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Construction and Design

Fort Sumter was first built in the wake of the War of 1812, which had highlighted the United States' lack of strong coastal defenses. Named for Revolutionary War general and South Carolina native Thomas Sumter, the fortification was one of nearly 50 forts built as part of the so-called Third System, a coastal defense program implemented by Congress in 1817.

The three-tiered, five-sided fort's coastal placement was designed to allow it to control access to the vital Charleston Harbor. While the island itself was only 2.4 acres in size, the fort was built to accommodate a garrison of 650 soldiers and 135 artillery pieces.

Did you know? There were no casualties during the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter at the start of the Civil War. The only Union deaths came during the evacuation: One soldier was killed and another mortally wounded in an accidental explosion during a planned 100-gun salute.

Construction of Fort Sumter first began in 1829 in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, on a manmade island built from thousands of tons of granite. Building ground to a halt in the 1830s amid a dispute over ownership of the stretch of the harbor, and did not resume until 1841. Like many Third System fortifications, Fort Sumter proved a costly endeavor, and construction slowed again in 1859 due to lack of funding. By 1860 the island and the outer fortifications were complete, but the fort's interior and armaments remained unfinished.

Fort Moultrie

Construction of Fort Sumter was still underway when South Carolina seceded from the Union on December 20, 1860. Despite Charleston's position as a major port, at the time only two companies of federal troops guarded the harbor. Commanded by Major Robert Anderson, these companies were stationed at Fort Moultrie, a dilapidated fortification facing the coastline.

Recognizing that Fort Moultrie was vulnerable to a land assault, Anderson elected to abandon it for the more easily defensible Fort Sumter on December 26, 1860. South Carolina militia forces would seize the city's other forts shortly thereafter, leaving Fort Sumter as the lone federal outpost in Charleston.

Battle of Fort Sumter

A standoff ensued until January 9, 1861, when a ship called Star of the West arrived in Charleston with over 200 U.S. troops and supplies intended for Fort Sumter. South Carolina militia batteries fired upon the vessel as it neared Charleston Harbor, forcing it to turn back to sea.

Major Anderson refused repeated calls to abandon Fort Sumter, and by March 1861 there were over 3,000 militia troops besieging his garrison. A number of other U.S. military facilities in the South had already been seized, and Fort Sumter was viewed by many as one of the South's few remaining hurdles to overcome before achieving sovereignty.

With the inauguration of President Abraham Lincoln in March 1861, the situation soon escalated. Knowing that Anderson and his men were running out of supplies, Lincoln announced his intention to send three unarmed ships to relieve Fort Sumter. Having already declared that any attempt to resupply the fort would be seen as an act of aggression, South Carolina militia forces soon scrambled to respond.

Civil War Begins

On April 11, militia commander P.G.T. Beauregard demanded that Anderson surrender the fort, but Anderson again refused. In response Beauregard opened fire on Fort Sumter shortly after 4:30 a.m. on April 12, 1861. U.S. Captain Abner Doubleday-later famous for the myth that he invented baseball-ordered the first shots in defense of the fort a few hours later. The first shots of the Civil War had been fired.

Beauregard's 19 coastal batteries unleashed a punishing barrage on Fort Sumter, eventually firing an estimated 3,000 shots at the citadel in 34 hours. By Saturday, April 13, cannon fire had broken through the fortress's five-foot-thick brick walls, causing fires inside the post. With his stores of ammunition depleted, Anderson and his Union forces had to surrender the fort shortly after 2 p.m. in the afternoon.

No Union troops had been killed during the bombardment, but two men died the following day in an explosion that occurred during an artillery salute held before the U.S. evacuation. The bombardment of Fort Sumter would play a major part in triggering the Civil War. In the days following the assault, Lincoln issued a call for Union volunteers to quash the rebellion, while more Southern states including Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee cast their lot with the Confederacy.

Beauregard and Du Pont

Following Beauregard's bombardment in 1861, Confederate forces occupied Fort Sumter and used it to marshal a defense of Charleston Harbor. Once it was completed and better armed, Fort Sumter allowed the Confederates to create a valuable hole in the Union blockade of the Atlantic seaboard.

The first Union assault on occupied Fort Sumter came in April 1863, when Rear Admiral Samuel Francis Du Pont attempted a naval attack on Charleston. Commander of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, Du Pont arrived in Charleston with a fleet of nine ironclad warships, seven of which were updated versions of the famed U.S.S. Monitor.

While Du Pont had hoped to recapture Fort Sumter-by then a symbol of the Confederate rebellion-his attack was poorly coordinated and met with unfavorable weather conditions. In collaboration with Fort Sumter, Confederate batteries commanded by P.G.T. Beauregard hammered the ironclad fleet with artillery fire, and underwater mines posed a constant threat to the ships' hulls.

Outgunned and unable to properly maneuver in heavy currents, Du Pont's fleet eventually withdrew from the harbor after taking over 500 hits by Confederate guns. Only one Union soldier was killed during the battle, but one of the ironclads, Keokuk, sank the next day.

Five Confederates were killed during the attack, but the damage to Fort Sumter was soon repaired and its defenses improved. Confederate soldiers even managed to salvage one of Keokuk 's 11-inch Dahlgren guns and mount it on the fortress.
READ MORE: 7 Important Civil War Battles
Fort Wagner

In July 1863, Union troops laid siege to Fort Wagner, a valuable post on Morris Island near the mouth of Charleston Harbor. After being met with heavy fire from Fort Sumter, Union General Quincy Adams Gillmore turned his guns on the fort and unleashed a devastating seven-day bombardment.

On September 8, a force of nearly 400 Union troops attempted to land at Fort Sumter and capture the post by force. Union Rear Admiral John Dahlgren mistakenly believed the fort was manned by a skeleton crew, but the landing party was met by over 300 Confederate infantry, who easily repulsed the assault.

Following the failed infantry attack, Union forces on Morris Island recommenced their bombing campaign on Fort Sumter. Over the next 15 months, Union artillery effectively leveled Fort Sumter, eventually firing nearly 50,000 projectiles at the fort between September 1863 and February 1865. Despite suffering over 300 casualties from the Union bombardments, the beleaguered Confederate garrison managed to retain control of the fort until February 1865.

Only when Union General William T. Sherman was poised to capture Charleston did the Confederates finally evacuate. Union forces would reclaim Fort Sumter on February 22, 1865. Robert A. Anderson and Abner Doubleday, the two commanding officers from the original siege of Fort Sumter, would both return to the fortress on April 14, 1865, for a flag-raising ceremony.

Fort Sumter National Monument

After the Civil War, the derelict Fort Sumter was rebuilt and partially redesigned. It would see little use during the 1870s and 1880s and was eventually reduced to serving as a lighthouse station for Charleston Harbor. With the start of the Spanish-American War (1898), the fortress was rearmed and once again used as a coastal defense installation. It would later see service during both World War I and World War II.

In 1948, Fort Sumter was decommissioned as a military post and turned over to the National Park Service as a National Historic Site and part of Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park. Tours are now available, attracting more than 750,000 visitors every year.

Sources

Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie: History & Culture. National Park Service.
Fort Sumter. American Battlefield Trust.
Fort Sumter: The Civil War Begins. Smithsonian Magazine.

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Fort Sumter: Civil War, Battle & Location | HISTORY

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Fort Sumter is an island fortification located in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, and is most famous for being the site of the first battle of the Civil War.

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July 3, 1863: The third day of Gettysburg marked a change in the tide of the war.

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Cite: http://www.historynet.com/appomattox-court-house-battle

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America's Civil War: Images of Peace at Appomattox

No one knows for certain how the myth was born. But no one can deny that it was enduringly appealing and slow to die. As Ulysses S. Grant would put it years later, 'like many other stories, it would be very good if it was only true.

The legend was that on April 9, 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Lt. Gen. Grant, not inside the McLean House in Appomattox Court House, Va., but outdoors, in an apple orchard somewhere outside the village. It was a romantic story, conjuring up a picture of rival commanders on horseback solemnly stacking their arms before opposing lines of blue and gray. It was also entirely false.

Nonetheless, throughout the mid-1860s the tale of the apple orchard surrender was repeatedly introduced, colorfully illustrated and widely distributed to an accepting public by the nation's most imaginative purveyors of popular culture: the publishers of popular prints. To America's engravers and lithographers falls the dubious honor of having perpetuated the myth by vivifying it in a seldom-remembered body of gaudy prints for American parlors, taverns and clubhouses.

In the years before the advent of motion pictures, radio and TV, picture publishers had considerable power, coloring public perception of the events of the day. Illustrations forged images of the news and the newsmakers - whether realistically depicted or not - into the collective consciousness of the national audience. So it was with the Appomattox story.

But how did the apple orchard surrender tale get started? As Grant conceded, it was one of those little fictions based on a slight foundation of fact. And it was reinforced by an incidental but much-noticed follow-up to the historic surrender.

As memoir writers on both sides of the Civil War would later recount, Confederate forces were actually occupying a hillside that embraced an apple grove on April 9, 1865. Grant related in his memoirs how a dirt road ran diagonally up that hillside, and how so many Rebel supply wagons had traveled the trail that their wheels had cut through the protruding roots of an apple tree, creating a makeshift embankment along the supply route. It was on this embankment, Grant was told, that his Confederate counterpart was sitting, his back against an apple tree, when he finally decided the time had come to surrender the Army of Northern Virginia.

Union Brevet Brig. Gen. Horace Porter recalled a similar scene. Porter wrote that Lee was lying down by the roadside on a blanket which had been spread over a few fence rails on the ground under an apple-tree, which was part of an orchard.

Reverence for the iconic Robert E. Lee continued for many years after his death in 1870. Charles Walker's 1893 lithograph commemorates the general's simple and heartfelt farewell to his troops: You will take with you the satisfaction that proceeds from the consciousness of duty faithfully performed, and I earnestly pray that a merciful God will extend to you His blessing and protection (Library of Congress).

Not surprisingly, Confederate writers chose to present a more active Lee: not a broken man lying on the ground, accepting the inevitable, but a mass of energy and resolve, resisting overwhelming forces until he wisely perceived the futility of struggling on. Colonel William W. Blackford, who had been an aide to Confederate Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart until the general's death in May 1864, was present at Appomattox. He remembered an apple orchard guarded by a line of sentinels, where Lee could be found on surrender day pacing backwards and forwards...looking like a caged lion.

Blackford's recollection was of a Lee quite unlike the idealized character later immortalized in popular prints and literature. To be sure, the general was the embodiment of all that was grand and noble in man in his full-dress uniform, complete with sword and sash. But he was also in one of his savage moods, Blackford remembered, and when these moods were on him, it was safer to keep out of his way. Lee that day was anything but the oft-portrayed stoic, dignified commander, made still more dignified by his gallantry in defeat.

Lee had good reason to fume, according to his aide, Colonel Charles Marshall. On April 8, wrote Marshall, Lee had proposed meeting Grant on the old stage road to Richmond, between the picket lines of the two armies, to discuss not surrender but peace. Grant made no reply to the invitation, but the next morning, Lee and two of his officers rode under a flag of truce toward the specified rendezvous. The men in the last hours of the Confederacy cheered General Lee to the echo, Colonel Marshall remembered, as they had cheered him many a time before. He waved his hand to suppress the cheering, because he was afraid the sound might attract the ire of the enemy, and we rode on through the line.

To Lee's disappointment, Grant never showed up. Instead, a Union staff officer delivered a note Grant had written to Lee. Grant had no authority to discuss the subject of peace, it said, only surrender. Marshall read the letter to Lee, and after a few moments' reflection, the Confederate commander made his most difficult decision. Well, write a letter to General Grant, he told Marshall, and ask him to meet me to deal with the question of the surrender of my army.

Even though Grant refused to meet Lee on the morning of April 9, at least one printmaker immortalized the event-that-never-was with a large lithograph of the Meeting of Generals Grant and Lee Prepatory to the Surrender of General Lee. Nearly a year would pass between surrender day and the publication of the print. But for artist P.S. Duval of Philadelphia and his publisher, Joseph Hoover (both experienced professionals who by then surely knew better), the dramatic appeal of the ride along the old stage road must have seemed irresistible.

What happened after Lee sent his message to Grant has been confirmed by memoirists of both North and South. The best account is probably that of Marshall, who was dispatched to Appomattox to find a place suitable for the surrender meeting. There, he encountered Wilmer McLean, a man...who used to live on the first battle field of Manassas, at a house about a mile from the Manassas Junction. He didn't like the war, and having seen the first battle of Manassas, he thought he would get away where there wouldn't be any more fighting.

In the end, the man who didn't like the war provided the place to end it - not as he first suggested, at a nearby home that Marshall thought all dilapidated, but in his own very comfortable house. Within minutes, in the 20-by-16 1/2-foot McLean parlor, Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to Ulysses S. Grant.

Lee arrived first, looking to one observer quite bald and wearing one of the side locks of his hair thrown across the upper portion of his forehead, which is as white and as fair as a woman's. Nonetheless, to his aide Armistead L. Long, even vanquished, Lee was yet a victor....Under the accumulation of difficulties his courage seemed to expand...his presence inspired the weak and weary with renewed energy....Those who watched his face to catch a glimpse of what was passing in his mind could gather thence no trace of his inner sentiments.

His image stands out clearly before me, Long wrote years later. Just after he had signed the surrender papers and emerged from the McLean House, Lee suddenly seemed to Long older, grayer, more quiet and reserved...very tired. But he would not be so portrayed.

The orchard myth was a popular subject for printmakers. P.S. Duval's orchard scene is an early example of the myth in print. (Library of Congress).

Northern printmakers were the only such artisans to produce Appomattox surrender scenes. They also produced most of the portraits of Lee, Confederate Lt. Gen. Thomas J. Stonewall Jackson and Confederate President Jefferson Davis in the postwar era. But they were not aggressive researchers. Many searched no further for contemporary descriptions of Lee's appearance at Appomattox than the New York Herald's report of April 14: Lee looked very much jaded and worn, but nevertheless, presented the same magnificent physique for which he had always been noted....During the whole interview he was retired and dignified to a degree bordering on taciturnity, but was free from all exhibition of temper or mortification. His demeanor was that of a thoroughly possessed gentleman who had a very disagreeable duty to perform, but was determined to get through it as well and as soon as he could.

Grant, who arrived after Lee, looked to one witness as though he had had a pretty bad time. He came dressed in a sack coat and a loose fatigue blouse. In sharp contrast to Lee's glorious new full-dress uniform, Grant wore no side arms: Lee wore his magnificent gold-handled ceremonial sword. Grant appeared somewhat dusty and a little soiled. Lee was impeccable and grand, now and forever the perfect knight of legend, exuding gallantry in defeat. The simple truth was that Grant had garbed himself in what he called a rough traveling suit, the uniform of a private with the stripes of a Lieutenant-General, because his own stock of fancy uniforms had not yet arrived at his headquarters. This ironic contrast between the simplicity of the victor and the grandeur of the vanquished would be pointedly reflected in many prints of Appomattox and would grow into a legend in American history.

The events inside the McLean parlor were formal and unemotional. After some conversation, Lee asked Grant to put his surrender terms in writing. Grant's aide, Colonel Ely S. Parker, brought a small table from one corner of the room, and Grant sat down and wrote out the conditions of surrender on field note paper, which produced a copy as the original was written. When he finished, Grant rose and carried his draft to Lee, who remained seated elsewhere in the parlor. Lee offered some comments, including his well-known appeal that his soldiers be allowed to keep their horses, a request to which Grant consented immediately. Grant then asked Colonel Parker to recopy the terms of surrender. Parker took the desk to a far corner of the room and began to rewrite the official document while Grant took another seat and, like Lee, waited patiently. Other officers in the room, including Marshall and Union Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan, exchanged pleasantries while they waited.

When Parker finished his transcription, Colonel Marshall took his seat to write out Lee's reply. The general admonished his aide not to begin the answer in the customary way. I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt.... Don't say, `I have the honor,' said Lee. Just say, `I accept these terms.'

Finally the surrender papers were signed by both generals, their aides handing them separate copies and then exchanging them so each commander could sign two. After a few more moments of conversation, during which Grant finally explained why he wore a field uniform that was no match for his rival's, Lee left the McLean House.

Such was the history of the surrender of Robert E. Lee's army. There was no theatrical display about it, Marshall observed. It was in itself perhaps the greatest tragedy that ever occurred in the history of the world, but it was the simplest, plainest, and most thoroughly devoid of any attempt at effect, that you can imagine.

But Marshall did not realize what could be imagined by America's printmakers. Besides, the story had not really ended. There was to be a dramatic coda that would add another layer of confusion to the surrender story.

Wilmer McLean, owner of the house where the surrender was signed, commissioned this print as a way to raise money to pay for property damage that occurred during the war. Lee is accompanied by two aides, while Grant is surrounded by the cream of the Union officer corps, including George Custer, Philip Sheridan, George Meade and Edward Ord. McLean's hopes for restitution were in vain; he abandoned the property in 1867, and the house was sold at public auction two years later (Library of Congress).

The Lee of legend (and popular illustrations) had already been created by the time the generals returned from the true site of the surrender ceremony. All along his route, he was hailed with such cries as I love you just as well as ever, General by his loyal, tearful troops. Though truly a fine and noble man, Lee had become even more: the gallant cavalier who bravely fought a war he had not sought, and who surrendered with all the grace of a gentleman, though he had confided he would rather die a thousand deaths than do so.

The day after the surrender, Grant declared, I would like to see General Lee again. This time they did meet on horseback, chatting for half an hour near the old Confederate headquarters as staff officers hovered nearby. It was an incidental meeting, an anticlimactic footnote to the historic day that preceded it. But it seems that stories of this second encounter stimulated a lingering belief that Lee actually surrendered in such a setting.

Had the printmakers supplied Appomattox scenes more quickly, the legend might never have grown. Only two printmakers issued Appomattox scenes in 1865, and both erred, if at all, on the side of understatement. Most depictions were delayed until 1866 or 1867. So it remains one of the great mysteries of Civil War iconography why such a newsworthy event was not portrayed more quickly. Perhaps time was needed for passions to cool, and for Northern calls for Lee's punishment to quiet down. It may be that some months had to pass before any Northern engraver or lithographer could feel safe portraying former enemy Robert E. Lee, even in defeat.

Southern printmakers provided no Appomattox scenes. They had been all but ruined by the war, driven out of business by chronic shortages of paper and ink, or compelled to focus on official work such as Confederate postage stamps and currency. By the time the war ended, the Southern print industry was, for all intents and purposes, a memory. And even had it survived, bitter recollections of Lee's surrender and scenes of Appomattox would not have appealed to its customers.

Northern printmakers, denied access to the Southern audience for four years, gradually began supplying the images of the Lost Cause that they could never have been produced while the cause lived. During the late 1860s and throughout the '70s and '80s, parlor portraits of the principal heroes of the Confederate experience - Lee, Jackson and Davis - would be published by men in New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago, men who had been enemies of the South just a few years earlier.

The appearance of these portraits and the first engravings and lithographs of Lee's surrender signaled the beginning of the Northern effort to portray the Confederate image for profit. But along with the opportunities for profit came a challenge. It seemed difficult to market accurate prints of a surrender that was so simple and set in such mundane surroundings. Most solved this dilemma by providing imagined scenes of the purported apple orchard peace conference.

Among the more common orchard peace conference pictures, one of the most typical is the overdramatically titled Capitulation and Surrender of Robt. E. Lee & His Army at Appomattox. More restrained efforts are described as scenes of the Grant and Lee meeting, but their implicit message is the same: They are meant to suggest the actual surrender.

Lee actually returned to the orchard after signing the peace terms, and stood under an apple tree for the rest of the afternoon seeing visitors. After the soldiers left, Colonel Blackford remembered, the tree General Lee stood under was carried off by relic hunters. But print audiences had no reason to be concerned about this vandalism. For months afterward, the legendary tree would appear and reappear in purported re-creations of a scene that had never taken place.

In James Queen's 1866 lithograph, Lee is shown reading the surrender terms beneath the ubiquitous apple tree while Grant gestures grandly to the rival armies encamped in the distance. The portraits of the generals are excellent; the setting is pure invention.

Another effort, by Philadelphia's Joseph Hoover, makes Lee appear almost eager to surrender, reaching out for the terms in Grant's hand. Again the scene is outdoors, and to add to the mythicizing, both Lee and Grant are shown in resplendent fancy dress uniforms, Grant wearing a sword, something he rarely did anywhere. Still another outdoor interpretation suggests that the surrender occurred in winter, an error arising perhaps out of ignorance, perhaps to emphasize the hardships the soldiers had suffered. Two other prints, one likely copied from the other, contend that Grant handed the surrender terms to Lee.

But no popular print of the apple orchard surrender exaggerated quite as grandiosely as Kurz & Allison's lithograph of the Capitulation and Surrender of Robt. E. Lee & His Army. The symbolic scene shows both Union and Confederate armies crowded into the orchard, actually meeting en masse for the surrender. Stereotypically tattered and wounded Confederates on one side of the scene are contrasted with hearty-looking Union troops behind Grant. To add to the absurdity of the picture, Lee is shown publicly surrendering his sword to Grant. Grant later characterized the much talked of surrender of Lee's sword and my handing it back as the purest romance. To printmakers such as Chicago's audience-wise Louis Kurz, though, truth was not the test of a good picture; sales appeal was.

Currier & Ives' two straightforward Appomattox lithographs were exceptions. But the work of these celebrated New York printmakers was not devoid of inaccuracy. Both their 1865 and 1873 prints depict Grant and Lee sharing a single table, though they did not do so. And the scenes suggest, by showing Lee's sword on the table, that he surrendered it.

The only evidence that any printmaker completely understood the chronology of events that unfolded at and near Appomattox Court House on April 9 and 10, 1865, comes in a rare lithograph by one-time Currier & Ives artist Louis Maurer. It shows Grant and Lee meeting outdoors on horseback, but declares in its caption that the encounter occurred the day after surrender. Maruer modeled the print on a beautiful watercolor by Otto Boetticher, a Prussian-born Union soldier and military artist. Maurer's adaptation remains one of the least-known but best-realized Appomattox prints. It portrays the two great adversaries planning for peace as grandly as they had waged a war.

Other painters attempted depictions of the surrender itself, with decidedly mixed results. Alonzo Chappel's Surrender of General Lee was engraved for a book by Johnson & Fry of New York in 1865, but it misrepresents the McLean parlor as little more than a barracks. A much later Chappel painting became the model for The Surrender of General Lee, adapted for W.K. Steele of New York and featuring an accurate depiction of the room's furnishings. The print proved popular enough to inspire a copy, but such a poor one that A. Lauder's print of Peace seems more a parody than a piracy.

About the same time, a Mrs. M.F. Cocheu produced a design that pictures the opening and closing events of the war as Alpha (the attack on Fort Sumter) and Omega (Lee's surrender). But in her ludicrous vision of the surrender, Lee, wearing a plumed hat, stands beneath an apple tree next to a rail fence, in full view of a wooden cabin; Grant appears to be smoking a cigar.

It is no wonder that some printmakers eschewed interpretive choices altogether. W. Webber's Appomattox print for J.H. Bufford, for example, celebrated the village of Appomattox Court House, not the event, while another printmaker made the centerpiece of his design a map of the area, adding no portraiture at all.

Of course, there were printmakers who succeeded in dealing seriously and inventively with the surrender and its immediate impact on Southern troops. Both Burk & McFettridge of Philadelphia and Charles H. Walker of Washington, D.C., issued prints immortalizing the simple farewell address Lee gave to his troops the day after his meeting with Grant in the McLean House. The Burk & McFettridge print, issued in 1883, features a wreathed portrait of Lee, flanked by a symbolic handshake sealing the reunification. Walker's more ambitious lithograph, issued 10 years later, included portraits of Lee in uniform astride his famous horse, Traveller, and in civilian clothes, along with a beautifully realized central scene of Lee surrounded by his loyal troops, as he returns tearfully to camp after the surrender.

Perhaps no print attempted more ambitiously to portray the surrender in its proper location, and with as many of its central characters as possible, than Major & Knapp's 1867 lithograph of The Room in the McLean House, at Appomattox C.H., in which GEN. LEE Surrendered to GEN. GRANT. Commissioned as a fundraising device by Wilmer McLean, the print contains portraits of the personalities meticulously copied from period photographs. The portrayal of Lee and two aides is modeled after a photograph for which the general had reluctantly posed on the back porch of his Richmond house a week after the surrender.

The Major & Knapp original slightly exaggerates the size of McLean's parlor, probably to accommodate figures of generals such as George Armstrong Custer, Philip Sheridan and George Gordon Meade. Its most glaring error is its identification of the man writing out the surrender terms as General Wesley Merritt instead of Colonel Ely Parker. Overall, though, save for the symbolic inclusion of so many military personalities, the print is perhaps the finest of all interpretations of the solemn moments during which Lee and Grant waited while the instruments of surrender were finalized.

Having McLean directly involved (he copyrighted the lithograph) undoubtedly contributed to the print's truthfulness. But the unfortunate man who had fled Manassas to avoid the dangers of war ironically found himself ruined by peace. Union officers had all but plundered his parlor after Grant and Lee left. Tables and chairs were carried off and pictures removed from the walls, with small sums of money thrown at their owner by the souvenir hunters.

McLean hoped to regain some of his losses through sales of the Major & Knapp print. But despite the picture's high quality, it apparently failed to earn McLean the fortune he had anticipated. Within a few years he abandoned his Appomattox home, and by the end of the century it had crumbled into ruins. It would not be reconstructed until after World War II.

The surrender did Wilmer McLean little good, but it did wonders for Robert E. Lee. Nothing Lee did in the field would inspire as many prints as his surrender. Remarkably, the same was true of Ulysses S. Grant. But it was Lee who may have gained the most from the prints' proliferation after the war. Appomattox prints helped elevate his image and make it palatable to both the South and the North. The mere fact that he had given up the rebellion at Appomattox helped to cleanse Lee in the North, where all print production would originate, encouraging his depiction with all the dignity eyewitnesses ascribed to him.

Thus, even though Appomattox prints were really Grant prints intended for jubilant Northerners, Lee's inclusion in the scenes put him on equal footing with the victor, perhaps because there could be little glory for Grant unless it could be shown that he had defeated a worthy foe. But this is not to underestimate the Appomattox prints' impact on Grant, for he was their true hero, Lee only their implied one. And Appomattox prints may well have helped Grant win election to the presidency in 1868. They did, however, help Lee become an American again, and in time an American hero.

Intentionally or not, these popular graphics for the family parlor also helped elevate Lee to a status shared by no other figure of the Confederacy: a living symbol of reconciliation. By depicting him unbowed before Grant, printmakers demonstrated that reunion could be accomplished without subjugation. Appomattox prints showed Lee in surrender but not in humiliation, and thus made Lee an icon of peace, not defeat.

As one of his field commanders would ask in a Lee eulogy delivered five years later, What man could have laid down his sword at the feet of a victorious general with greater dignity than he did at Appomattox? Even Northern historian Charles Francis Adams Jr. would term the surrender the most creditable episode in American history - an episode without blemish - imposing, dignified, simple, heroic. So it would always seem in Appomattox prints, even the most fanciful among them.

Appomattox prints took a potentially humiliating event in Robert E. Lee's life and transformed it into something of a triumph. Perhaps Grant himself sensed this, for the man the prints were supposed to celebrate disapproved of the entire genre. When a committee of Congress approached him soon after the war to propose a painting of the surrender for the Capitol Rotunda, Grant refused. He said he would never play a role in producing a picture commemorating a victory in which his own countrymen had been vanquished.

In a way, Appomattox scenes pleased neither the conquered nor the conquering heroes. But they certainly pleased the people.

This article was written by Harold Holzer, Gabor S.Boritt and Mark E. Neely Jr. and originally published in the Janurary 2006 issue of Civil War Times Magazine.

For more great articles, be sure to subscribe to Civil War Times magazine today!

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Information about The Battle & Surrender At Appomattox Courthouse, one of the last Civil War Battles of the American Civil War Appomattox Courthouse Battle Facts Location: Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia Dates: April 9, 1865 Generals: Union: Ulysses S. Grant | Confederate: Robert E. Lee Soldiers Engaged: Union Army: 120,000 | Confederate Army: 30,000 Outcome: Union Victory [...]

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Cite: http://www.american-historama.org/1860-1865-civil-war-era/ten-percent-plan.htm

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Find a summary, definition and facts about President Lincoln's Ten Percent Plan for kids. The aims of the Ten Percent Plan. Information about Ten Percent Plan for kids, children, homework and schools.

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The Reconstruction Amendments: The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments

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Plessy Vs. Fergusson/ End of Reconstruction

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Plessy Vs. Fergusson/ End of Reconstruction

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Cite: https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/plessy-v-ferguson

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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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Cite: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/goldrush-california/

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The California Gold Rush | American Experience | PBS

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The discovery of gold in1848 unleashed the largest migration in United States history and drew people from a dozen countries to form a multi-ethnic society in California.

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Homestead Act:
Cite: https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/homestead-act
Morrill Act:
Cite: http://www.1890universities.org/history

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The Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890 | 1890 LandGrant Universities

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"A second Morrill Act in 1890 was also aimed at the former Confederate states. This act required each state to show that race was not an admissions criterion, or else to designate a separate land-grant institution for persons of color.

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Cite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUKCA966BFc

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Cite:https://www.google.com/search?q=massacre+at+wounded+knee&rlz=1CAASUJ_enUS822&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjww57LpcDeAhXJrIMKHebiAZcQ_AUIEygB&biw=1366&bih=618&safe=active&ssui=on#imgrc=OdizMr2MiNu-vM:

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Fort Sumter: https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/fort-sumter
Emancipation Proclamation: https://carwad.net/wallpaper-525544
Battle of Getteysburg:https://www.pbs.org/video/the-civil-war-the-civil-war-gettysburg/
Appomatox Courthouse:http://www.historynet.com/appomattox-court-house-battle

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Ten Percent Plan:http://www.american-historama.org/1860-1865-civil-war-era/ten-percent-plan.htm
Wade-Davis Bill: https://slideplayer.com/slide/3437535/
13th,14th, and 15th Amendments:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpiH2b923pc
Plessy Vs. Fergusson: https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/plessy-v-ferguson

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The Gold Rush: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/goldrush-california/
Homestead Act:https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/homestead-act
Morrill Act:http://www.1890universities.org/history
The Long Walk:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUKCA966BFc
Massacre at Wounded Knee:
https://www.google.com/search?q=massacre+at+wounded+knee&rlz=1CAASUJ_enUS822&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjww57LpcDeAhXJrIMKHebiAZcQ_AUIEygB&biw=1366&bih=618&safe=active&ssui=on#imgrc=OdizMr2MiNu-vM:

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Cite:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6tRp-zRUJs

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The Industrial Economy: Crash Course US History #23

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Inventions: Lightbulb, Telephone, Automobile, and Airplane

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Inventions: Lightbulb, Telephone, Automobile, and Airplane

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Cite:https://learning-center.homesciencetools.com/article/modern-inventions-airplane-light-bulb-telephone/

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Science Lesson: Learn About Inventions

The Telephone & Alexander Graham Bell

What if the only way you could communicate with someone living in another city was by mailing them a letter, one that might take weeks to get delivered? (Even with our modern technology, it still takes at least two weeks for mail to get to some countries.) The telephone is certainly one of the greatest inventions in the history of communication!

The inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, was born in Scotland in 1847, the same year as Thomas Edison. He went to university in Edinburgh and London, then immigrated to Canada in 1870 and to the U.S. a year later. There he used visible speech (a type of phonetic notation that shows the position of the throat, mouth, and tongue to make different sounds) to teach deaf-mute people how speak.

When he was a young man, Bell became interested in transmitting speech, the way a telegraph transmitted messages. In 1874 he developed the idea for the telephone and successfully created and patented one two years later. (Just two hours after he applied for his patent, Elisha Gray filed his intention to apply for a patent for a very similar device.) His first transmitted sentence was to his assistant: 'Watson, come here; I want to see you.' Bell demonstrated his telephone at the Philadelphia Centennial Expo and in 1877 organized the Bell Telephone Company.

So how does this amazing invention work? How can you talk to someone miles away and hear them as though they were in the same room with you? It's actually a fairly simple process. At its most basic, a telephone consists of a switch, a receiver, and a microphone. The switch connects your phone to the telephone network; the receiver changes electrical signals into sound waves so you can hear the other person, and the microphone changes the sound waves you make into electrical impulses to send to the other end of the line.

The microphone contains carbon granules and a thin metal diaphragm. When you speak, the sound waves (vibrations in the air) hit the diaphragm and cause it to move, compressing the carbon granules behind it. A louder sound will compress the granules more than a soft sound. When the carbon is compressed, an electrical current can flow through it more easily. A battery (either in your handset or at the telephone company) sends an electric current through your phone; when you speak, the compression of the carbon varies the intensity of the current.
Experiment with electricity and sound transmission with this kit for kids!
This process is reversed at the other end of the line by the receiver. The electrical current flows through an electromagnet in the receiver, producing a magnetic field. This magnetic field attracts the thin metal diaphragm in the receiver, causing it to move in and out. As it does so, it pushes and pulls the air, creating sound waves. These waves reach your ear with the same intensity as they were spoken, allowing you to hear what the other person said.

The process hinges on the ability to have a variable electrical current. Unlike the telephone, a telegraph operates on a constant electric current - the messages are transmitted not by changing the current, but by repeatedly turning it on and off in a distinct pattern. Because the human voice doesn't start and stop sound waves in the same way as tapping Morse code does, the current must be able to adjust for variation in volume and frequency. The carbon microphone allows for this variation, giving us the ability to transmit speech electrically.

Bell probably couldn't have imagined the kind of communication we have today. Not only do we have long-distance telephone networks all over the world, we also have cellular phones that use radio frequencies to allow us to talk wirelessly wherever we are. Communication was changed forever by the telephone and continues to develop rapidly today.
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The Light Bulb & Thomas Edison

Perhaps one of the most important inventions of all time is the electric light bulb. We could get by with candles or lanterns in our homes, but imagine trying to shop at the mall, work in a large office complex, or travel at night by car or plane without electric lighting!

Thomas Alva Edison, one of the developers of the modern light bulb, is also one of the most famous as well as prolific inventors in history. He patented over 1000 inventions in his lifetime. Edison was born in Ohio in 1847. As a child, he received less than a year of formal schooling, but was educated at home. His parents allowed him to set up a laboratory in their basement and his mother gave him books about chemistry and electronics. Edison credits his mother as being 'the making' of him.

When he was 12, Edison got a job selling newspapers on a train that made day trips between his hometown of Port Huron, Michigan and Detroit. He took his laboratory along in the baggage car so that he would be able to experiment during layovers. This worked until one day some of his chemicals spilled and started a fire! Also while working on the train, Edison saved the child of one of the station masters, and as a reward was taught how to use a telegraph machine. He became a telegraph operator and began making improvements to the telegraph's functionality. He later invented a way for multiple telegraph messages to be transmitted simultaneously (rather than one at a time).

As a young man, Edison moved to New York City and eventually established a laboratory. In 1877 he invented the phonograph, which used a record made of tinfoil to play back sound. In 1879 he created a successful incandescent light bulb. This was his hardest project - from 1877 to 1880, Edison and his assistants tried around 3000 experiments to perfect their light bulb design. By the end of 1880, Edison had produced a bulb that lasted 1500 hours. (This has a moral: don't worry if some of your own science experiments aren't a success the first time you try them!)
Experiment with electricity with our student-friendly kit!
Edison was not the first person to make a working light bulb: In the 1860s another English scientist, Sir Joseph Wilson Swan, began experimenting. He made a light bulb that used carbonized paper for a filament. But Swan lacked a strong enough vacuum inside the bulb; a design problem that he corrected at almost the same time Edison did. After a legal battle between the two inventors, Edison and Swan teamed up and created the company Ediswan to market their invention.

How exactly do light bulbs work? For being such an important part of our lives, they have a fairly simple design. The base contains two metal contacts, which connect to an electrical circuit. These contacts are attached to two wires, which are in turn attached to the filament in the middle of the bulb (the filament is usually supported by a glass mount). A power supply sends an electric current from one contact to the other, traveling up through the wires and the filament. As the current passes through the filament, it "excites" the atoms that make up the filament material, causing them to give off energy in the form of heat and light. Edison tried thousands of different materials for his filaments, but most of them produced light for only a short time. He finally tried a carbonized cotton thread, which burned for many hours. Eventually, light bulbs were made using the metal tungsten for the filament. Tungsten works well because it has an unusually high melting point. This is important because metal must be heated to extreme temperatures to give off enough light.

The danger of running electrical current through the filament is that the resulting high temperatures may cause the filament to combust, or catch on fire. This will only happen if oxygen is present, so Edison sucked all the air out of his glass bulbs to create a vacuum. This method worked fine to prevent combustion, but it allowed filament atoms to evaporate, shortening the life of the bulb. In modern bulbs, the glass is filled with an inert gas, such as argon. This prevents combustion, and also helps prevent tungsten atoms from evaporating.

For over a century we have read and worked by the light of Edison's incandescent bulb. Other light sources, such as fluorescent bulbs and LED, have gained popularity in recent years because of their efficiency. The incandescent bulb releases most of its energy in the form of heat, not light, thus wasting electricity. Fluorescent and LED, however, are much cooler, and release most of their energy as visible light. These light sources have replaced the incandescent bulb for many functions.

Although almost all of Edison's discoveries were technological rather than strictly scientific, his invention credits include an alkaline storage battery, microphone, mimeograph (a copy machine), and a kinetoscope for viewing moving pictures. He also created the first 'talkie,' a movie that had sound, using his kinetoscope and phonograph. He continued to improve not only the incandescent light bulb, but some of his other inventions like the phonograph as well.
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The Airplane and the Wright Brothers

On December 17, 1903, Orville Wright flew the first powered, heavier-than-air airplane, propelling himself and his older brother Wilbur into world history. It took the brothers years of preparation to get to that cold and windy day in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

Wilbur (born in 1867) and Orville (born in 1871) grew up in Dayton, Ohio, the son of a United Brethren minister. Both of their parents had college educations, and they fostered intellectual curiosity and experimentation in their children. Bishop Wright sparked his young sons' interest in flight early on by bringing them a special toy - a flying top. This toy was essentially a rubber-band powered helicopter. The boys flew it until it fell apart, and then Wilbur built his own. As they grew older, the boys spent much of their time designing, building, and selling kites.

As young adults, Wilbur and Orville capitalized on the booming popularity of bicycles by starting their own bicycle sale and repair shop. Eventually they started building their own bicycles, which was excellent training for their next enterprise: building a flying machine.

Wilbur and Orville read everything about flight that they could get their hands on in Dayton. To get more information, Wilbur wrote the Smithsonian asking for up-to-date materials on the study of flight. With the Smithsonian's help they studied Sir George Cayley's work with the four forces of flight (lift, gravity, thrust, and drag), others' experiments with gliders, and the attempts at flight made by the Smithsonian's secretary, Samuel Langley. All the work these men had done, even when they failed, proved indispensable to the Wrights' efforts. After carefully studying, Wilbur and Orville began their own scientific analysis of what was needed for flight, and began designing their own gliders. They didn't just want to put an airplane in the sky; they wanted controlled flight, and for this they needed to master the three axes of motion: pitch, roll, and yaw.

Pitch is the up and down motion of the airplane's nose (climbing or diving). Roll is the airplane rolling from side to side, causing its wings to tilt up or down. This is especially necessary for turns. When an airplane turns left, it doesn't just remain level; the left wing will dip down and the right wing will be raised up. The last of the three axes is yaw, which is the airplane's right and left movement.

Orville and Wilbur realized that birds control pitch, roll, and yaw by adjusting the shape of their wings. The brothers tried to mimic this by developing what they called 'wing warping,' a system of wires and pulleys that manipulated the glider wings to allow banking turns to the left and right. At first the wing warping was controlled with the pilot's feet, but eventually they designed a hip cradle, which was easier to use. The pilot shifted his hips right, the wires pulled the left wingtips up, and the glider banked to the right. Wing warping took care of roll; their front elevator controlled pitch, and eventually the brothers controlled yaw by connecting wires from a rudder to the hip cradle.

In the autumn of 1900, the Wrights packed up a glider and set up camp at a deserted and windy beach outside of Kitty Hawk, NC. For three weeks they flew their glider as a kite, before trying to pilot it. Though they didn't achieve as much lift as they expected based on the lift tables established by aviation researchers, they were very happy with the results of their first Kitty Hawk visit. Their best flight lasted 15 seconds and covered 300 feet.

1901 saw the brothers back at Kitty Hawk, this time with an upgraded glider. The flight tests did not go as they had hoped. The new glider proved much more difficult to control, and they simply could not get the amount of lift they were trying for. They went home to Dayton discouraged and ready to give up. Men will certainly fly, they thought, but not in our lifetime. In the end, they decided to persevere. The lift tables widely accepted by the other pioneers in flight must be wrong. The Wrights decided to test the tables; they built their own wind tunnel in the back of their bicycle shop, and observed its effects on 200 different types of miniature wings.

With the information they gathered from their wind tunnel experiments, the brothers built yet another glider for testing in 1902. This was the first flying machine that had controls for all three axes of motion. It flew smoothly, was controlled easily, and glided more than 600 feet several times. They had a maneuverable aircraft; now they needed power.

True to form, the Wrights decided to build their own engine for their plane (named 'The Flyer'). The finished product put out 12 horsepower and weighed 180 lb (the entire plane weighed 605 lbs). Then came the real challenge: designing propellers. One of their greatest contributions to aviation turned out to be their pioneer research on propellers. Their final product had 70% efficiency, which is nearly as good as modern propel ers! Back at Kitty Hawk in the fall of 1903, they began assembling The Flyer. Bad weather and damage to the plane delayed flying for several months, but finally in mid-December they were ready. Because wheels would make the plane too heavy, the Wrights constructed a wooden track for the plane to move on when taking off. On December 17th, Orville climbed onto The Flyer and started the engine. It moved down the track and lifted into the air. That first flight last only 12 seconds and covered 120 feet, but it was still the first-ever controlled, heavier-than-air flight. The brothers flew the plane four times that day, and the fourth time Wilbur flew for 59 seconds, covering 852 feet.

After this breakthrough the Wrights continued to improve their plane. Now that they weren't dependent on the winds for power, they left the beaches of Kitty Hawk and moved their work to an Ohio field. By 1905, Wilbur was flying laps around the field: 24.5 miles in 39 minutes. In spite of this success, the brothers couldn't find a buyer for their invention. They decided to stop flying until they could get a sales contract. Three years later, in 1908, they received offers from the French and from the U.S. Army. Wilbur packed up a plane and went to France, where he became something of a celebrity by flying figure eights and taking up passengers (this later model had two seats). Orville demonstrated his plane for the U.S. Government and impressed them with his altitude of 300 feet, hour-long flights and average speed of 42.58 miles. They paid him $30,000 for the plane.

The age of aviation had 'taken off,' so to speak. Just 44 years after that first powered flight, airplanes began flying faster than the speed of sound; in another 14 years men were flying in space; another eight years after that they were walking on the moon. The Wright brothers' passion and perseverance laid the foundation for this astonishing and speedy technological advance.
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Science Projects: Technology Experiments

Make a Light Bulb

Thomas Edison tried thousands of experiments when he was inventing the incandescent light bulb. You can experiment too, and find out how a light bulb really works, by making your own! You will need a glass canning jar with a lid, three feet of insulated copper wire, a 6-volt battery, and thin iron wire (unraveled picture hanging wire works great).

Cut the copper wire into two equal sections. Strip at least one inch of insulation off the ends of each length of wire. Next, punch two holes in the jar lid (you can use a nail for this). Thread a wire through each hole in the lid. Make a hook at the end of each wire (the end that will be inside the jar when you put the lid on). Twist two or three strands of iron wire together, then twist the ends around the hooks in the copper wire. The iron wire will act as your filament.

Place the lid (with the filament) in the jar and carefully connect the free ends of the copper wire to the 6-volt battery. Once both ends are connected, the current should start flowing, causing the filament to heat up and give off a bright orange glow. Your homemade light bulb is working! (Note: once your filament is burned out, don't touch it right away - it will be very hot.)

For full instructions on making and experimenting with propellers, read the rest of this science project!
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Learn about Inventions: Airplane, Light Bulb, Telephone

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What if the only way you could communicate with someone living in another city was by mailing them a letter, one that might take weeks to get delivered? (Even with our modern technology, it still takes at least two weeks for mail to get to some countries.)

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Cite:https://ehistory.osu.edu/exhibitions/1912/trusts/RiseBigBusiness

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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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Second Industrial Revolution:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6tRp-zRUJs
Inventions::https://learning-center.homesciencetools.com/article/modern-inventions-airplane-light-bulb-telephone/
The Rise of Big Bussiness:
https://ehistory.osu.edu/exhibitions/1912/trusts/RiseBigBusiness
The Rise of Labor Movement:
https://journalistsresource.org/studies/economics/inequality/labor-unions-income-pay-inequality-research/

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The rise of the Labor Movement: (Picture)

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The rise of the Labor Movement: (Picture)

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Cite:https://journalistsresource.org/studies/economics/inequality/labor-unions-income-pay-inequality-research/

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The issue: Since the Occupy Wall Street movement took over New York's Zuccotti Park in 2011, income inequality has become a major political issue in the United States. Less often discussed is the role labor unions play in protecting workers' wages.

In America, according to an estimate from Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, the top 1 percent of earners take home 25 percent of the nation's income and control 40 percent of the wealth. Meanwhile, working-class wages have fallen over the past 40 years.

Membership in labor unions peaked in 1954 with 34.8 percent of workers, according to the Congressional Research Service, and has fallen since. In 2015, 11.1 percent of American workers were members of a union, according to U.S. Department of Labor statistics. And that year median wages for union members were about 26 percent higher.

Why has union membership fallen so dramatically? One reason is that America's workforce has largely shifted from low-skill manufacturing jobs - which are largely homogenous and easy to organize - to jobs involving high-skilled tasks that require a college education, and which are often more individualized. Moreover, with globalization and the outsourcing of jobs, American workers and the U.S. economy have been forced to compete against other countries where labor is often cheaper. Unions, by offering members higher wages, push up the cost of production and make it harder for American firms to compete.

Add factory automation and the "demand for unskilled labor fell relative to the demand for skilled labor," researchers at the Center for Economic Studies of the Census Bureau explained in a 2012 report. The Bureau defines unskilled workers "as clerical workers, laborers, operatives, and sales personnel, while skilled ones are taken to be craftsmen, managers, and professionals" (see chart to the left).

An academic study worth reading: "Unions and Income Inequality: A Panel Cointegration and Causality Analysis for the United States," published in Economic Development Quarterly, July 2016.

Study summary: Unions have been shown to increase members' wages. As a result, firms with large union membership among their workers have less money available to hire new workers, possibly increasing unemployment. Thus, many economists believe the net effect of unions on the distribution of income is unclear. But as unions recede, other trends are becoming apparent.

Dierk Herzer of Helmut-Schmidt-University in Hamburg, Germany examined the relationship between union membership and income inequality. He looks at two figures: The income share of the top 10 percent of earners in each U.S. state over the years 1964-2012, to measure inequality, and the rate of union membership in each state. He controlled for state income trends and education levels.
Findings:

In every state, the top 10 percent of earners gained control over a larger share of the wealth at the same time union membership declined. (See figure.)

There is a causal relationship between the density of union membership and income inequality over the long run. A 1 percent increase in union membership reduces the income share to the top 10 percent by 0.000514 percentage points. Given the average annual decline in union membership, that translates into the wealthiest 10 percent receiving an increase in income share of 0.00016 percent per year.

The overall decline in union membership is responsible for about 5 percent of the increase in the income share of the top 10 percent.

There is no evidence that income inequality led workers to leave unions. Moreover, a decrease in inequality does not boost union membership (even if it does hurt the wealth of the top 10 percent).

Other resources:
The Bureau of Labor Statistics, part of the U.S. Department of Labor, publishes data on union membership and employment rates across the country. Some figures from 2015: New York State had the highest union membership rate in the country at 24.7 percent; South Carolina had the lowest at 2.1 percent. Men were more likely to be members than women (11.5 percent compared to 10.6 percent); Black workers were more likely to be members than White, Asian or Hispanic workers. Public-sector workers were five-times more likely to be union members than private-sector workers.
Other research:

University of California, Berkeley economist David Card estimated in 1998 that the decline in union membership caused between 10 percent and 20 percent of the rise in male income inequality over the previous 25 years.

Celebrated French economist Thomas Piketty has collected accolades and criticism for his bestselling 2013 book on global inequality, Capital in the Twenty-First Century.

Keywords: labor unions, inequality, income inequality, economy, workforce, right-to-work, union pay
The International Labor Organization (ILO) is a United Nations agency that brings together governments, employers and workers to set standards and develop policies on workers' rights and work conditions. The ILO database has figures on topics such as migrant workers, child labor, grey economies and workers' skills.

Cornell University Library hosts a vast archive of information about labor unions and organizing, including a list of labor unions, bargaining language and labor history.

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington D.C. think-tank, argues that labor unions hurt consumers and the economy overall.

Oxfam International, a confederation of anti-poverty groups, addressed income inequality in its 2014 briefing, "Working for the Few."

An October 2013 report from Credit Suisse, a bank, indicates that almost half of all wealth globally is owned by 1 percent of the population; 10 percent of the planet's population owns 86 percent of its wealth.

Last updated: August 29, 2016

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Labor unions and income inequality in America - Journalist's Resource

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The issue: Since the Occupy Wall Street movement took over New York's Zuccotti Park in 2011, income inequality has become a major political issue in the United States. Less often discussed is the role labor unions play in protecting workers' wages.

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American Imperialism (The Spanish-American War)

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American Imperialism (The Spanish-American War)

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Cite:https://www.sparknotes.com/history/american/spanishamerican/section6/

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SparkNotes: The Spanish American War (1898-1901): American Imperialism: 1898

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A summary of American Imperialism: 1898 in 's The Spanish American War (1898-1901). Learn exactly what happened in this chapter, scene, or section of The Spanish American War (1898-1901) and what it means. Perfect for acing essays, tests, and quizzes, as well as for writing lesson plans.

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American Imperialism:https://www.sparknotes.com/history/american/spanishamerican/section6/
Immigration and the Growth of Cities:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRhjqqe750A
Political Corruption and Progressive Government Reform:http://picturethis.museumca.org/timeline/progressive-era-1890-1920s/progressive-political-reform/info
Women's Rights (Temperence and Suffrage): http://2day.sweetsearch.com/1920-19th-amendment-gives-women-right-to-vote/

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Cite:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRhjqqe750A

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Growth, Cities, and Immigration: Crash Course US History #25

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Political Corruption and Progressive Government Reform:

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Political Corruption and Progressive Government Reform:

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Cite:http://picturethis.museumca.org/timeline/progressive-era-1890-1920s/progressive-political-reform/info

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The American voting public of the early 1900s was accustomed to the tenet that the best government was the least government. Progressive era politics changed that belief when government corruption became commonplace. Reformers like Teddy Roosevelt in Washington and Governor Hiram Johnson in California responded to an epidemic of political and civic corruption by expanding the role of government in regulating the economy and in giving citizens, for the first time, direct access to the legislative process.

Between 1910 and 1914, under Governor Hiram Johnson's political leadership the California legislature expanded state government first by breaking the economic and political power of the Southern Pacific Railroad (SP). The reform legislature passed the Stetson-Eshelman Act, which increased the state Railroad Commission's authority and power to fix passenger and freight rates; thus ending Southern Pacific Railroad's (SP) crushing monopolistic practices. With the Public Utilities Act and the creation of the Public Utility Commission (PUC), the agency's commissioners had the authority over the railroads as well as all public utilities.

The legislators also halted the political power of SP with the passage of reform mechanisms giving voters direct access to government and the legislative process. The initiative allowed voters to pass legislation; the referendum allowed the public's veto of existing legislation; and the recall permitted the removal of elected officials. The direct primary, the popular election of U.S. senators, and cross-filing for Republican and Democratic candidates changed the control over who got elected from party bosses to the voters. In passing these measures, Governor Johnson and the legislature had achieved the political goal of engaging ordinary citizens in participatory democracy. The systemic power of SP was over, but the government's role in shaping its citizens' quality of life was still growing.

In order to address workers' fears of losing their livelihood through sickness or job-related accidents, the legislature passed the Workmen's Compensation, Insurance, and Safety Act in 1913, which in turn set up an Industrial Accident Commission and State Compensation Insurance Fund. This was ground-breaking work by government, which had only recently been in the business of protecting only business interests. Setting additional precedents, the legislature curtailed child labor, and also set an 8-hour day and minimum wage for female industrial workers.

In the field of education, Hiram Johnson's reform government called for teacher pensions, free textbooks for public school children, the creation of a comprehensive curriculum, and mandatory kindergartens. The kindergarten movement, begun in Germany in the 1830s, found a ready American enthusiasm by women reformers who believed that kindergarten was as important an educational experience as college. By 1878, the first free public kindergarten was established in San Francisco. Enthusiastic financial support led to still more kindergartens, so that by 1894, 235 more of them were set up nationally and globally, based on the California model. Public university education also received the attention of reform initially through the generosity of Phoebe Apperson Hearst, mother of publisher William Randolph Hearst. In the 1890s her financial support of the University of California, Berkeley made possible the construction of the outdoor Greek Theater, a women's gymnasium, a university museum and the Department of Anthropology. The University of California continued its academic growth through the appointment of Benjamin Ide Wheeler, who, over a 19-year period, established twenty new departments.

Neither progressive politicians nor unions helped minority laborers in the nation and in California. Blacks were excluded from union membership. Chinese were excluded from immigrating to the U. S. In 1907 Japan agreed through a Gentlemen's Agreement reached with President Roosevelt not to issue passports to Japanese workers, thus also eliminating Japanese from the American work force. Japanese in California, through the passage of the Alien Land Law, were prohibited from owning land in the state. Women, however, fared better. In addition to legislation improved their working conditions, they also received the right to vote. While Governor Johnson did not openly endorse the Amendment that would grant suffrage, he did help get it on the ballot. It passed by 3,587 votes.

Presidents Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson all promoted political, economic, social, and moral reforms on the national front. Passage of several acts expanded the Interstate Commerce Commission. Taft created the Department of Labor. Two economic regulatory agencies were created: the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Trade Commission. Four constitutional amendments were also ratified: the 16th introduced a federal income tax, the 17th allowed for the direct election of U.S. Senators. The 18th established prohibition, and the 19th allowed women the right to vote. Such economic and political reforms under the aegis of an expanded government were necessary, the progressives argued, to restore the values of the American dream for all Americans.

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Progressive Era: 1890-1920s: Progressive Political Reform

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The American voting public of the early 1900s was accustomed to the tenet that the best government was the least government. Progressive era politics changed that belief when government corruption became commonplace.

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Women's Rights (Temprence and Suffrage) (Picture)

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Women's Rights (Temprence and Suffrage) (Picture)

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Citehttp://2day.sweetsearch.com/1920-19th-amendment-gives-women-right-to-vote/

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Women had been advocating for their rights for decades before the amendment was passed, participating in marches and parades, lobbying, acts of civil disobedience, silent vigils, even hunger strikes. Some met with violent resistance and suffered physical abuse and jail time.

The suffrage movement grew out of the abolitionist and temperance movements of the mid-19th century, as women involved in those efforts became politically active. In 1848, about 250 suffragists including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott gathered for the historic Seneca Falls women's rights conference in New York.

After the Civil War, African-American men gained the right to vote with the 15th Amendment. In 1869, Susan B. Anthony and Stanton created the National Woman Suffrage Association to advocate for an amendment to the Constitution, and Lucy Stone formed the American Woman Suffrage Association to work with state legislatures on the issue.

The two groups later combined to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association. In 1872, Anthony was arrested for trying to vote for Ulysses S. Grant in the presidential election. Wyoming was the first state to grant full suffrage to women when it entered the Union in 1890, and 14 other states-most in the west-granted full suffrage by 1920. Most states in the midwest and northeast granted at least partial suffrage, such as the ability to vote only in presidential elections.

"By the beginning of the 20th century, the role of women in American society was changing drastically; women were working more, receiving a better education, bearing fewer children, and several states had authorized female suffrage," according to History.com.

The era also brought about the rise of women's groups such as the Women's Christian Temperance Union, the National Council of Jewish Women, the National Association of Colored Women and the Women's Trade Union League.

By 1916, the Democratic and Republican parties both endorsed the enfranchisement of women. The tide took a decisive turn in favor of women when New York adopted women's suffrage in 1917 and President Woodrow Wilson announced his support of the amendment in 1918.
Several documents related to the 19th Amendment and the women's suffrage movement are available at the National Archives Web site, including a 1868 resolution proposing an Amendment to the Constitution, a petition to Congress submitted in 1871 and the ratification of the 19th Amendment by the state of Tennessee.

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1920: 19th Amendment Gives Women Right to Vote

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Women had been advocating for their rights for decades before the amendment was passed, participating in marches and parades, lobbying, acts of civil disobedience, silent vigils, even hunger strikes. Some met with violent resistance and suffered physical abuse and jail time.

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The Assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand 

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The Assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand 

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Cite: https://www.history.com/news/did-franz-ferdinands-assassination-cause-world-war-i

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The causes of World War I, also known as the Great War, have been debated since it ended. Officially, Germany shouldered much of the blame for the conflict, which caused four years of unprecedented slaughter. But a series of complicated factors caused the war, including a brutal assassination that propelled Europe into the greatest conflict the continent had ever known.

The murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand outraged Austria-Hungary.
In June 1914, Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie traveled to Bosnia-which had been annexed by Austria-Hungary-for a state visit.

On June 28, the couple went to the capital city of Sarajevo to inspect imperial troops stationed there. As they headed toward their destination, they narrowly escaped death when Serbian terrorists threw a bomb at their open-topped car.

Their luck ran out later that day, however, when their driver inadvertently drove them past 19-year-old Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip who shot and killed Franz Ferdinand and his wife at point-blank range. Austria-Hungary was furious and, with Germany's support, declared war on Serbia on July 28.

Within days, Germany declared war on Russia-Serbia's ally-and invaded France via Belgium, which then caused Britain to declare war on Germany.

Limited industrial resources fueled imperialist expansion.
A state's desire to expand its empire was nothing new in European history, but by the early 20th century the Industrial Revolution was in full force.

New industrial and manufacturing technologies created the need to dominate new territories and their natural resources, including oil, rubber, coal, iron and other raw materials.

With the British Empire extending to five continents and France controlling many the African colonies, Germany wanted a larger slice of the territorial pie. As countries vied for position, tensions rose, and they formed alliances to position themselves for European dominance.

The rise of nationalism undermined diplomacy.
During the 19th century, rising nationalism swept through Europe. As people took more pride in country and culture, their desire to rid themselves of imperial rule increased. In some cases, however, imperialism fed nationalism as some groups claimed superiority over others.

This widespread nationalism is thought to be a general cause of World War I. For instance, after Germany dominated France in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, France lost money and land to Germany, which then fueled French nationalism and a desire for revenge.

Nationalism played a specific role in World War I when Archduke Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated by Princip, a member of a Serbian nationalist terrorist group fighting against Austria-Hungary's rule over Bosnia.

Entangled alliances created two competing groups.
In 1879, Germany and Austria-Hungary allied against Russia. In 1882, Italy joined their alliance (The Triple Alliance) and Russia responded in 1894 by allying with France.

In 1907, Great Britain, Russia and France formed the Triple Entente to protect themselves against Germany's growing threat. Soon, Europe was divided into two groups: The Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy; and the Allies, which included Russia, France and Britain.

As war was declared, the allied countries emboldened each other to enter the fray and defend their treaties, although not every coalition was set in stone-Italy later changed sides. By the end of August 1914, the so-called "entangled alliances" had caused what should have been a regional conflict to expand to all of Europe's powerful states.

Militarism sparked an arms race.
In the early 1900s, many European countries increased their military might and were ready and willing put it to use. Most of the European powers had a military draft system and were in an arms race, methodically increasing their war chests and fine-tuning their defense strategies.

Between 1910 and 1914, France, Russia, Britain and Germany significantly increased their defense budgets. But Germany was by far the most militaristic country in Europe at the time. By July 1914, it had increased its military budget by a massive 79 percent.

Germany was also in an unofficial war with Britain for naval superiority. They doubled their naval battle fleet as Britain's Royal Navy produced the first Dreadnought battleship which could outgun and outrun any other battleship in existence. Not to be outdone, Germany built its own fleet of Dreadnoughts.

By the start of World War I, the European powers were not just prepared for war, they expected it and some even counted on it to increase their world standing.

Although the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand was the spark that caused Austria-Hungary to strike the first blow, all the European powers quickly fell in line to defend their alliances, preserve or expand their empires and display their military might and patriotism.

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Did Franz Ferdinand's Assassination Cause World War I?

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The causes of World War I, also known as the Great War, have been debated since it ended. Officially, Germany shouldered much of the blame for the conflict, which caused four years of unprecedented slaughter. But a series of complicated factors caused the war, including a brutal assassination that propelled Europe into the greatest conflict the continent had ever known.

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The Assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand:
https://www.history.com/news/did-franz-ferdinands-assassination-cause-world-war-i

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https://www.ncpedia.org/wwi-technology-and-weapons-war

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Peace established at the end of WW1 (Picture)

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Peace established at the end of WW1 (Picture)

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Cite: https://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/modern-world-history-1918-to-1980/the-treaty-of-versailles/

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Citation: C N Trueman "The Treaty of Versailles"
historylearningsite.co.uk. The History Learning Site, . .

The Treaty of Versailles was the peace settlement signed after World War One had ended in 1918 and in the shadow of the Russian Revolution and other events in Russia. The treaty was signed at the vast Versailles Palace near Paris - hence its title - between Germany and the Allies. The three most important politicians there were David Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau and Woodrow Wilson.
The Versailles Palace was considered the most appropriate venue simply because of its size - many hundreds of people were involved in the process and the final signing ceremony in the Hall of Mirrors could accommodate hundreds of dignitaries. Many wanted Germany, now led by Friedrich Ebert, smashed; others, like Lloyd George, were privately more cautious.

Background

World War One had left Europe devastated. Those countries that had fought in it, had suffered casualties never experienced before:

Britain : 750,000 soldiers killed; 1,500,000 wounded
France : 1,400,000 soldiers killed; 2,500,000 wounded
Belgium : 50,000 soldiers killed
Italy : 600,000 soldiers killed
Russia : 1,700,000 soldiers killed
America : 116,000 soldiers killed

Those who had fought against the Allies suffered heavy casualties as well:

Germany : 2,000,000 soldiers killed
Austria-Hungary : 1,200,000 soldiers killed
Turkey : 325,000 soldiers killed
Bulgaria : 100,000 soldiers killed

The total deaths of all nations who fought in the war is thought to have been 8.5 million with 21 million being wounded.

Alongside these statistics, was the fact that vast areas of north-eastern Europe had been reduced to rubble. Flanders in Belgium had been all but destroyed with the ancient city of Ypres being devastated. The homes of 750,000 French people were destroyed and the infrastructure of this region had also been severely damaged. Roads, coal mines, telegraph poles had all been destroyed and such a loss greatly hindered the area's ability to function normally.

The victors from World War One were in no mood to be charitable to the defeated nations and Germany, in particular, was held responsible for the war and its consequences.

During mid-1918, Europe was hit by Spanish flu and an estimated 25 million people died. This added to the feeling of bitterness that ran through Europe and this anger was primarily directed at Germany.

The "Big Three"

The treaty was signed on June 28th 1919 after months of argument and negotiation amongst the so-called "Big Three" as to what the treaty should contain.

Who were the "Big Three" and where did they clash over Germany and her treatment after the war ?

The "Big Three" were David Lloyd George of Britain, Clemenceau of France and Woodrow Wilson of America.

David Lloyd George of Great Britain had two views on how Germany should be treated.

His public image was simple. He was a politician and politicians needed the support of the public to succeed in elections. If he had come across as being soft on Germany, he would have been speedily voted out of office. The British public was after revenge and Lloyd George's public image reflected this mood. "Hang the Kaiser" and "Make Germany Pay" were two very common calls in the era immediately after the end of the war and Lloyd George, looking for public support, echoed these views.

However, in private Lloyd George was also very concerned with the rise of communism in Russia and he feared that it might spread to western Europe. After the war had finished, Lloyd George believed that the spread of communism posed a far greater threat to the world than a defeated Germany. Privately, he felt that Germany should be treated in such a way that left her as a barrier to resist the expected spread of communism. He did not want the people of Germany to become so disillusioned with their government that they turned to communism. Lloyd George did not want Germany treated with lenience but he knew that Germany would be the only country in central Europe that could stop the spread of communism if it burst over the frontiers of Russia. Germany had to be punished but not to the extent that it left her destitute. However, it would have been political suicide to have gone public with these views.

Georges Clemenceau of France had one very simple belief - Germany should be brought to its knees so that she could never start a war again.

This reflected the views of the French public but it was also what Clemenceau himself believed in. He had seen the north-east corner of France destroyed and he determined that Germany should never be allowed to do this again. "The Tiger" did not have to adapt his policies to suit the French public - the French leader and the French public both thought alike.

Woodrow Wilson of America had been genuinely stunned by the savagery of the Great War. He could not understand how an advanced civilisation could have reduced itself so that it had created so much devastation.

In America, there was a growing desire for the government to adopt a policy of isolation and leave Europe to its own devices. In failing health, Wilson wanted America to concentrate on itself and, despite developing the idea of a League of Nations, he wanted an American input into Europe to be kept to a minimum. He believed that Germany should be punished but in a way that would lead to European reconciliation as opposed to revenge.

He had already written about what he believed the world should be like in his " Fourteen Points ". The main points in this document were:

1. no more secret treaties

2. countries must seek to reduce their weapons and their armed forces

3. national self-determination should allow people of the same nationality to govern themselves and one nationality should not have the power to govern another

4. all countries should belong to the League of Nations.

Italy and the Big Three

Linked to the "Big Three" was Italy led by Vittorio Orlando. He was frequently left on the sidelines when the important negotiations took place despite Italy fighting on the side of the Allies. Why was Italy treated in this manner?

At the start of the war in 1914, Italy should have fought with Germany and Austria as she had signed the Triple Alliance which dictated that if one of the three was attacked, the other two would go to that country's aid. Italy did not join in on Germany's side but waited until 1915 and joined the side of Britain and France. This association with Germany was enough to taint Italy in the eyes of the "Big Three". Also Italy had not played an overwhelming part in the war. Her army had been beaten at the battles of Caporetto. Her strategic importance to central Europe was minimal whilst Britain dominated the Mediterranean with naval bases in Malta and Gibraltar. Italy's potential military clout in 1919, should the need arise to put pressure on Germany and Austria, was limited.

Therefore, the three main nations in the lead up to the treaty were far from united on how Germany should be treated. The eventual treaty seemed to satisfy everyone on the sides of the Allies. For France, it appeared as if Germany had been smashed; for Britain, Lloyd George was satisfied that enough of Germany's power had been left to act as a buffer to communist expansion from Russia; Wilson was simply happy that the proceedings had finished so that he could return home.

So what exactly did the treaty do to Germany?

The terms of the Treaty of Versailles

The treaty can be divided into a number of sections; territorial, military, financial and general.

Territorial.

The following land was taken away from Germany :

Alsace-Lorraine (given to France)

Eupen and Malmedy (given to Belgium)

Northern Schleswig (given to Denmark)

Hultschin (given to Czechoslovakia)

West Prussia, Posen and Upper Silesia (given to Poland)

The Saar, Danzig and Memel were put under the control of the League of Nations and the people of these regions would be allowed to vote to stay in Germany or not in a future referendum.

The League of Nations also took control of Germany's overseas colonies.
Germany had to return to Russia land taken in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Some of this land was made into new states : Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. An enlarged Poland also received some of this land.

Military

Germany's army was reduced to 100,000 men; the army was not allowed tanks

She was not allowed an airforce. She was allowed only 6 capital naval ships and no submarines. The west of the Rhineland and 50 kms east of the River Rhine was made into a demilitarised zone (DMZ). No German soldier or weapon was allowed into this zone. The Allies were to keep an army of occupation on the west bank of the Rhine for 15 years.

Financial

The loss of vital industrial territory would be a severe blow to any attempts by Germany to rebuild her economy. Coal from the Saar and Upper Silesia in particular was a vital economic loss. Combined with the financial penalties linked to reparations, it seemed clear to Germany that the Allies wanted nothing else but to bankrupt her.

Germany was also forbidden to unite with Austria to form one superstate, in an attempt to keep her economic potential to a minimum.

General

There are three vital clauses here:

1. Germany had to admit full responsibility for starting the war. This was Clause 231 - the infamous "War Guilt Clause".

2. Germany, as she was responsible for starting the war as stated in clause 231, was, therefore responsible for all the war damage caused by the First World War. Therefore, she had to pay reparations, the bulk of which would go to France and Belgium to pay for the damage done to the infrastructure of both countries by the war. Quite literally, reparations would be used to pay for the damage to be repaired. Payment could be in kind or cash. The figure was not set at Versailles - it was to be determined later. The Germans were told to write a blank cheque which the Allies would cash when it suited them. The figure was eventually put at £6,600 million - a huge sum of money well beyond Germany's ability to pay.

3. A League of Nations was set up to keep world peace.

In fact, the first 26 clauses of the treaty dealt with the League's organisation.

The German reaction to the Treaty of Versailles

After agreeing to the Armistice in November 1918, the Germans had been convinced that they would be consulted by the Allies on the contents of the Treaty. This did not happen and the Germans were in no position to continue the war as her army had all but disintegrated. Though this lack of consultation angered them, there was nothing they could do about it. Therefore, the first time that the German representatives saw the terms of the Treaty was just weeks before they were due to sign it in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles on June 28th 1919.

There was anger throughout Germany when the terms were made public. The Treaty became known as a Diktat - as it was being forced on them and the Germans had no choice but to sign it. Many in Germany did not want the Treaty signed, but the representatives there knew that they had no choice as Germany was incapable of restarting the war again.

In one last gesture of defiance, the captured German naval force held at Scapa Flow (north of Scotland) scuttled itself i.e. deliberately sank itself.

Germany was given two choices:

1. sign the Treaty or

2. be invaded by the Allies.

They signed the Treaty as in reality they had no choice. When the ceremony was over, Clemenceau went out into the gardens of Versailles and said "It is a beautiful day".

The consequences of Versailles

The Treaty seemed to satisfy the "Big Three" as in their eyes it was a just peace as it kept Germany weak yet strong enough to stop the spread of communism; kept the French border with Germany safe from another German attack and created the organisation, the League of Nations, that would end warfare throughout the world.

However, it left a mood of anger throughout Germany as it was felt that as a nation Germany had been unfairly treated.

Above all else, Germany hated the clause blaming her for the cause of the war and the resultant financial penalties the treaty was bound to impose on Germany. Those who signed it (though effectively they had no choice) became known as the "November Criminals".

Many German citizens felt that they were being punished for the mistakes of the German government in August 1914 as it was the government that had declared war, not the people.

Were the terms of the Treaty of Versailles actually carried out?

The League of Nations was created. This did happen even if Germany was initially excluded from it.

Land had to be handed over the Poland, France, Belgium and Denmark. This did happen - all the land Germany was required to hand over, was handed over. Territory put under League of Nations control was handed over to the League.

All overseas colonies were to be handed over to the League. This did happen.

All land taken from Russia had to be handed back to Russia. This did happen though land in the western area became Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia in keeping with the belief in national self-determination.

Germany's army had to be reduced to 100,000 men. On paper this happened. The fact that Germany side-stepped the rule did not mean that she literally broke it - though what she did was a deliberate attempt to break this term. German soldiers in the 1920's were signed on for a short contract of service and then put in the reserves once their time had finished. Therefore, Germany never had more than 100,000 soldiers serving at any one time though she certainly had substantial reserve soldiers which boosted Hitler when he renounced the clauses of Versailles.

Germany's navy was reduced to 6 battleships with no submarines. This happened. Germany could not afford battleships in the aftermath of the war and most navies were now moving to smaller (by degrees), faster ships that could also carry weapons that carried a punch - such as cruisers. Aircraft carriers were also being developed with greater commitment. Submariners were trained abroad - Versailles did not cover this, so it did not break the terms of Versailles - only the spirit.

No air force was allowed. This happened but as with submariners, potential pilots were trained abroad or using gliders in Germany to educate them in the theory of flying. This did not break Versailles.

Western Germany was to be demilitarised. This happened. Germany was forbidden to unite with Austria. This happened.

Germany had to accept the "War Guilt Clause" and pay reparations. The former happened in the sense that Germany signed the Treaty which meant that she accepted this term on paper - if not in fact. Germany did try and pay reparations when she could do so. She did not refuse to pay in 1922. She simply could not produce what was needed that year and this led to the French invasion of the Ruhr. In the 1920's it was the Allies who took the decision to reduce reparations and eased Germany's plight in so doing. The first instance of refusal to pay reparations came in 1933 when Hitler announced that Germany would not pay - and the Allies did nothing.

Therefore, throughout the 1920's, in nearly all parts of the Treaty, the terms were carried out. It was after 1933 that there was a systematic breaking of the terms when the Nazis came to power.

The other peace settlements

It is often forgotten that with the energy put into the punishment of Germany, other countries fought on her side and, equally, had to be dealt with. These countries were Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey.

Austria-Hungary had to sign two peace settlements, indicative of the fact that this state was shortly to be divided into two.

Austria signed the Treaty of Saint Germain.

Hungary signed the Treaty of Trianon.

Austria and Hungary were treated as two completely new countries after these treaties were signed. Both lost land to neighbouring countries; the new state of Czechoslovakia was effectively created out of this carve-up of land; large blocks of land went to Poland, Romania and Yugoslavia. Part of Austria went to Italy.

Both new countries had to reduce their military capability and both states had to pay reparations for war damage. However, the figures involved were nowhere near as high as the figure imposed on Germany.

Bulgaria had to sign the Treaty of Neuilly. Bulgaria lost land to the new state of Yugoslavia, had to reduce her military capability and had to pay reparations.

Turkey, or the Turkish Empire to be precise, had to sign the Treaty of Sevres.

This was a very harsh treaty. Why was Turkey treated this way? Memories were still clear to many people on the Allied side of what had happened at Gallipoli when the ANZACS suffered appalling losses at the hands of the Turks in what was one of the the Allies greatest defeat of World War One. To an extent, there was an element of revenge on "Johnny Turk" who had had the audacity to inflict defeat on one of the major powers of the world - Great Britain.

Turkey lost most of her land in Europe. Turkey was left with but a toe-hold on what is considered Europe. The Turkish Straits was put under the control of the League of Nations at a time when it was dominated by Britain and France. The land held by Turkey in Arabia was made into a mandate - the land was ruled by the British and French until the people of the areas were ready to govern themselves. Syria and Lebanon went to France while Iraq, Transjordan and Palestine went to Britain.

Armies from Britain, France, Greece and Italy occupied what was left of Turkey - the area known as Asia Minor.

The treaty only served to anger the nationalist Turks who sought to overturn it. This they started to do in 1921.

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The Treaty of Versailles - History Learning Site Treaty of Versailles 1919

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Citation: C N Trueman "The Treaty of Versailles"historylearningsite.co.uk. The History Learning Site, . . The Treaty of Versailles was the peace settlement signed after World War One had ended in 1918 and in the shadow of the Russian Revolution and other events in Russia.

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https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/rise-to-world-power/us-in-wwi/v/united-states-enters-world-war-i

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https://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/modern-world-history-1918-to-1980/the-treaty-of-versailles/

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United States enters World War I (video) | Khan Academy

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

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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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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oL_lStk8q9c

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History Brief: The Rise of the Automobile

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https://www.history.com/topics/united-states-constitution/18th-and-21st-amendments

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Black Tuesday/ Stock Market Crash of 1929: https://www.history.com/news/what-caused-the-stock-market-crash-of-1929

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Black Tuesday/ Stock Market Crash of 1929

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Black Tuesday/ Stock Market Crash of 1929

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Cite: https://www.history.com/news/what-caused-the-stock-market-crash-of-1929

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The stock market crash of 1929-considered the worst economic event in world history-began on Thursday, October 24, 1929, with skittish investors trading a record 12.9 million shares.

On October 28, dubbed "Black Monday," the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged nearly 13 percent. The market fell another 12 percent the next day, " Black Tuesday." While the crisis send shock waves across the financial world, there were numerous signs that a stock market crash was coming. What exactly caused the crash-and could it have been prevented?
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A Stock Market Peak Occurred Before the Crash

During the " Roaring Twenties ", the U.S. economy and the stock market experienced rapid expansion, and stocks hit record highs.

The Dow increased six-fold from August 1921 to September 1929, leading economists such as Irving Fisher to conclude, "Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."

The market officially peaked on September 3, 1929, when the Dow shot up to 381.

By this time, many ordinary working-class citizens had become interested in stock investments, and some purchased stocks "on margin," meaning they paid only a small percentage of the value and borrowed the rest from a bank or broker.

Additionally, the overall economic climate in the United States was healthy in the 1920s. Unemployment was down, and the automobile industry was booming.

While the precise cause of the stock market crash of 1929 is often debated among economists, several widely accepted theories exist.

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The Market-And People-Were Overconfident

Some experts argue that at the time of the crash, stocks were wildly overpriced and that a collapse was imminent.

That same sense of reckless overconfidence extended to average consumers and small investors, too, leading to an "asset bubble." The crash happened after a long period of rising market growth that led to consumer overconfidence.

In fact, after 1922, the stock market had increased by nearly 20 percent each year until 1929.
READ MORE: Here Are Warning Signs Investors Missed Before the 1929 Crash
People Bought Stocks With Easy Credit

During the 1920s, there was a rapid growth in bank credit and easily acquired loans. People encouraged by the market's stability were unafraid of debt.

The concept of "buying on margin" allowed ordinary people with little financial acumen to borrow money from their stockbroker and put down as little as 10 percent of the share value.

A similar type of overconfidence was seen in industries such as manufacturing and agriculture: overproduction led to a glut of items including farm crops, steel, durable goods and iron. This meant companies had to purge their supplies at a loss, and share prices suffered.

The Government Raised Interest Rates

In August 1929 - just weeks before the stock market crashed - the Federal Reserve Bank of New York raised the interest rate from 5 percent to 6 percent.

Some experts say this steep, sudden hike cooled investor enthusiasm, which affected market stability and sharply reduced economic growth.

Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

Another factor was an ongoing agricultural recession: Farmers struggled to make an annual profit to keep their businesses afloat. Some believe this agricultural slump affected the financial climate of the country.

Panic Made the Situation Worse

Public panic in the days after the stock market crash led to hordes of people rushing to banks to withdraw their funds in a number of "bank runs," and investors were unable to withdraw their money because bank officials had invested the money in the market.

This led to massive bank failures and further deepened an already dire financial situation.

Many analysts claim that the financial press also played a key role in contributing to the sense of panic that exacerbated the stock market crash.

The day before Black Thursday, the Washington Post ran the headline: "Huge Selling Wave Creates Near-Panic as Stocks Collapse," while The New York Times announced: "Prices of Stocks Crash in Heavy Liquidation."

There Was No Single Cause for the Turmoil

Most economists agree that several, compounding factors led to the stock market crash of 1929.

A soaring, overheated economy that was destined to one day fall likely played a large role. Equally relevant issues, such as overpriced shares, public panic, rising bank loans, an agriculture crisis, higher interest rates and a cynical press added to the disarray.

Many investors and ordinary people lost their entire savings, while numerous banks and companies went bankrupt.

While historians sometimes debate whether the stock market crash of 1929 directly caused the Great Depression, there's no doubt that it greatly affected the American economy for many years.

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What Caused the Stock Market Crash of 1929?

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The stock market crash of 1929-considered the worst economic event in world history-began on Thursday, October 24, 1929, with skittish investors trading a record 12.9 million shares. On October 28, dubbed "Black Monday," the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged nearly 13 percent. The market fell another 12 percent the next day, " Black Tuesday."

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Table of Contents

1. Origins of Temperance Movement

2. From State to Federal Prohibition Legislation

3. Unexpected Events

4. Calls for Prohibition's Repeal

By the late 1800s, prohibition movements had sprung up across the United States, driven by religious groups who considered alcohol, specifically drunkenness, a threat to the nation. The movement reached its apex in 1919 with the ratification of the 18th Amendment, prohibiting the manufacture, transportation and sale of intoxicating liquors. Prohibition proved difficult to enforce and failed to have the intended effect of eliminating crime and other social problems-to the contrary, it led to a rise in organized crime, as the bootlegging of alcohol became an ever-more lucrative operation. In 1933, widespread public disillusionment led Congress to ratify the 21st Amendment, which repealed Prohibition.

Origins of Temperance Movement

A wave of intense religious revivalism that swept the U.S. during the 1820s and 30s led to the formation of a number of prohibition movements driven by religious groups who considered alcohol, specifically drunkenness, a "national curse." (This revivalism also helped inspire the movement to end slavery.) The first temperance legislation appeared in 1838, in the form of a Massachusetts law prohibiting the sale of spirits in less than 15-gallon quantities. Though it was repealed two years later, Maine passed the first state prohibition law in 1846, and by the time the Civil War began, a number of other states had followed suit.

Did you know? Prohibition was known as "the noble experiment." The phrase was coined by President Herbert Hoover, who wrote to an Idaho senator in 1928: "Our country has deliberately undertaken a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose."

As early as 1873, the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) of Ohio called for the abolition of the sale of alcohol. They were soon joined in the fight by the even more powerful Anti-Saloon League (ASL), founded in 1893 in Ohio but later expanded into a national organization that endorsed political candidates and lobbied for legislation against saloons. Beginning around 1906, the ASL led a renewed call for prohibition legislation at the state level. Through speeches, advertisements and public demonstrations at saloons and bars, prohibition advocates attempted to convince people that that eliminating alcohol from society would eliminate poverty and social vices, such as immoral behavior and physical violence. One prominent temperance advocate, Kentucky-born Carrie Amelia Moore Nation (she called herself "Carry A. Nation"), became known for particularly violent tactics against what she called "evil spirits." In addition to making protest speeches, Nation was known for breaking saloon windows and mirrors and destroying kegs of beer or whiskey with a hatchet. She was arrested numerous times, and became a household name across the country for her "saloon-smashing" campaign.

From State to Federal Prohibition Legislation

By 1916, 23 of 48 states had passed anti-saloon legislation. Many went further, prohibiting the manufacture of alcoholic beverages as well. After the congressional elections that year, "dry" members (as those who favored a national prohibition of alcohol became known) won a two-thirds majority over "wet" in the U.S. Congress. On January 16, 1919, the requisite number of states ratified the 18th Amendment, which prohibited the manufacturing, transportation and sale of alcohol within the United States; it would go into effect the following January.

Later in 1919, the National Prohibition Act-popularly known as the Volstead Act, after its legislative sponsor, Representative Andrew J. Volstead of Minnesota-was enacted in order to provide the government with the means of enforcing Prohibition. Loopholes in this act-such as the fact that liquor used for medicinal, sacramental or industrial purposes remained legal, as did fruit or grape beverages prepared at home-as well as varying degrees of government support throughout the 1920s hampered the enforcement of Prohibition, and it would remain more of an ideal than a reality.

Unexpected Events

Under Prohibition, the illegal manufacture and sale of liquor-known as "bootlegging"-occurred on a large scale across the United States. In urban areas, where the majority of the population opposed Prohibition, enforcement was generally much weaker than in rural areas and smaller towns. Perhaps the most dramatic consequence of Prohibition was the effect it had on organized crime in the United States: as the production and sale of alcohol went further underground, it began to be controlled by the Mafia and other gangs, who transformed themselves into sophisticated criminal enterprises that reaped huge profits from the illicit liquor trade.

When it came to its booming bootleg business, the Mafia became skilled at bribing police and politicians to look the other way. Chicago's Al Capone emerged as the most notorious example of this phenomenon, earning an estimated $60 million annually from the bootlegging and speakeasy operations he controlled. In addition to bootlegging, gambling and prostitution reached new heights during the 1920s as well. A growing number of Americans came to blame Prohibition for this widespread moral decay and disorder-despite the fact that the legislation had intended to do the opposite-and to condemn it as a dangerous infringement on the freedom of the individual.

Calls for Prohibition's Repeal

If public sentiment had turned against Prohibition by the late 1920s, the advent of the Great Depression only hastened its demise, as some argued that the ban on alcohol denied jobs to the unemployed and much-needed revenue to the government. The efforts of the nonpartisan group Americans Against Prohibition Association (AAPA) added to public disillusionment. In 1932, the platform of Democratic presidential candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt included a plank for repealing the 18th Amendment, and his victory that November marked a certain end to Prohibition.

In February 1933, Congress adopted a resolution proposing the 21st Amendment to the Constitution, which repealed both the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act. The resolution required state conventions, rather than the state legislatures, to approve the amendment, effectively reducing the process to a one-state, one-vote referendum rather than a popular vote contest. That December, Utah became the 36th state to ratify the amendment, achieving the necessary majority for repeal. A few states continued statewide prohibition after 1933, but by 1966 all of them had abandoned it. Since then, liquor control in the United States has largely been determined at the local level.

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Prohibition - Definition, Amendment & Era

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The ratification of the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution-which banned the manufacture, transportation and sale of intoxicating liquors-ushered in a 13-year period in American history known as Prohibition.

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Bussiness Cycle/ Causes of the Great Depression

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Bussiness Cycle/ Causes of the Great Depression

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The Great Depression: Causes & Repercussions —  US Economic History 7

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Bussiness Cycle/ Causes of the Great Depression

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Bussiness Cycle/ Causes of the Great Depression

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMSO8Yhnktw

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President Roosevelt's New Deal plan/ Plan for ending the Great Depression

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President Roosevelt's New Deal plan/ Plan for ending the Great Depression

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https://www.history.com/news/new-deal-effects-great-depression

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President Roosevelt's New Deal plan/ Plan for ending the Great Depression

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President Roosevelt's New Deal plan/ Plan for ending the Great Depression

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Did New Deal Programs Help End the Great Depression?

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While the New Deal did have a lasting impact on the U.S. economy, other significant factors contributed toward ending the Great Depression by June 1938.

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Cite: https://www.thebalance.com/what-was-the-dust-bowl-causes-and-effects-3305689

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https://www.thebalance.com/what-was-the-dust-bowl-causes-and-effects-3305689

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The Rise of Totalitarianism in Europe in the 1930s

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The Rise of Totalitarianism in Europe in the 1930s

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PreserveArticles.com: Preserving Your Articles for Eternity

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The following factors contributed to the rise of totalitarianism in Europe between 1929-39:

First, the humiliating treatment rneeted out to Germany by the Treaty of Versailles, created a sense of hatred and revenge amongst the I Germans. The treaty had mutilated Germany physically, humiliated her emotionally, suffocated her economically and encircled her territorially. This had greatly offended the popular sentiments in Germany. Hitler fully exploited these sentiments to establish his dictatorship in German".

Secondly, the Treaty of Versailles greatly disappointed Italy. Though she fought on the side of the victors she could not gain whatever had been promised to her during the war. the other hand. Italy had to face 'poverty, discontent and disorder.'

The Italian leaders felt that though they had won the war they lost the peace. Naturally, the Italians were in the look out for a man who could help them to achieve their national ambitions and they found such a person in Benito Mussolini and permitted him to establish his totalitarian rule in Italy.

Thirdly, the successful bid by America and other European powers to curb the growing power of Japan by imposing restrictions on her navy and ambitions in China, through the Washington Conference of 1921-22 was exploited by the military leaders in Japan to bring discredit to the democratic government and establish a totalitarian rule in Japan.

Fourthly, in Russia the Communist leaders were determined to spread communism all over the world. They crushed all the anti-revolutionary forces within the country with firm hand and tried to promote communism in other countries of world by resorting to all types of methods.

In addition to the particular cause which helped the growth of totalitarian regimes in various countries there were some general causes which also contributed to the rise of dictatorships.

In the first place, the democratic governments established after the First World War proved a miserable failure in so far as they failed to solve the social, economic and political problems facing their countries in the post-war period. Their failure was fully exploited to establish dictatorial regimes.

Secondly, the world wide economic depression of 1929-32 caused enormous hardship and suffering to the people and gave rise to a spirit of frustration, despondency and despair among the people. The people were naturally allured by the leaders who promised them a bright future and rendered them willing obedience.

Finally, the failure of the League of Nations to check aggression and preserve world peace also greatly contributed to the rise of totalitarian regimes. Japan, Italy, Germany etc. committed aggression with impunity and the League of Nations failed to take any action against them.

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What are the main causes for rise of Totalitarianism in Europe?

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First, the humiliating treatment rneeted out to Germany by the Treaty of Versailles, created a sense of hatred and revenge amongst the I Germans. The treaty had mutilated Germany physically, humiliated her emotionally, suffocated her economically and encircled her territorially. Related posts: Short Essay on the Rise of Militarism in Japan after First World War ...

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The Rise of Totalitarianism in Europe in the 1930s

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The Rise of Totalitarianism in Europe in the 1930s

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http://www.preservearticles.com/history/what-are-the-main-causes-for-rise-of-totalitarianism-in-europe/11727

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Objoad6rG6U

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World War II Part 1: Crash Course US History #35