collection includes exterior views of buildings, domestic interiors, backyards, and plumbing and sanitary facilities, as well as images of street scenes and local residents.
The New York Tenement House Department was created in 1901 to enforce new building standards and document safety and health violations in New York City's overcrowded multi-family dwellings. Inspectors, including staff photographers, surveyed and documented the living conditions of the occupants, including information pertaining to light and ventilation, fire safety, sanitation, and interior layout.

A collection gifted to NYPL by the New York City Department of Housing and Buildings in 1942. The original nitrate negatives (4,198 images) were microfilmed on four 35mm reels before being destroyed. A representative selection of images (roughly 1,100 in number) was preserved with interpositives and contact prints.
The collection includes exterior and interior shots of buildings, as well as images of street scenes, storefronts, fire report cards, and various employees of the Tenement House Department. It provides a visual documentation of over one thousand photographs of tenement conditions, and includes some striking images.

Hine was an American sociologist and photographer who used his images as a tool for social reform, documenting conditions of inadequate housing and child labor. Among Hine's wide scope of photographs are some particularly of tenement conditions.

These can be found in the larger collection called Photographic views of New York City, 1870's-1970's

Using Pamphlets as Primary Source Documents

The Library holds a substantial collection of pamphlet volumes, smaller booklets of usually fewer than 50 pages, that have been bound together and contain related subject matter.

Pamphlets were not always collected by libraries, so they can be difficult for researchers to find, and their ephemeral nature means that some are in quite poor condition. But contemporary publications pertaining to tenement reform were frequently distributed as pamphlets, so access to them is valuable to those seeking primary sources. Highlights from the Library's holdings include:

Maps

Those researching housing conditions can use maps to track building by building growth in an area. Maps were also produced by city agencies and reformers to illustrate conditions in ways that text could not convey.

Fire insurance maps give detailed building-specific data for a city. By comparing fire insurance maps of a specific area of the city over time, one can see the changes in development of an area: height of the buildings, how much lot they occupy, from which materials they are constructed, how many are on a block, etc.

Sanitary and social chart of the Fourth Ward of the City of New York, to accompany a report of the 4th Sanitary Inspection District, made to the Council of Hygiene of the Citizens' Association; NYPL Digital Collections, Image ID: 5056960

In the News

The word "tenement" appears in some of our earliest digitized newspapers, in advertisements for rentals and sales.
The ProQuest New York Times (1851-2013) database has more than 106,000 results for the word "tenement," which included reporting on the Health Officer's account to the Common Council about increases of deaths in the city, and how some of those increases could be attributed to overcrowded dwellings and the rental of cellars as housing.

Additional digitized historical newspapers can be found on the Library's database menu.

New York Times article dated Jan 21, 1852

In the Archives

How the Other Half Lives, page 1, from the Jacob Riis papers.

NYPL Digital Collections, Image ID: 1654566

In addition to the Jacob Riis papers, other collections in the Library's Manuscripts and Archives Division provide powerful primary source documentation of tenement building and the housing reform movement in New York.

Among the useful materials:

Tenement House Building Company minutes

Letters written for the New York Tenement House Commission that are part of the Richard Watson Gilder papers

People's Institute records, featuring the work of Charles Sprague Smith, to teach the theory and practice of government and social philosophy to workers and recent immigrants in New York City. It sponsored lectures, classes, concerts, and other community activities principally on Manhattan's Lower East Side.

Lillian D. Wald papers; Wald was a public health nurse and social worker on New York City's Lower East Side, a pioneer in American social work and public health

The American Institute of Social Service Exhibition, Photographs exhibition of American social conditions in 1900s, which show the character of tenements and other buildings

Committee for Slum Clearance, 1954-1959, part of the Robert Moses papers.

Modern influence

In many ways, New York City remains defined by its density, a characteristic brought about by compact living. Slum clearance policies did not eliminate tenements from New York-the buildings still populate our blocks in various states of repair and are still homes for thousands of New Yorkers.

The Tenement Museum is a powerful public history example of the influence and impact of New York's tenement housing. It has been a significant catalyst for researchers, who have produced a number of scholarly works and other publications including the museum's own newspaper, The Tenement Times.

Tenement Museum Reading List:

Eighth Avenue and 46th Street, 1997, from the Bill Barvin Location Photograph Archive; NYPL Digital Collections, Image ID: 5210097

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Tenement Homes: The Outsized Legacy of New York's Notoriously Cramped Apartments | The New York Public Library

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The influence of the New York City tenement is layered upon the city much like the apartments themselves are layered atop each other.

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The Growth of Mass Communication- Late 1800s

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The Growth of Mass Communication- Late 1800s

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1.1 - EVOLUTION OF COMMUNICATION - STONE AGE TO MODERN AGE

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The Rise of Immigration- late 1800s:
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/ellis-island/immigration-1840-60.jpg
The Growth of Cities:

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3514
Tenement Life- Causes and Effects::
https://www.nypl.org/blog/2018/06/07/tenement-homes-new-york-history-cramped-apartments
The Growth of Mass Communication- Late 1800s:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxTUC5I22LU&vl=en

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Rise of political machines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJiJUlIKO-Y
Progressive reform: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/rise-to-world-power/age-of-empire/a/the-progressive-era
rise of organized labor: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/the-gilded-age/gilded-age/a/the-knights-of-labor
Women's suffrage and the temperance movement: https://amazingwomeninhistory.com/womens-suffrage-and-temperance-movement/
Election of 1912:
http://outlawsincorporated.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/1912-Presidents2-768x301.png
Isolationism vs Imperialism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2vs6_06Mzk

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The period of US history from the 1890s to the 1920s is usually referred to as the Progressive Era, an era of intense social and political reform aimed at making progress toward a better society.

Progressive Era reformers sought to harness the power of the federal government to eliminate unethical and unfair business practices, reduce corruption, and counteract the negative social effects of industrialization.

During the Progressive Era, protections for workers and consumers were strengthened, and women finally achieved the right to vote.

The problems of industrialization

The ideology and politics of progressivism

The worldview of Progressive reformers was based on certain key assumptions. The first was that human nature could be improved through the enlightened application of regulations, incentives, and punishments. The second key assumption was that the power of the federal government could be harnessed to improve the individual and transform society. These two assumptions were not shared by political conservatives, who tended to believe that human nature was unchanging, and that the federal government should remain limited in size and scope.

Some of the most famous Progressive reformers were Jane Addams, who founded Hull House in Chicago to help immigrants adapt to life in the United States; Ida Tarbell, a "muckraker" who exposed the corrupt business practices of Standard Oil and became an early pioneer of investigative journalism; and Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt, who both expanded the power of the federal government to impose regulations on private industry and implement protections for workers, consumers, and the natural environment.

Progressive reformers successfully influenced the passage of much substantive legislation, including several amendments to the US Constitution. The Sixteenth Amendment established a federal income tax, the Seventeenth Amendment allowed for the direct election of Senators, the Eighteenth Amendment prohibited sales of alcohol, and the Nineteenth Amendment guaranteed women the right to vote.

The dark side of progressivism

Though Progressive reformers achieved many noteworthy goals during this period, they also promoted discriminatory policies and espoused intolerant ideas. The Wilson administration, for instance, despite its embrace of modernity and progress, pursued a racial agenda that culminated in the segregation of the federal government. The years of Wilson's presidency (1913-1921) witnessed a revival of the Ku Klux Klan and a viciously racist backlash against the economic and political gains of African Americans in the post-Reconstruction period.

In line with their view of human nature as capable of being engineered and manipulated, many Progressive reformers advocated selective breeding, or eugenics. Eugenics was considered "the science of better breeding" and aimed to improve the genetic quality of the human population through policies that would encourage the more "desirable" elements of society to have more children while preventing "undesirables" from reproducing. Eugenics was based on a racial and class hierarchy that placed white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants at the top. Lower classes, ethnic minorities, recent immigrants, the mentally ill, and the developmentally disabled all occupied lower rungs on this hierarchy. In 1907, the United States became the first country to pass a compulsory sterilization law.

The genocidal policies of Nazi Germany ultimately discredited the "science" of eugenics, but not before over 60,000 American men and women were forcibly sterilized to prevent them from having children.

What do you think?

How would you describe the Progressive worldview? Do you agree with the ideological assumptions of progressivism?

What were the most impressive achievements of Progressive reformers?

Overall, were the effects of progressivism more harmful or beneficial to American society?

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The Progressive Era (Progressive movement) (article) | Khan Academy

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

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The Knights of Labor (article) | Khan Academy

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In the late nineteenth century, the Knights of Labor attempted to organize workers of all kinds into a union to improve working hours and conditions for laborers.

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Women’s Suffrage & the Temperance Movement

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Women’s Suffrage & the Temperance Movement

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by Keri Engel

It might seem like women's rights and alcohol prohibition would be on opposite sides of the political spectrum. But did you know that throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, women's suffrage and the temperance movement were both considered radical causes? Many suffragists, in addition to their work for women's rights, were also a part of the temperance movement, which advocated for reduced or no alcohol consumption.

Both movements culminated in the same year: 1920, when the 18th Amendment prohibiting alcohol came into effect and the 19th Amendment enfranchising women was ratified.

How was the women's suffrage movement connected to the temperance movement?

Let's take a look at how it started...

Why Did the Temperance Movement Want Prohibition?

As the United States developed, its people started turning from light alcoholic beverages, such as beer and hard cider, to stronger beverages like rum and whiskey as they became cheaper.

The production of rum especially was part of the whole slave trade. Slaves from Africa were brought to the West Indies to grow sugar, which was used to make rum. That's why it started to become available so cheaply.

What many citizens saw as an epidemic of alcoholism followed.

Remember that at this time, women had no rights. A woman was legally not a person, and was considered to be the property of her father or husband.

So what happened if a woman got married to a man who turned out to be an alcoholic? If he spent all their money on booze, or even became violent?

Legally, there was no escape.

What could women do?

All they could do was ask men to stop drinking so much.

"THE BOTTLE: He is discharged from his employment for drunkenness: They pawn their clothes to supply the bottle."

That's how the rise of cheap alcohol and growing alcoholism led to the growth of the women's temperance movement in the early 19th century.

Advocates for temperance linked the consumption of alcohol with greater issues like violent crime, poverty, unemployment, and domestic violence.

Though at first campaigning for moderation, the movement became more radical after the Civil War and began calling for complete prohibition of all alcohol. National organizations such as the Anti-Saloon League and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union grew quickly, and by the late 19th century became very powerful in lobbying for prohibition legislation.

"Fearful quarrels and brutal violence are the natural consequences of the frequent use of the bottle."

Women's Suffrage and Prohibition

Around the turn of the 20th century, Western society still overwhelmingly believed in biological determinism: that men and women had different inherent natures determined by their respective biology.

Women were thought to be morally superior to men by nature, and many advocates for women's suffrage argued that women should have the vote because of this.

Advocates for temperance wanted women to have the vote because it was believed they would vote for prohibition due to their moral superiority. Many breweries, on the other hand, lobbied against the suffrage movement out of fear of losing their businesses to prohibition.

A Respectable Suffrage Movement

Groups such as the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), founded in 1873, linked together the causes of Christianity, temperance, and social reform.

As a religious organization, the WCTU was seen as a more ladylike and respectable way for women to become involved in the struggle for suffrage. Since each local chapter of the WCTU was autonomous, local leaders had the freedom to act on issues such as women's suffrage under the banner of a respectable religious organization.

Francis Willard (1839-1898) was a suffragist and a temperance movement leader

Suffrage and Temperance Movement Leaders

Many of the most famous early feminists and women's suffrage advocates were also supporters of prohibition. The WCTU's second president, Francis Willard, broadened the organization's activism with her slogan "Do everything." A feminist and suffragist, Francis Willard fought not only for temperance and women's suffrage, but for other radical causes such as workers' unions, federal aid for education, and an eight-hour workday.

Perhaps the most famous pair of United States suffragists, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, were temperance activists before they became involved in the women's suffrage movement. Susan B. Anthony, before becoming a famous speaker on women's rights, gave her first speech at a Daughters of Temperance dinner. Together Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton co-founded the Woman's State Temperance Society in 1852, the first women's state temperance society in America.

Though the temperance movement mostly died out after the repeal of the 18th Amendment in 1933, adherents to the movement continue to exist to this day.

The Woman's Christian Temperance Union still fights for social reform, though they are now considered extremely conservative in their current stance against abortion rights and same-sex marriage. The feminist movement, on the other hand, is now mainly considered a liberal cause. This strange alliance, though it lasted almost a century, died out soon after the death of prohibition as each movement went its separate way.

Radfem Graphic Tee - "Prude Is a Slur Against Any Woman With Boundaries"

This radfem t-shir...

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Women's Suffrage and the Temperance Movement: Strange Allies

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by Keri Engel It might seem like women's rights and alcohol prohibition would be on opposite sides of the political spectrum. But did you know that throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, women's suffrage and the temperance movement were both considered radical causes?

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Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

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Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

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Deeply in love, Ferdinand chose to marry Sophie Chotek in 1900 despite the opposition of his uncle, Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Josef, who refused to attend their wedding. Though not exactly a commoner, Sophie came from a family of obscure Czech nobles and not from a reigning or formerly reigning dynasty of Europe. As a result, her and Ferdinand's children were declared ineligible for the throne. Sophie also became the victim of countless petty slights. At imperial banquets, for example, she entered each room last, without an escort, and was then seated far away from her husband at the dinner table.

His marriage notwithstanding, Ferdinand remained Franz Josef's heir and inspector general of the army. In that capacity, he agreed to attend a series of June 1914 military exercises in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Austria-Hungary had just annexed these provinces a few years earlier against the wishes of neighboring Serbia, which likewise coveted them. Ferdinand believed the Serbs to be "pigs," "thieves," "murderers" and "scoundrels." Yet he had opposed annexation for fear that it would make an already turbulent political situation even worse. Formerly controlled by the Ottoman Empire, Bosnia-Herzegovina's population was roughly 40 percent Serb, 30 percent Muslim and 20 percent Croat, with various other ethnicities making up the remainder.

Upon learning of Ferdinand's upcoming visit, the Young Bosnians, a secret revolutionary society of peasant students, began plotting to assassinate him. In May, Gavrilo Princip, Trifko Grabez and Nedeljko Cabrinovic traveled to the Serbian capital of Belgrade, where they received six handheld bombs, four semi-automatic pistols and cyanide suicide capsules from members of the so-called Black Hand, a terrorist group with close ties to the Serbian army. After practicing with their pistols in a Belgrade park, the three men journeyed back to Bosnia-Herzegovina, receiving help from Black Hand associates to smuggle their weapons across the border. To this day, it remains unclear whether the Serbian government participated in the scheme.

Ferdinand and Sophie departed their estate for Bosnia-Herzegovina on June 23. Having received multiple warnings to cancel the trip, the archduke knew that danger potentially awaited them. "Our journey starts with an extremely promising omen," he purportedly said when the axles on his car overheated. "Here our car burns, and down there they will throw bombs at us." After arriving at a spa town a few miles outside of Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina's capital, Ferdinand attended two days of military exercises while Sophie visited schools and orphanages. On a whim, the couple drove in one evening to check out Sarajevo's bazaars. While there, they attracted a crowd of onlookers, including Princip, but were apparently treated with warmth and politeness.

Following a banquet with religious and political leaders, only one day of events remained before Ferdinand and Sophie were to return home. That morning, June 28, the archduke sent a telegram to his eldest son congratulating him on his latest exam results. He and Sophie then boarded a train for the short ride into Sarajevo. For once, Sophie was permitted to walk alongside Ferdinand during a brief troop inspection, after which the couple got in an open-topped car for a motorcade ride to city hall. The car in front of them was supposed to carry six specially trained officers but instead had only one, plus three local policemen. In fact, throughout the trip, Austro-Hungarian officials allegedly focused more attention on dinner menus than security details.

Meanwhile, seven Young Bosnians had fanned out along the Appel Quay, a main avenue in Sarajevo running parallel to the Miljacka River. When the motorcade passed by, its route having been published in advance, Cabrinovic asked which car carried the archduke. He then hurled his bomb at the car, only to watch it bounce off the folded-up roof and roll underneath the wrong vehicle. The subsequent explosion wounded two army officers and several bystanders but left Ferdinand and Sophie essentially unharmed. Cabrinovic jumped into the mostly dry riverbed and made a half-hearted attempt to kill himself before being apprehended. "I am a Serbian hero," he purportedly shouted as the police led him away. At least two other Young Bosnians also had good looks at the archduke but apparently lost the nerve to attempt an assassination.

Rather than immediately flee Sarajevo, Ferdinand decided to continue on to the planned event at city hall. Upon finishing that up, he insisted on visiting the wounded officers in the hospital. In order to dissuade any other bomb throwers, the motorcade zipped down the Appel Quay at high speeds. By mistake, however, the first three cars turned onto a side street right where Princip happened to be standing. As the cars attempted to reverse back onto the Appel Quay, Princip whipped out his pistol and fired two shots at the archduke from point-blank range, piercing him in the neck and also striking Sophie's abdomen. "Sophie, Sophie, don't die-stay alive for our children," Ferdinand murmured. Within minutes, though, both had passed away. Princip, a slender, 19-year-old Serbian army reject, later admitted to killing Ferdinand but said he had not meant to hit Sophie. Three weeks too young for the death penalty, Princip was given a 20-year sentence, but contracted tuberculosis and died in jail in April 1918, at the age of just 23.

With tensions already running high among Europe's powers, the assassination precipitated a rapid descent into World War I. First, Austria-Hungary gained German support for punitive action against Serbia. It then sent Serbia an ultimatum, worded in a way that made acceptance unlikely. Serbia proposed arbitration to resolve the dispute, but Austria-Hungary instead declared war on July 28, 1914, exactly a month after Ferdinand's death. By the following week, Germany, Russia, France, Belgium, Montenegro and Great Britain had all been drawn into the conflict, and other countries like the United States would enter later. Overall, more than 9 million soldiers and nearly that many civilians would die in fighting that lasted until 1918.

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The Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, 100 Years Ago

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Deeply in love, Ferdinand chose to marry Sophie Chotek in 1900 despite the opposition of his uncle, Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Josef, who refused to attend their wedding. Though not exactly a commoner, Sophie came from a family of obscure Czech nobles and not from a reigning or formerly reigning dynasty of Europe.

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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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The Treaty of Versailles, What Did the Big Three Want? 1/2

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Assassination of Ferdinand: https://www.history.com/news/the-assassination-of-archduke-franz-ferdinand-100-years-ago
New Technology of WWI:
https://www.ncpedia.org/wwi-technology-and-weapons-war
14 Points:  https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2Foriginals%2Fd7%2F66%2Fa4%2Fd766a4369eb9f3a910eb7fa65db923e9.
Treaty of Versailles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArVAS4lOFmc