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Great migration:  https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/human-journey/
Anasazi and early hunter gatherers: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/riddles-of-the-anasazi-85274508/
Native american culture areas: http://www.iupui.edu/~mstd/e320/amerind/cultareas.htm
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The vikings: https://www.ancient.eu/Leif_Erikson/
The voyages of Christopher Columbus :https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/6OlHjNjS-5k9Z2-y8mKfCIpDeKbanBcBf81T3yJhz1ijp0pAxK3HKTyesBmY9zi7zXH3bFALWHnnkEoqC6EYDsUjeP4XhcCFtA=w1366-h641
Spanish Empire in the New World https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjhIzemLdos
Race for Empires in the New world http://oxfordre.com/americanhistory/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-262

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The 1st migration and Bering  land Bridge

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The 1st migration and Bering  land Bridge

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Here is an article for the Bring land bridge

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What awful event forced the Anasazi to flee their homeland, never to return?

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Leif Erikson (also spelled Leif Eriksson, Old Norse Leifr Eiríksson), nicknamed Leif 'the Lucky', was a Norse Viking who is best known for arguably being the first European to have set foot on North American soil along with his crew c. 1000 CE. Probably born in Iceland around 970-980 CE, Leif was the son of the famous Erik the Red who set up the first Viking settlement in Greenland in the late 980s CE. After his father's death just after 1000 CE, Leif succeeded him as chieftain of Greenland, and because his son Thorkel had succeeded him by 1025 CE it is fair to assume Leif had died by then, though it is unsure exactly when.

Leif's larger-than-life reputation mostly stems from the 13th-century CE Icelandic Vinland Sagas (the independently composed The Saga of the Greenlanders and Erik the Red's Saga) which tell the story of how he kitted out the first Norse expedition to Newfoundland and the surrounding areas, in present-day Canada. Here, he discovered, among others, the grapevines that inspired the Vikings' name for the area: Vinland (Old Norse Vínland, 'Wine Land'). In fact, most of what we know about Leif Erikson comes from these two sagas. Importantly, they were not eye-witness accounts but concern events dating to more than two centuries before they were written down. The stories' similarities and their context, however, do support the idea that they refer to real people and events that were at least partially preserved by means of an oral tradition. The archaeological record offers some help, too: the remains of the Norse settlement credited by the sagas as being founded by Leif have indeed been found in Newfoundland, at L'Anse aux Meadows.

Early Life

Erik the Red founded the Eastern Settlement in Greenland around 985 CE, where young Leif grew up while around him Greenland was further explored & settled.

Although we know little of Leif's childhood and early years, we do know his family certainly had a knack for making life interesting. Leif's ancestry lies in Jæren, Norway, where his grandfather Thorvald, son of Asvald Ulfsson, got into such a degree of trouble by killing someone that he packed up his family and fled to Iceland, where the Norse had been present since the last quarter of the 9th century CE. There, Thorvald died, leaving his son Erik to carve out a life for himself. In Iceland, Erik, who would 'officially' have been Erik Thorvaldsson but is better known as Erik the Red (probably giving a none too subtle hint about his hair- and beard colour) married local girl Thjodhild, the daughter of Jorund Atlason, whose family had Irish blood somewhere down the line. This Irish connection was a not uncommon by-product of the Viking's exploits in the British Isles starting in the late 9th century CE. Erik and Thjodhild seem to have settled down and built a farm they called Eiríksstaðir near Vatnshorn on the Breidafjord, in the west of Iceland, which is probably where Leif was born. Leif had two brothers, Thorstein and Thorvald, as well as a sister, Freydis, who according to Erik the Red's Saga was an illegitimate daughter of Erik's.

A quiet life was not in the cards for Leif's family; his father Erik followed in grandfather Thorvald's footsteps in being exiled for murder, too, around 982 CE. This time, however, there was no known Norse settlement to the west that they could easily move to. Following rumours of land that had been sighted west of Iceland, though, Erik the Red sailed there and allegedly became the first Viking to set foot on Greenland, coining the name to entice more people to come and settle there. He founded what would become the Eastern Settlement on Greenland's southern tip around 985 CE, picking the choicest morsel of land for himself and his family and setting up a farm called Brattahlíð in the confidently named Eriksfjord. Young Leif thus grew up there within a pioneering lifestyle, while around him Greenland was further explored and settled. The people surrounding him in this initial colonisation of Greenland would have come from Iceland and were mostly chieftains and rich farmers who owned their own ships, probably counting around 500 individuals; they set up stock farms with the domestic animals they had brought along in their ships in the inner fjords where land was comparatively fertile.

Leif in the Hebrides & Norway

Leif's exploits prior to his famous American venture are laid out in a sole source, Erik the Red's Saga, whose accuracy is thus tricky to verify. The saga relays how Leif, who is described as a promising young man, wants to sail from Greenland to Norway one summer but is blown off-course to the Hebrides, where the suboptimal sailing conditions keep him stranded there all summer. There, he makes use of a previously established Norse foothold on the islands. Luckily for Leif, his holiday is anything but boring: he meets a lady of high birth named Thorgunna, whom he falls in love with to such a degree she states she is pregnant by the time Leif is ready to set sail again. Although Thorgunna wishes to go home with Leif, her family's approval has not been sought and according to the saga, Leif feels 'reluctant to abduct a woman of such high birth from a foreign country.' ( Erik the Red's Saga 5, in Smiley, 660). She is not happy with this and informs Leif she will send her child over to him in Greenland as soon as he is old enough to travel. Thorgunna later gives birth to a son, Thorgils, who eventually does come to Greenland and is recognised by Leif as his son, or so the saga says.

Leif then continues the journey to his original destination, Norway, where he swears loyalty to Olaf Tryggvason, the King of Norway (r. 995-1000 CE), the man who went down in history among others for playing a part in the spread of Christianity among the Norse. Erik's Saga clearly carries out this theme too, and, again being the only source for this otherwise unknown attribution, states that King Olaf asks Leif Erikson to become his envoy and convert Greenland to Christianity. Leif agrees to this. Historically, it is possible (or even probable) that the Norse Greenlanders were already Christian around the time of the initial settlement, however. Iceland officially adopted Christianity in 1000 CE - with Greenland following soon after, prior to which the religion had already begun to take decent root. Olaf Tryggvason's role in its spread seems a tad exaggerated, anyway: although he is credited by the sagas as converting the people of Shetland and Orkney, for instance, the archaeological record demonstrates they had already adopted Christianity well before the end of the 10th century CE. Similarly, Leif's role in the Christianisation of Greenland should not go unquestioned, either, as Gísli Sigurðsson explains:

The people who left Breidafjord in Iceland with Eiríkr the Red in 985 or 986 and settled in Greenland have not left behind any signs of heathen burial customs in Greenland. The oldest graves from the cemetery of Þjóðhild's [Thjodhild, Leif's mother] church are Christian and date from the end of the tenth century. This shows that Christianity was the living religion of these people, even though Óláfr Tryggvason is supposed to have sent Leifr Eiríksson the Lucky to convert them in 1000. (Brink & Price, 564).

Erik the Red's Saga claims that Leif's father Erik refused to convert, although his mother did, and that 'after her conversion, Thjodhild refused to sleep with Eirik, much to his displeasure.' ( Erik the Red's Saga 5 in Smiley, 661).

Vinland: Journeys to America

Continuing the story from Erik the Red's Saga, before Leif even gets back to Greenland from Norway to start his preaching gig, he once again ends up on a side-quest:

After being tossed about at sea for a long time he chanced upon land where he had not expected any to be found. Fields of self-sown wheat and vines were growing there; also, there were trees known as maple, and they took specimens of all of them. Leif also chanced upon men clinging to a ship's wreck, whom he brought home and found shelter for over the winter. In so doing he showed his strong character and kindness. (...) Afterwards he became known as Leif the Lucky. (Erik the Red's Saga 5, quoted from Smiley, 661).

This is the crux of Leif Erikson's fame: the European discovery of the lands the Norse called Vínland ('Wine Land'), on the eastern shores of North America - a landmass which was of course already inhabited. Vinland is thought to have encompassed the whole area from the Strait of Belle Isle in Newfoundland to the Gulf of St Lawrence and its southern shores, perhaps stretching to Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick. Here, The Saga of the Greenlanders chips in with additional (and sometimes divergent) information. This saga instead attributes the first sighting of (if not landing on) Vinland to Bjarni Herjólfsson, who here is the one who was blown off-course. Leif then hears of his land-sighting story back in Greenland, launches an expedition, and first reaches a glacier-covered stone slab of land he and his crew name Helluland ('Stone-slab Land', likely northern Labrador and/or Baffin Island) and then a flat and forested land they call Markland ('Forest Land', likely central Labrador). Eventually they come upon a lush land where they found a base they name Leifsbúðir ('Leif's Booths'). It is while exploring the surrounding lands, especially further south, that Leif and his men discover timber and the grapes that inspire Vinland's name.

Leif Erikson is actually a good candidate for the historical leader of at least one of the expeditions to Vinland, likely carrying it out on behalf of his father Erik the Red.

In Erik the Red's Saga, the base set up by Leif is instead named Straumfjǫrðr ('Fjord of Currents'). Its different name might be explained by the fact that this saga seems to downplay Leif's role in general, focusing instead on his sister-in- law Gudrid and her husband Karlsefni who are depicted as leading one big expedition to Vinland. This is a possible result of a movement in the 13th century CE which sought to canonise Bishop Björn Gilsson, a direct descendant of theirs. Either way, Leifsbúðir/Straumfjǫrðr, or whatever it may have been called, became the biggest archaeological boost to Leif's Vinland story in 1961 CE, when the remains of a Norse settlement were discovered at L'Anse aux Meadows on the northernmost tip of Newfoundland's Northern Peninsula, in present-day Canada. Eight turf-walled dwellings, including what looks like chieftains' halls, other large halls, smaller halls and huts, all with large storage spaces and some with workshops built in, were uncovered and date to between 980-1020 CE. They thus fit the sagas' timeframes. A ringed pin of the Dublin Viking type was found there, too, tying in with information from the sagas about the Viking explorers having had family connections in Ireland (such as Leif's mother having Irish ancestry).

The settlement, which could have housed between 70-90 people, was set up for work crews who probably used the site as a gateway location, overwintering there and then launching expeditions to other regions where they gathered timber, grapes, furs, and other valuable resources. These could then be stored at L'Anse aux Meadows until they could be ferried back to Greenland. It was in use for perhaps less than a decade, before a combination of the too-extravagant distance from there to Greenland and competition with natives gave the venture the 'not worth the hassle' stamp.

L'Anse aux Meadows was clearly the Viking's main base in North America - based on the fact that the Norse population in Greenland around 1000 CE would have been too small to support another large settlement in America - and there is no doubt that it corresponds with the Straumfjǫrðr and Leifsbúðir from the sagas. Leif is actually a good candidate for the historical leader of at least one of the expeditions to Vinland, as the buildings found at L'Anse aux Meadows indicate the presence of an important chieftain. Leif fits this description: with his father Erik the Red being the head honcho of Norse Greenland around the start of the Vinland journeys, it is likely Erik would have initially overseen or authorised these journeys and that Leif would have functioned as his deputy in actually carrying them out. It is not too much of a stretch to believe Leif's Vinland adventures as depicted in the sagas are at least partially rooted in historical reality.

The Post-Vinland Years

Erik the Red died sometime in the years just after 1000 CE. Leif succeeded him, becoming chief of Greenland and returning there to sort stuff out there while passing on the Vinland baton to his deputies - all family and extended family, if we follow the sagas. They would have been required to bring Leif a share of their riches, further adding to what was probably already a comfortable lifestyle for him. Leif's brother Thorvald is described in The Saga of the Greenlanders as leading an expedition to Vinland and borrowing both Leif's ship and his houses at Leifsbúðir for it. He explores the surrounding area with his crew but is used as a pin-cushion by arrows fired from natives, and dies, far away from home. Another brother, Thorstein then comes to Vinland, too, to recover his brother's body. Leif also grants his sister-in-law Gudrid and her husband Karlsefni permission to use his houses in Vinland. The same goes for Leif's sister Freydis, who in a somewhat strange story spreads weird rumours and gets her crew to fight amongst themselves, resulting in deaths, with Freydis killing off the remaining women with her own hands. The saga describes how the party returns to Greenland, Leif eventually finds out what happened, and condemns her but does not take any further action against her.

The only other theme the sagas focus on in Leif's post-Vinland years is his alleged role in spreading Christianity across Greenland - one we have already labelled as dubious or at the very least hard to verify. His mother seems to have sponsored or given her name to a church, Thjodhild's church, built around the end of the 10th century CE, though. Leif is last mentioned alive in written records in 1019 CE, and we know that his son Thorkel became chieftain of Greenland in 1025 CE. Presumably, then, Leif died sometime between 1019 and 1025 CE. Other than his summer of love in the Hebrides with Thorgunna, no other partner is mentioned for him, so we do not know how this Thorkel came into the world.

Legacy

By the 19th century CE, before the discovery of L'Anse aux Meadows lifted the Vinland Sagas ' stories from the pages of books into archaeological reality, Leif Erikson was the chosen hero of many of the Scandinavians who emigrated to North America around this time. In 1898 CE, a forged rune-stone known as the Kensington Stone popped up in Minnesota sporting an 'amateurishly concocted inscription supposedly made by fourteenth-century descendants of Viking settlers.' (Sawyer, 245). From the archaeological confirmation of a Norse presence in America in the 1960s CE, Christopher Columbus has had to share the stage with the Norse Viking Leif Erikson who beat him to the American punch by around 500 years, and who has been granted his own day in the United States, too: Leif Erikson Day, on October 9th.

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Leif Erikson (also spelled Leif Eriksson, Old Norse Leifr Eiríksson), nicknamed Leif 'the Lucky', was a Norse Viking who is best known for arguably being the first European to have set foot on North American soil along with his crew c. 1000 CE.

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The Spanish Empire, Silver, & Runaway Inflation: Crash Course World History #25

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Ideas of Race in Early America - Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History

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"Race," as a concept denoting a fundamental division of humanity and usually encompassing cultural as well as physical traits, was crucial in early America. It provided the foundation for the colonization of Native land, the enslavement of American Indians and Africans, and a common identity among socially unequal and ethnically diverse Europeans.

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English settlement in the New World http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=2&psid=3574
The effects of the Enlightenment and great awakening https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-ushistory1os2xmaster/chapter/great-awakening-and-enlightenment/
Acts passed against the colonists https://slideplayer.com/slide/3834993/13/images/10/Following+the+French+and+Indian+War%2C+Britain+implemented+a+series+of+taxes+designed+to+raise+money+to+pay+the+debt+incurred+because+of+the+War.+Each+of+these+Acts+were+passed+in+Parliament+without+colonial+consent+nor+representation.+Below+is+description+of+each+tax+along+with+the+colonist+reaction+to+these+new+taxes..jpg
The Boston massacre and Tea Party https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cT_Z0KGhP8

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In a volume recounting the history of the English colony in Virginia, Smith describes a famous incident in which Powhatan's 12-year-old daughter, Pocahontas (1595?-1617), saved him from execution. Although some have questioned whether this incident took place (since Smith failed to mention it in his Historie's first edition), it may well have been a "staged event," an elaborate adoption ceremony by which Powhatan symbolically made Smith his vassal or servant.

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The effects of the Enlightenment and the Great Awakening

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The effects of the Enlightenment and the Great Awakening

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Learning Objectives

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

Explain the significance of the Great Awakening

Describe the genesis, central ideas, and effects of the Enlightenment in British North America

Two major cultural movements further strengthened Anglo-American colonists' connection to Great Britain: the Great Awakening and the Enlightenment. Both movements began in Europe, but they advocated very different ideas: the Great Awakening promoted a fervent, emotional religiosity, while the Enlightenment encouraged the pursuit of reason in all things. On both sides of the Atlantic, British subjects grappled with these new ideas.

During the eighteenth century, the British Atlantic experienced an outburst of Protestant revivalism known as the First Great Awakening. (A Second Great Awakening would take place in the 1800s.) During the First Great Awakening, evangelists came from the ranks of several Protestant denominations: Congregationalists, Anglicans (members of the Church of England), and Presbyterians. They rejected what appeared to be sterile, formal modes of worship in favor of a vigorous emotional religiosity. Whereas Martin Luther and John Calvin had preached a doctrine of predestination and close reading of scripture, new evangelical ministers spread a message of personal and experiential faith that rose above mere book learning. Individuals could bring about their own salvation by accepting Christ, an especially welcome message for those who had felt excluded by traditional Protestantism: women, the young, and people at the lower end of the social spectrum.

The Great Awakening caused a split between those who followed the evangelical message (the "New Lights") and those who rejected it (the "Old Lights"). The elite ministers in British America were firmly Old Lights, and they censured the new revivalism as chaos. Indeed, the revivals did sometimes lead to excess. In one notorious incident in 1743, an influential New Light minister named James Davenport urged his listeners to burn books. The next day, he told them to burn their clothes as a sign of their casting off the sinful trappings of the world. He then took off his own pants and threw them into the fire, but a woman saved them and tossed them back to Davenport, telling him he had gone too far.

Another outburst of Protestant revivalism began in New Jersey, led by a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church named Theodorus Frelinghuysen. Frelinghuysen's example inspired other ministers, including Gilbert Tennent, a Presbyterian. Tennant helped to spark a Presbyterian revival in the Middle Colonies (Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey), in part by founding a seminary to train other evangelical clergyman. New Lights also founded colleges in Rhode Island and New Hampshire that would later become Brown University and Dartmouth College.

In Northampton, Massachusetts, Jonathan Edwards led still another explosion of evangelical fervor. Edwards's best-known sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," used powerful word imagery to describe the terrors of hell and the possibilities of avoiding damnation by personal conversion. One passage reads: "The wrath of God burns against them [sinners], their damnation don't slumber, the pit is prepared, the fire is made ready, the furnace is now hot, ready to receive them, the flames do now rage and glow. The glittering sword is whet, and held over them, and the pit hath opened her mouth under them." Edwards's revival spread along the Connecticut River Valley, and news of the event spread rapidly through the frequent reprinting of his famous sermon.

The foremost evangelical of the Great Awakening was an Anglican minister named George Whitefield. Like many evangelical ministers, Whitefield was itinerant, traveling the countryside instead of having his own church and congregation. Between 1739 and 1740, he electrified colonial listeners with his brilliant oratory.

Two Opposing Views of George Whitefield

Not everyone embraced George Whitefield and other New Lights. Many established Old Lights decried the way the new evangelical religions appealed to people's passions, rather than to traditional religious values. The two illustrations below present two very different visions of George Whitefield.

Compare the two images above. On the left is an illustration for Whitefield's memoirs, while on the right is a cartoon satirizing the circus-like atmosphere that his preaching seemed to attract (Dr. Squintum was a nickname for Whitefield, who was cross-eyed). How do these two artists portray the same man? What emotions are the illustration for his memoirs intended to evoke? What details can you find in the cartoon that indicate the artist's distaste for the preacher?

The Great Awakening saw the rise of several Protestant denominations, including Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists (who emphasized adult baptism of converted Christians rather than infant baptism). These new churches gained converts and competed with older Protestant groups like Anglicans (members of the Church of England), Congregationalists (the heirs of Puritanism in America), and Quakers. The influence of these older Protestant groups, such as the New England Congregationalists, declined because of the Great Awakening. Nonetheless, the Great Awakening touched the lives of thousands on both sides of the Atlantic and provided a shared experience in the eighteenth-century British Empire.

The Enlightenment, or the Age of Reason, was an intellectual and cultural movement in the eighteenth century that emphasized reason over superstition and science over blind faith. Using the power of the press, Enlightenment thinkers like John Locke, Isaac Newton, and Voltaire questioned accepted knowledge and spread new ideas about openness, investigation, and religious tolerance throughout Europe and the Americas. Many consider the Enlightenment a major turning point in Western civilization, an age of light replacing an age of darkness.

Several ideas dominated Enlightenment thought, including rationalism, empiricism, progressivism, and cosmopolitanism. Rationalism is the idea that humans are capable of using their faculty of reason to gain knowledge. This was a sharp turn away from the prevailing idea that people needed to rely on scripture or church authorities for knowledge. Empiricism promotes the idea that knowledge comes from experience and observation of the world. Progressivism is the belief that through their powers of reason and observation, humans could make unlimited, linear progress over time; this belief was especially important as a response to the carnage and upheaval of the English Civil Wars in the seventeenth century. Finally, cosmopolitanism reflected Enlightenment thinkers' view of themselves as citizens of the world and actively engaged in it, as opposed to being provincial and close-minded. In all, Enlightenment thinkers endeavored to be ruled by reason, not prejudice.

The Freemasons were a fraternal society that advocated Enlightenment principles of inquiry and tolerance. Freemasonry originated in London coffeehouses in the early eighteenth century, and Masonic lodges (local units) soon spread throughout Europe and the British colonies. One prominent Freemason, Benjamin Franklin, stands as the embodiment of the Enlightenment in British America. Born in Boston in 1706 to a large Puritan family, Franklin loved to read, although he found little beyond religious publications in his father's house. In 1718 he was apprenticed to his brother to work in a print shop, where he learned how to be a good writer by copying the style he found in the Spectator, which his brother printed. At the age of seventeen, the independent-minded Franklin ran away, eventually ending up in Quaker Philadelphia. There he began publishing the Pennsylvania Gazette in the late 1720s, and in 1732 he started his annual publication Poor Richard: An Almanack, in which he gave readers much practical advice, such as "Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise."

Franklin subscribed to deism, an Enlightenment-era belief in a God who created, but has no continuing involvement in, the world and the events within it. Deists also advanced the belief that personal morality-an individual's moral compass, leading to good works and actions-is more important than strict church doctrines. Franklin's deism guided his many philanthropic projects. In 1731, he established a reading library that became the Library Company of Philadelphia. In 1743, he founded the American Philosophical Society to encourage the spirit of inquiry. In 1749, he provided the foundation for the University of Pennsylvania, and in 1751, he helped found Pennsylvania Hospital.

His career as a printer made Franklin wealthy and well-respected. When he retired in 1748, he devoted himself to politics and scientific experiments. His most famous work, on electricity, exemplified Enlightenment principles. Franklin observed that lightning strikes tended to hit metal objects and reasoned that he could therefore direct lightning through the placement of metal objects during an electrical storm. He used this knowledge to advocate the use of lightning rods: metal poles connected to wires directing lightning's electrical charge into the ground and saving wooden homes in cities like Philadelphia from catastrophic fires. He published his findings in 1751, in Experiments and Observations on Electricity.

Franklin also wrote of his "rags to riches" tale, his Memoir, in the 1770s and 1780s. This story laid the foundation for the American Dream of upward social mobility.

Visit the Worldly Ways section of PBS's Benjamin Franklin site to see an interactive map showing Franklin's overseas travels and his influence around the world. His diplomatic, political, scientific, and business achievements had great effects in many countries.

The reach of Enlightenment thought was both broad and deep. In the 1730s, it even prompted the founding of a new colony. Having witnessed the terrible conditions of debtors' prison, as well as the results of releasing penniless debtors onto the streets of London, James Oglethorpe, a member of Parliament and advocate of social reform, petitioned King George II for a charter to start a new colony. George II, understanding the strategic advantage of a British colony standing as a buffer between South Carolina and Spanish Florida, granted the charter to Oglethorpe and twenty like-minded proprietors in 1732. Oglethorpe led the settlement of the colony, which was called Georgia in honor of the king. In 1733, he and 113 immigrants arrived on the ship Anne. Over the next decade, Parliament funded the migration of twenty-five hundred settlers, making Georgia the only government-funded colonial project.

Oglethorpe's vision for Georgia followed the ideals of the Age of Reason, seeing it as a place for England's "worthy poor" to start anew. To encourage industry, he gave each male immigrant fifty acres of land, tools, and a year's worth of supplies. In Savannah, the Oglethorpe Plan provided for a utopia: "an agrarian model of sustenance while sustaining egalitarian values holding all men as equal."

Oglethorpe's vision called for alcohol and slavery to be banned. However, colonists who relocated from other colonies, especially South Carolina, disregarded these prohibitions. Despite its proprietors' early vision of a colony guided by Enlightenment ideals and free of slavery, by the 1750s, Georgia was producing quantities of rice grown and harvested by slaves.

The eighteenth century saw a host of social, religious, and intellectual changes across the British Empire. While the Great Awakening emphasized vigorously emotional religiosity, the Enlightenment promoted the power of reason and scientific observation. Both movements had lasting impacts on the colonies. The beliefs of the New Lights of the First Great Awakening competed with the religions of the first colonists, and the religious fervor in Great Britain and her North American colonies bound the eighteenth-century British Atlantic together in a shared, common experience. The British colonist Benjamin Franklin gained fame on both sides of the Atlantic as a printer, publisher, and scientist. He embodied Enlightenment ideals in the British Atlantic with his scientific experiments and philanthropic endeavors. Enlightenment principles even guided the founding of the colony of Georgia, although those principles could not stand up to the realities of colonial life, and slavery soon took hold in the colony.

Review Question

Who were the Freemasons, and why were they significant?

Answer to Review Question

The Freemasons were a fraternal society that originated in London coffeehouses in the early eighteenth century. They advocated Enlightenment principles of inquiry and tolerance. Masonic lodges soon spread throughout Europe and the British colonies, creating a shared experience on both sides of the Atlantic and spreading Enlightenment intellectual currents throughout the British Empire. Benjamin Franklin was a prominent Freemason.

Glossary

deism an Enlightenment-era belief in the existence of a supreme being-specifically, a creator who does not intervene in the universe-representing a rejection of the belief in a supernatural deity who interacts with humankind

Enlightenment an eighteenth-century intellectual and cultural movement that emphasized reason and science over superstition, religion, and tradition

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By the end of this section, you will be able to: Explain the significance of the Great Awakening Describe the genesis, central ideas, and effects of the Enlightenment in British North America Two major cultural movements further strengthened Anglo-American colonists' connection to Great Britain: the Great Awakening and the Enlightenment.

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The story behind the Boston Tea Party - Ben Labaree

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Paul Revere and the Battle of Lexington and Concord

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Paul Revere and the Battle of Lexington and Concord

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Paul Revere and the Battles of Lexington and Concord https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jhj4lf8eGH8
The Declaration of Independence https://image.slidesharecdn.com/declarationofindependence-141112190311-conversion-gate02/95/declaration-of-independence-1-638.jpg?cb=1415819018
The battle of Saratoga https://www.saratoga.com/aboutsaratoga/battle-of-saratoga/

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The Battle of Saratoga, comprising two significant battles during September and October of 1777, was a crucial victory for the Patriots during the American Revolution and is considered the turning point of the Revolutionary War. The Battle was the impetus for France to enter the war against Britain, re-invigorating Washington's Continental Army and providing much needed supplies and support.

Recognized as one of the fifteen most decisive battles in world history, the Saratoga National Historic Park commemorates the site where a new Nation emerged.

A Brief Overview of the Crucial Battles of Saratoga
N. Currier, and John Trumbull. Surrender of General Burgoyne at Saratoga N.Y. Oct. 17th. New York: Published by N. Currier. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/2002695771/>.
The turning point in the Revolutionary War began as a plan by the British to strategically control Upstate New York and isolate New England from the Southern colonies in an effort to decisively put an end to the Revolution. It ended as an opportunity the Patriots were waiting for.

British troops led by General John Burgoyne planned to drive south from Montreal to Albany, NY along the historic water route of Lake Champlain, Lake George and the Hudson River. Once in Albany, they would join forces with two other British commands, one coming north from New York City and the other coming east along the Mohawk River valley.

Moving South

Burgoyne's advance south faltered in the forests near the Lake George area. Colonist troops were felling trees and blocking Burgoyne's path, slowing the British considerably. By the time Burgoyne reached Fort Edward, they were running low on supplies. A detachment was sent to procure cattle and supplies from nearby Vermont, and were subsequently overrun by Colonist forces, further dwindling Burgoyne's numbers.

Separately, the British that were traveling North from New York City under the command of General Howe, decided to veer from the plan and 'take' Philadelphia, which they did, however, Washington's Continental Army retreated to York and prevented Howe from leaving and joining forces with Burgoyne. In addition, Washington realized that a major battle was shaping up, and sent troops north. He also put the word out that any Militia that could join the troops should. The end result was a large contingent of regular troops and militia gathered in the Saratoga area.
Photo Credit: SaratogaPhotographer.com
Battle #1

Burgoyne again began his advance south, but was stopped about 10 miles below Saratoga. The first battle of Saratoga, the Battle of Freeman's Farm, took place on September 19, 1777. A militia of sharpshooters from Virginia harassed the British, while other colonist forces aggressively charged into battle with them. Burgoyne lost two men for every one on the American side.

Battle #2

The second battle, the Battle of Bemis Heights, occurred on October 7, when Burgoyne determined to break free from the encircling colonial forces and drive them from the field. The British troops and their German allies were devastated, and nearly lost their entrenched positions. Fighting on horseback, Benedict Arnold, received a wound in his leg during this battle; his contribution to the battle is commemorated by a statue of his boot, with no other reference to the hero turned traitor.

Victory!

This defeat at Bemis Heights forced Burgoyne to withdraw north to camps in and around the present Village of Schuylerville. Burgoyne surrendered on October 17, 1777, in what would later be named Victory NY, where the Saratoga Monument memorializes that important day.

Disgraced, Burgoyne returned to England, and was never given another command. These crucial colonist victories at the Battle of Saratoga persuaded the French to support the Americans with military aid, and is considered the major turning point in the American Revolution.

See Where It Happened!
Photo Credit: SaratogaPhotographer.com
Here in Saratoga you can walk the battlefield that marked the turning point of the American Revolution, observe period artillery and discover more about the crucial Battle of Saratoga. Visit our page on Saratoga National Historic Park: Site of the Battle of Saratoga to learn more.
Sources of Information: MyRevolutionaryWar.com, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and Saratoga National Historic Park MORE: Full excerpt on the Battle of Saratoga from Creasy's 15 most Decisive Battles

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The Battle of Saratoga - A Major Turning Point of the Revolutionary War

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The Battle of Saratoga proved to be a crucial victory for the Patriots and is considered a turning point of the Revolutionary War.

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Battle of Yorktown and the Treaty of Paris

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Battle of Yorktown and the Treaty of Paris

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(ignore the video at the top of the article)

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The Last Year of the War

Late in the American Revolution, George Washington had good reason to be hopeful. Despite Britain's Southern Strategy, American troops were making headway against the British army and their loyalist forces. Foreign navies were fighting the British at sea, and French officers, like the Marquis de Lafayette, were also helping on land. While the morale of the Continental armies and navies were on the rise, British troops became disheartened, and the English population was starting to grumble about another expensive, seemingly endless war.

In an attempt to disrupt the American troops in the south, General Charles Cornwallis had moved his army into Yorktown, Virginia at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. From there, he planned to attack the American supply and communication lines. And in the event that things went poorly, he figured he had a quick escape by sea.

Lafayette had been covertly following Cornwallis' actions and quietly gathering reinforcements throughout the summer, preparing for a coordinated attack. The Americans needed to stop Cornwallis before he received a supply shipment and reinforcements from England, but this would also have to be a surprise attack, so they could surround him before he escaped.

Converging on Yorktown

In mid-August 1781, the Continental Army received a message from across the sea. The French fleet was leaving the West Indies and heading to Yorktown. They would arrive within a month. The French army moved down from Rhode Island to join the American forces right under the nose of the redcoats. Moving thousands of men and animals secretly for several hundred miles would be a challenge today, but without the modern conveniences of roads or bridges, it seems impossible.

To try and slip away without being noticed, Washington established a decoy force, suggesting to the British that he was planning to attack their base in New York City. About two weeks later, the British commander-in-chief learned from a scout that the Americans were past Philadelphia. He desperately tried to get word to General Cornwallis. But by September 5, Cornwallis didn't need anyone to tell him he was in trouble. The French navy had arrived.

The Siege of Yorktown

A British fleet from New York was dispatched and the two rivals clashed at sea in the Battle of the Chesapeake. On September 16, the British attack fleet retreated to New York with their tails between their legs, leaving General Cornwallis pinned against the bay with France at his back and the combined army approaching from the front. At least 7,000 land forces arrived on September 28, joined by more than 3,000 French marines. The British army was surrounded.

The Battle of Yorktown was really a three-week siege. French and American cannons began to fire on British defensive positions without stopping in order to prevent the British from making any repairs. The allies captured the redoubts and turned the guns back on the British. As the allies drew closer to the town, Cornwallis began sinking his own ships in the harbor to keep them from being captured. After a failed attempt to escape, General Cornwallis surrendered on October 19, 1781.

Back in England, King George insisted he could send more troops and win the war, but he didn't have any support in Parliament or among the English people. The surrender at Yorktown marked the end of the American Revolution. However, it would be two more years before the various navies resolved their fights overseas, British troops evacuated the United States and a peace treaty was signed.

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the battle of yorktown and the treaty of paris - video & lesson transcript | study.com

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The Battle of Yorktown and the Treaty of Paris - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

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Late in the American Revolution, George Washington had good reason to be hopeful. Despite Britain's Southern Strategy, American troops were making headway against the British army and their loyalist forces. Foreign navies were fighting the British at sea, and French officers, like the Marquis de Lafayette, were also helping on land.

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The Articles of Confederation served as the written document that established the functions of the national government of the United States after it declared independence from Great Britain. It established a weak central government that mostly, but not entirely, prevented the individual states from conducting their own foreign diplomacy.

The Articles of Confederation

The Albany Plan an earlier, pre-independence attempt at joining the colonies into a larger union, had failed in part because the individual colonies were concerned about losing power to another central insitution. As the American Revolution gained momentum, however, many political leaders saw the advantages of a centralized government that could coordinate the Revolutionary War. In June of 1775, the New York provincial Congress sent a plan of union to the Continental Congress, which, like the Albany Plan, continued to recognize the authority of the British Crown.

Some Continental Congress delegates had also informally discussed plans for a more permanent union than the Continental Congress, whose status was temporary. Benjamin Franklin had drawn up a plan for "Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union." While some delegates, such as Thomas Jefferson, supported Franklin's proposal, many others were strongly opposed. Franklin introduced his plan before Congress on July 21, but stated that it should be viewed as a draft for when Congress was interested in reaching a more formal proposal. Congress tabled the plan.

Following the Declaration of Independence, the members of the Continental Congress realized it would be necessary to set up a national government. Congress began to discuss the form this government would take on July 22, disagreeing on a number of issues, including whether representation and voting would be proportional or state-by-state. The disagreements delayed final discussions of confederation until October of 1777. By then, the British capture of Philadelphia had made the issue more urgent. Delegates finally formulated the Articles of Confederation, in which they agreed to state-by-state voting and proportional state tax burdens based on land values, though they left the issue of state claims to western lands unresolved. Congress sent the Articles to the states for ratification at the end of November. Most delegates realized that the Articles were a flawed compromise, but believed that it was better than an absence of formal national government.

On December 16, 1777, Virginia was the first state to ratify. Other states ratified during the early months of 1778. When Congress reconvened in June of 1778, the delegates learned that Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey refused to ratify the Articles. The Articles required unanimous approval from the states. These smaller states wanted other states to relinquish their western land claims before they would ratify the Articles. New Jersey and Delaware eventually agreed to the conditions of the Articles, with New Jersey ratifying on Nov 20, 1778, and Delaware on Feb 1, 1779. This left Maryland as the last remaining holdout.

Irked by Maryland's recalcitrance, several other state governments passed resolutions endorsing the formation of a national government without the state of Maryland, but other politicians such as Congressman Thomas Burke of North Carolina persuaded their governments to refrain from doing so, arguing that without unanimous approval of the new Confederation, the new country would remain weak, divided, and open to future foreign intervention and manipulation.

Meanwhile, in 1780, British forces began to conduct raids on Maryland communities in the Chesapeake Bay. Alarmed, the state government wrote to the French minister Anne-César De la Luzerne asking for French naval assistance. Luzerne wrote back, urging the government of Maryland to ratify the Articles of Confederation. Marylanders were given further incentive to ratify when Virginia agreed to relinquish its western land claims, and so the Maryland legislature ratified the Articles of Confederation on March 1, 1781.

The Continental Congress voted on Jan 10, 1781, to establish a Department of Foreign Affairs; on Aug 10 of that year, it elected Robert R. Livingston as Secretary of Foreign Affairs. The Secretary's duties involved corresponding with U.S. representatives abroad and with ministers of foreign powers. The Secretary was also charged with transmitting Congress' instructions to U.S. agents abroad and was authorized to attend sessions of Congress. A further Act of Feb 22, 1782, allowed the Secretary to ask and respond to questions during sessions of the Continental Congress.

The Articles created a sovereign, national government, and, as such, limited the rights of the states to conduct their own diplomacy and foreign policy. However, this proved difficult to enforce, as the national government could not prevent the state of Georgia from pursuing its own independent policy regarding Spanish Florida, attempting to occupy disputed territories and threatening war if Spanish officials did not work to curb Indian attacks or refrain from harboring escaped slaves. Nor could the Confederation government prevent the landing of convicts that the British Government continued to export to its former colonies. In addition, the Articles did not allow Congress sufficient authority to enforce provisions of the 1783 Treaty of Paris that allowed British creditors to sue debtors for pre-Revolutionary debts, an unpopular clause that many state governments chose to ignore. Consequently, British forces continued to occupy forts in the Great Lakes region. These problems, combined with the Confederation government's ineffectual response to Shays' Rebellion in Massachusetts, convinced national leaders that a more powerful central government was necessary. This led to the Constitutional Convention that formulated the current Constitution of the United States.

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Milestones: 1776-1783 - Office of the Historian

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The Articles of Confederation served as the written document that established the functions of the national government of the United States after it declared independence from Great Britain. It established a weak central government that mostly, but not entirely, prevented the individual states from conducting their own foreign diplomacy.

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Constitutional Compromises: Crash Course Government and Politics #5

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The articles of confederation https://history.state.gov/milestones/1776-1783/articles
The great Compromise https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCCmuftyj8A
Federalism https://www.thoughtco.com/federalism-and-the-united-states-constitution-105418
Separation of powers https://app-usa-modeast-prod-a01239f.s3.amazonaws.com/USA_Government_Branches_Infographic.png
The Constitution https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/the-constitution/
The Bill of Rights
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/billofrightsintro.html

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Why a Constitution?

The need for the Constitution grew out of problems with the Articles of Confederation, which established a "firm league of friendship" between the States, and vested most power in a Congress of the Confederation. This power was, however, extremely limited-the central government conducted diplomacy and made war, set weights and measures, and was the final arbiter of disputes between the States. Crucially, it could not raise any funds itself, and was entirely dependent on the States themselves for the money necessary to operate. Each State sent a delegation of between two and seven members to the Congress, and they voted as a bloc with each State getting one vote. But any decision of consequence required a unanimous vote, which led to a government that was paralyzed and ineffectual.

A movement to reform the Articles began, and invitations to attend a convention in Philadelphia to discuss changes to the Articles were sent to the State legislatures in 1787. In May of that year, delegates from 12 of the 13 States (Rhode Island sent no representatives) convened in Philadelphia to begin the work of redesigning government. The delegates to the Constitutional Convention quickly began work on drafting a new Constitution for the United States.

The Constitutional Convention

A chief aim of the Constitution as drafted by the Convention was to create a government with enough power to act on a national level, but without so much power that fundamental rights would be at risk. One way that this was accomplished was to separate the power of government into three branches, and then to include checks and balances on those powers to assure that no one branch of government gained supremacy. This concern arose largely out of the experience that the delegates had with the King of England and his powerful Parliament. The powers of each branch are enumerated in the Constitution, with powers not assigned to them reserved to the States.

Much of the debate, which was conducted in secret to ensure that delegates spoke their minds, focused on the form that the new legislature would take. Two plans competed to become the new government: the Virginia Plan, which apportioned representation based on the population of each State, and the New Jersey plan, which gave each State an equal vote in Congress. The Virginia Plan was supported by the larger States, and the New Jersey plan preferred by the smaller. In the end, they settled on the Great Compromise (sometimes called the Connecticut Compromise), in which the House of Representatives would represent the people as apportioned by population; the Senate would represent the States apportioned equally; and the President would be elected by the Electoral College. The plan also called for an independent judiciary.

The founders also took pains to establish the relationship between the States. States are required to give "full faith and credit" to the laws, records, contracts, and judicial proceedings of the other States, although Congress may regulate the manner in which the States share records, and define the scope of this clause. States are barred from discriminating against citizens of other States in any way, and cannot enact tariffs against one another. States must also extradite those accused of crimes to other States for trial.

The founders also specified a process by which the Constitution may be amended, and since its ratification, the Constitution has been amended 27 times. In order to prevent arbitrary changes, the process for making amendments is quite onerous. An amendment may be proposed by a two-thirds vote of both Houses of Congress, or, if two-thirds of the States request one, by a convention called for that purpose. The amendment must then be ratified by three-fourths of the State legislatures, or three-fourths of conventions called in each State for ratification. In modern times, amendments have traditionally specified a time frame in which this must be accomplished, usually a period of several years. Additionally, the Constitution specifies that no amendment can deny a State equal representation in the Senate without that State's consent.

With the details and language of the Constitution decided, the Convention got down to the work of actually setting the Constitution to paper. It is written in the hand of a delegate from Pennsylvania, Gouverneur Morris, whose job allowed him some reign over the actual punctuation of a few clauses in the Constitution. He is also credited with the famous preamble, quoted at the top of this page. On September 17, 1787, 39 of the 55 delegates signed the new document, with many of those who refused to sign objecting to the lack of a bill of rights. At least one delegate refused to sign because the Constitution codified and protected slavery and the slave trade.

Ratification

The process set out in the Constitution for its ratification provided for much popular debate in the States. The Constitution would take effect once it had been ratified by nine of the thirteen State legislatures; unanimity was not required. During the debate over the Constitution, two factions emerged: the Federalists, who supported adoption, and the Anti-Federalists, who opposed it.

James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay set out an eloquent defense of the new Constitution in what came to be called the Federalist Papers. Published anonymously in the newspapers The Independent Journal and The New York Packet under the name Publius between October 1787 and August 1788, the 85 articles that comprise the Federalist Papers remain to this day an invaluable resource for understanding some of the framers' intentions for the Constitution. The most famous of the articles are No. 10, which warns of the dangers of factions and advocates a large republic, and No. 51, which explains the structure of the Constitution, its checks and balances, and how it protects the rights of the people.

The States proceeded to begin ratification, with some debating more intensely than others. Delaware was the first State to ratify, on December 7, 1787. After New Hampshire became the ninth State to ratify, on June 22, 1788, the Confederation Congress established March 9, 1789 as the date to begin operating under the Constitution. By this time, all the States except North Carolina and Rhode Island had ratified-the Ocean State was the last to ratify on May 29, 1790.

The Bill of Rights

One of the principal points of contention between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists was the lack of an enumeration of basic civil rights in the Constitution. Many Federalists argued, as in Federalist No. 84, that the people surrendered no rights in adopting the Constitution. In several States, however, the ratification debate in some States hinged on the adoption of a bill of rights. The solution was known as the Massachusetts Compromise, in which four States ratified the Constitution but at the same time sent recommendations for amendments to the Congress.

James Madison introduced 12 amendments to the First Congress in 1789. Ten of these would go on to become what we now consider to be the Bill of Rights. One was never passed, while another dealing with Congressional salaries was not ratified until 1992, when it became the 27th Amendment. Based on the Virginia Declaration of Rights, the English Bill of Rights, the writings of the Enlightenment, and the rights defined in the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights contains rights that many today consider to be fundamental to America.

The First Amendment provides that Congress make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise. It protects freedom of speech, the press, assembly, and the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The Second Amendment gives citizens the right to bear arms.

The Third Amendment prohibits the government from quartering troops in private homes, a major grievance during the American Revolution.

The Fourth Amendment protects citizens from unreasonable search and seizure. The government may not conduct any searches without a warrant, and such warrants must be issued by a judge and based on probable cause.

The Fifth Amendment provides that citizens not be subject to criminal prosecution and punishment without due process. Citizens may not be tried on the same set of facts twice and are protected from self-incrimination (the right to remain silent). The amendment also establishes the power of eminent domain, ensuring that private property is not seized for public use without just compensation.

The Sixth Amendment assures the right to a speedy trial by a jury of one's peers, to be informed of the crimes with which one is charged, and to confront the witnesses brought forward by the government. The amendment also provides the accused the right to compel testimony from witnesses, as well as the right to legal representation.

The Seventh Amendment provides that civil cases preserve the right to trial by jury.

The Eighth Amendment prohibits excessive bail, excessive fines, and cruel and unusual punishments.

The Ninth Amendment states that the list of rights enumerated in the Constitution is not exhaustive, and that the people retain all rights not enumerated.

The Tenth Amendment assigns all powers not delegated to the United States, or prohibited to the States, to either the States or to the people.
Learn more about the Constitution

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The need for the Constitution grew out of problems with the Articles of Confederation, which established a "firm league of friendship" between the States, and vested most power in a Congress of the Confederation. This power was, however, extremely limited-the central government conducted diplomacy and made war, set weights and measures, and was the final arbiter of disputes between the States.

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Introduction & History of the Bill of Rights
The original Constitution, as proposed in 1787 in Philadelphia and as ratified by the states, contained very few individual rights guarantees, as the framers were primarily focused on establishing the machinery for an effective federal government. A proposal by delegate Charles Pinckney to include several rights guarantees (including "liberty of the press" and a ban on quartering soldiers in private homes) was submitted to the Committee on Detail on August 20, 1787, but the Committee did not adopt any of Pinckney's recommendations. The matter came up before the Convention on September 12, 1787 and, following a brief debate, proposals to include a Bill or Rights in the Constitution were rejected. As adopted, the Constitution included only a few specific rights guarantees: protection against states impairing the obligation of contracts (Art. I, Section 10), provisions that prohibit both the federal and state governments from enforcing ex post facto laws (laws that allow punishment for an action that was not criminal at the time it was undertaken) and provisions barring bills of attainder (legislative determinations of guilt and punishment) In the ratification debate, Anti-Federalists opposed to the Constitution, complained that the new system threatened liberties, and suggested that if the delegates had truly cared about protecting individual rights, they would have included provisions that accomplished that. With ratification in serious doubt, Federalists announced a willingness to take up the matter of a series of amendments, to be called the Bill of Rights, soon after ratification and the First Congress comes into session. The concession was undoubtedly necessary to secure the Constitution's hard-fought ratification. Thomas Jefferson, who did not attend the Constitutional Convention, in a December 1787 letter to Madison James Madison was skeptical of the value of a listing of rights, calling it a "parchment barrier." (Madison's preference at the Convention to safeguard liberties was by giving Congress an unlimited veto over state laws and creating a joint executive-judicial council of revision that could veto federal laws.) Despite his skepticism, by the fall of 1788, Madison believed that a declaration of rights should be added to the Constitution. Its value, in Madison's view, was in part educational, in part as a vehicle that might be used to rally people against a future oppressive government, and finally--in an argument Some members of Congress argued that a listing of rights of the people was a silly exercise, in that all the listed rights inherently belonged to citizens, and nothing in the Constitution gave the Congress the power to take them away. It was even suggested that the Bill of Rights might reduce liberty by giving force to the argument that all rights not specifically listed could be infringed upon. In part to counter this concern, the Ninth Amendment was included providing that "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage other rights retained by the people." Decades later, the Ninth Amendment would be pointed to by some judges, such as Justice Goldberg in his opinion in Griswold v Connecticut (a case recognizing a right of privacy that included a right to use contraceptives), as a justification for giving a broad and liberty-protective reading to the the specifically enumerated rights. Others, such as rejected Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, would dismiss the Ninth Amendment as analogous to "an inkblot on the Constitution," a provision so unclear in its significance that judges should essentially read it out of the Constitution. Most of the protections of the Bill of Rights eventually would be extended to state infringements as well federal infringements though the "doctrine of incorporation" beginning in the early to mid-1900s. The doctrine rests on interpreting the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as prohibiting states from infringing on the most fundamental liberties of its citizens. (For more, see page on INCORPORATION DEBATE.)
borrowed from Thomas Jefferson--Madison argued that a declaration of rights would help install the judiciary as "guardians" of individual rights against the other branches. When the First Congress met in 1789, James Madison, a congressman from Virginia, took upon himself the task of drafting a proposed Bill of Rights. He considered his efforts "a nauseous project." His original set of proposed amendments included some that were either rejected or substantially modified by Congress, and one (dealing with apportionment of the House) that was not ratified by the required three-fourths of the state legislatures. Some of the rejections were very significant, such as the decision not to adopt Madison's proposal to extend free speech protections to the states, and others somewhat less important (such as the dropping of Madison's language that required unanimous jury verdicts for convictions in all federal cases).
called the omission of a Bill of Rights a major mistake: "A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth."
(Art. I, Sections 9 and 10) . The framers, and notably James Madison, its principal architect, believed that the Constitution protected liberty primarily through its division of powers that made it difficult for an oppressive majorities to form and capture power to be used against minorities. Delegates also probably feared that a debate over liberty guarantees might prolong or even threaten the fiercely-debated compromises that had been made over the long hot summer of 1787.

James Madison reads his proposed Bill of Rights in the First Congress

In the end, we owe opponents of the Constitution a debt of gratitude, for without their complaints, there would be no Bill of Rights. Thomas Jefferson wrote, "There has just been opposition enough" to force adoption of a Bill of Rights, but not to drain the federal government of its essential "energy." George Washington agreed: "They have given the rights of man a full and fair discussion, and explained them in so clear and forcible manner as cannot fail to make a lasting impression."

The Rejected Rights Guarantees Included
in James Madison's Original Bill of Rights:

1. "No person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person."
2. "No State shall violate the equal rights of conscience, or the freedom of the press, or the trial by jury in criminal cases." [Madison called this guarantee, extending protections of the First Amendment and the jury trial right of the Sixth Amendment to the states , "the most valuable amendment in the whole lot." It passed the House, but was rejected by the Senate.]

The Bill of Rights

THE FIRST 10 AMENDMENTS TO THE CONSTITUTION AS RATIFIED BY THE STATES ("The Bill of Rights")**

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence. In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law. Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

**Because the Ninth and Tenth Amendments are not specific guarantees of individual liberties, in some usages "The Bill of Rights" refers only to the first eight amendments.

Assignment:
Barron settles the question of whether Bill of Rights guarantees that do not specifically limit their application to the federal government (The First Amendment, e.g., expressly says "Congress shall make no law...") might also protect citizens from the actions of state governments. The answer Chief Justice Marshall gives, in case involving an alleged taking of private property by Baltimore without compensation to the owner, is "No."
The decision in the case was Marshall's last on the Court and, interestingly, Marshall cuts off his successor as chief justice, Roger B. Taney, before Taney has a chance to argue the case for Baltimore--Marshall believed that the argument for Barron had been sufficiently weak that there was no need to hear from the lawyer representing the city.

Questions for Class Discussion
1. What has been the principal value of the Bill of Rights? Has it been educational, symbolic, or has its main value come from giving the judiciary an additional check on the power of the other branches?
2. Are there other rights that you wish would have been included in the Bill of Rights? What are they? Are there some rights included in the Bill of Rights that you wish Madison would have left out?

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The Bill of Rights: Its History and its Significance

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Introduction & History of the Bill of Rights The original Constitution, as proposed in 1787 in Philadelphia and as ratified by the states, contained very few individual rights guarantees, as the framers were primarily focused on establishing the machinery for an effective federal government.

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The Rise of Political Parties (Federalists and Rebublicans)

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The Rise of Political Parties (Federalists and Rebublicans)

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Rise of Political Parties

- Characteristics of each party

The National Bank was also a semiofficial institution. Although it is used to store federal money and bolster the nation's economy - you can also invest in the Bank by purchasing stock in the Bank - so you have speculators (generally wealthy individuals) who have invested in the national bank. Republicans saw this as groundwork for corruption.

Jefferson and the Republicans opposed the bank because they thought the government shouldn't be tied to business practices for the country. Also thought the government had no authority to establish a national bank because this hadn't been a provision of the Constitution. Republicans wanted a strict interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. Thomas Jefferson is one of the main proponents of strict interpretation (a fact which will cause some embarrassment with his upcoming purchase of the Louisiana Territory...)

Hamilton & the Federalists replied that the bank was constitutional because the federal govt. had the power to regulate trade and control taxes. Federalists promoted a loose interpretation of the Constitution so the federal government had the power to set economic policy.

The upshot - the bank was quite successful; it encouraged foreign investment in the Bank and boosted the country's cash reserves. It will also come in handy for Jefferson when he needs to finance the Louisiana Purchase.

The election of 1796 points out one of the flaws in the electoral college system (as envisioned in the constitution). Remember how I emphasized the point that there were no political parties at the time the college was created? Well, just ten years later there were parties (Federalists and Republicans).

According to the Electoral system, electors selected two candidates and their votes were tallied to determine who won the presidency and who would become vice-president. Thus, in the election of 1796 John Adams won the presidency and his political rival, Thomas Jefferson, became Vice- resident (see your Berkin text for a more detailed explanation of the political maneuvering here, p. 147).

The upcoming Election of 1800 will provide further impetus to address this problem with the Electoral College - we'll discuss this in the next lecture...

Just as Americans were trying to sort out and define their political system, the nations of Britain and France were resuming hostilities in Europe. Since the United States had ties to both countries, American had a difficult time trying to maintain neutrality.

Americans had initially supported the French Revolution and its laudable goals which mirrored the American Revolution. However, as the French Revolution degenerated into the Reign of Terror, many Americans wanted to distance themselves from the horrors of the revolution which ran contrary to Americans' notions of social order, human rights, and property rights. Although Americans supported a more democratic form of government in France, they didn't support the chaos which ensued in the Reign of Terror (1792-3). To completely short-circuit a needless lecture on the French Revolution just keep this in mind - Napoleon will emerge as the de facto leader of France in 1799!

The French Revolution is important to Americans because the United States will find itself caught in the middle of the two main contestants - by 1792 Britain and France were again at war. The French wanted to extend the revolution and Britain wanted to contain it.

The British still occupied forts along the western frontier (in Ohio Valley and around the Great Lakes). They also blockaded the French West Indies to American trade and seized American ships which traveled there for trade. (ex. between 1793-94, Brits seized the cargoes of 250 American ships)

The Spanish (allied with the French) occupied Florida and controlled New Orleans -effectively controlling traffic on the Mississippi (if they chose to).

Washington managed (with some difficulty) to maintain a policy of neutrality during his two administrations - he didn't want to drag the new nation into a costly, deadly, and probably "unwinnable" war.

Adams considered himself the "heir apparent" to President Washington, having languished in the vice presidency (which he described as "the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived") for eight years, awaiting his turn to be President. Adams had served his country well - you should recall that he was a key player in the years preceding the American Revolution and that he advanced the careers of both Washington and Jefferson at the Second Continental Congress in 1775. He also served as an ambassador to Britain after the war and, like many Federalists, Adams supported a continued economic partnership with Great Britain.

Still, Adams was a "reluctant Federalist." Although he believed in the need for a strong central government, he didn't feel compelled to protect the interests of the wealthy as Hamilton did. He was also ticked because Hamilton had so much power and influence, even after he was no longer Secretary of the Treasury. The rivalry between Adams and Hamilton helped to mitigate the influence of the Federalist party.

Alien and Sedition Acts - (1798) See Berkin for more information!

Passed by Congress (Jefferson and his fellow Republicans tend to pin this legislation solely upon Adams - remember it has to be passed by a majority in Congress, though the Federalists control Congress at this point) and promoted/approved by Adams. The Alien act wasn't used much but was designed to arrest and deport "aliens" (immigrants) suspected of treason. Also passed a Naturalization Act which increased the # of years of residency required to become a naturalized citizen (from 5 to 14).

The Sedition act was much more problematic. Established fines and imprisonment for those accused of writing, speaking, or publishing anything considered treasonous to the government. Critics will argue that this contradicts the 1 st Amendment guarantee of freedom of the press. The Federalists were trying to curb free speech but specifically they wanted to reduce the influence of Republicans who were railing against the Federalist government!

The Alien & Sedition Acts backfired for Adams because they angered most Americans. The Sedition Act also prompted Jefferson (authored Kentucky) and Madison (Va.) to compose the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions which reasserted the states had a right to intercede in governmental affairs if they felt the federal government had exceeded its authority.

These resolutions are important because southerners will later draw upon them, claiming that they establish the principles of nullification.

The Alien and Sedition Acts expired about the time that Adams was leaving office in 1800.

By now you should be able to trace the evolution of the Federalists and Republicans and understand their stances on major issues associated with the first political party system.

For a "refresher" keep the following points in mind:

Led by Hamilton and J. Adams

Want a strong central (national) government

generally favor a wealthy aristocracy of the elite and enjoy the support of the commercial classes

don't really trust the "common" (i.e. Jefferson's farmers, artisans, and members of the lower classes) people to make wise economic and political decisions

supporters tend to be from urban areas, especially in the North

emphasize economic policy of strong commercial growth

want a flexible or loose interpretation of the U.S. Constitution (remember the Bank debate)

want to maintain a close trade relationship with Great Britain

declined in significance after the election of 1800

Republicans (a.k.a. Democrat Republicans or Jeffersonian Republicans)

Led by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison

want to retain state power and rely on a decentralized form of republican government

believe that "the people" should be in charge of the government

supporters tend to be small planters, artisans, and semi-subsistence farmers in rural areas of the North and South

believe in an agrarian republic of property-owners

call for a strict interpretation of the U.S. Constitution

want to maintain a close relationship with France (within reason - remember the Revolution!)

became the dominant party after the election of 1800

Remember, political parties are good things! Keep the following points in mind....

Parties originally started out at the federal level then spread to the state and local levels as politicians consolidated power among constituents. Parties will eventually develop national and local newspapers to promote their agendas

although the parties proved to have a divisive influence in politics, both parties remained loyal to the constitutional system of a republican government. They did not form coups to seize governmental power, instead they relied on democratic elections.

each political party helps to mitigate the radical elements of the other. Plus there is a greater tendency to avoid political extremes if both sides realize that they must ultimately compromise in order to ensure passage of legislation

Return to Class Schedule

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Rise of Political Parties - Characteristics of each party The National Bank was also a semiofficial institution. Although it is used to store federal money and bolster the nation's economy - you can also invest in the Bank by purchasing stock in the Bank - so you have speculators (generally wealthy individuals) who have invested in the national bank.

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Beginning this fall, St. Louisans will be able to see the actual document that made what is now Missouri part of the United States.

In 1803, the United States bought more 828,000 square miles of land from France for $15 million - roughly four cents an acre - in a deal known as the Louisiana Purchase.

The parcel immediately doubled the size of the country and eventually became part or all of 14 states from Louisiana to Montana, including Missouri, Iowa and Arkansas.

The National Archives will lend the Missouri History Museum the actual treaty and other related documents for an exhibit called "The Louisiana Purchase: Making St. Louis, Remaking America."

It's the fourth most cherished American document, according to a study involving the "U.S. News and World Report," after the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

The treaty will be displayed under a clear cover, in the original French, with a translation provided. Seeing it will help connect St. Louisans to their past, according to Chris Gordon, the museum's library and collections director.

"Visitors will be able to gaze upon an actual piece of history," Gordon said.

Gordon noted that the acquisition of the Louisiana Territory stands out in history for its lack of bloodshed.

"Often, especially in these times, land was taken by force. But this was a very peaceful execution of a land sale," Gordon said.

The exhibit opens October 25, and runs through April 19.

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Missouri History Museum To Display Original Louisiana Purchase Treaty

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Beginning this fall, St. Louisans will be able to see the actual document that made what is now Missouri part of the United States. In 1803, the United States bought more 828,000 square miles of land from France for $15 million - roughly four cents an acre - in a deal known as the Louisiana Purchase.

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The rise of political parties  https://www.radford.edu/~rvshelton/Parties.htm
The Louisiana Purchase https://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/missouri-history-museum-display-original-louisiana-purchase-treaty#stream/0
The Corps of Discovery https://www.radford.edu/~rvshelton/Parties.htm
The War of 1812 https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/brief-overview-war-1812
The Monroe Doctrine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Woh4gwIFpic

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

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On March 23, 1806, the Corps of Discovery started on the long journey back the way they had come. They had some conflicts with some of the Indians on the lower Columbia, whom they accused of charging high prices for food, trying to steal from the travelers, and interfering with their progress. But when they reached the friendly Nez Percés, they found their horses alive and cared-for, though scattered on open range.

The group was back across the mountains by June and decided to split up into smaller parties for a while so as to explore some of the territory more thoroughly. Lewis took a more northerly route, and it was during this trip that the explorers had their first and only violent conflict with Indians. A group of Blackfeet apparently tried to captured horses and guns, and Lewis's party killed two of them.

At about that same time, Clark, on a southerly route, discovered an unusual, large stone formation on the Yellowstone River. He named it "Pompy's Tower," after the nickname of Sacagawea's son, now in his second year (certainly one of the most remarkable childhoods in American history). There on that formation, Clark left an inscription, "Wm. Clark July 25th 1806," which can still be seen today.

The separate parties rejoined in August back on the Missouri River, at the mouth of the Yellowstone. They continued on down the river, dropping off Charbonneau, Sacagawea, and little Jean-Baptiste at the Mandan villages. Traveling quickly, they reached St. Louis on September 23, 1806.

The men of the expedition were welcomed as heroes. They had been gone so long that the nation feared they were dead. Remarkably, only one member of the group died. This was Sergeant Charles Floyd, who probably died of a ruptured appendix as the Corps of Discovery traveled up the Missouri River on its way to the Mandan villages.

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Lewis and Clark : The Expedition of the Corps of Discovery

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On March 23, 1806, the Corps of Discovery started on the long journey back the way they had come. They had some conflicts with some of the Indians on the lower Columbia, whom they accused of charging high prices for food, trying to steal from the travelers, and interfering with their progress.

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The War of 1812 brought the United States onto the world’s stage in a conflict that ranged throughout the American Northeast, Midwest, and Southeast, into…

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Jacksonian democracy  http://www.ushistory.org/us/23f.asp
Native American Removal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WZPvUWrOfc
Trails West  https://manifestdestinytrails.weebly.com/
Texas becomes a Country  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwJsazGuICo
Manifest Destiny  http://www.ushistory.org/us/29.asp
Mexican-American war  https://www.britannica.com/event/Mexican-American-War

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Jacksonian Democracy and Modern America [ushistory.org]

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

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Trail of Tears (1080 HD Official) OneManClanStudios / AVUX & Digital Entertainment Facebook: http://smarturl.it/OMCFacebook SoundCloud: http://smarturl.it/OMCSoundCloud Directed by: John Neff Facts: RunTime: Aprox. 16Min, 15 w/o Credits+Intro RenderTime: 12 Days Hours Worked on: 280 Hours Plot: A captured tribe of Native Americans is forced on a dangerous trail to be relocated.

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Spanish:

Guerra de 1847 or Guerra de Estados Unidos a Mexico ("War of the United States Against Mexico")

What was the Mexican-American War?

What did the Mexican-American War have to do with Manifest Destiny?

Was there opposition to the Mexican-American War within the United States?

What did the U.S. gain by winning the Mexican-American War?

How did the Mexican-American War increase sectionalism in the United States?

Summarize This Article

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Trusted Britannica articles, summarized using artificial intelligence, to provide a quicker and simpler reading experience. This is a beta feature. Please verify important information in our full article.

This summary was created from our Britannica article using AI. Please verify important information in our full article.

Mexican-American War, war between the United States and Mexico (April 1846-February 1848) stemming from the United States' annexation of Texas in 1845 and from a dispute over whether Texas ended at the Nueces River (Mexican claim) or the Rio Grande (U.S. claim). The war-in which U.S. forces were consistently victorious-resulted in the United States' acquisition of more than 500,000 square miles (1,300,000 square km) of Mexican territory extending westward from the Rio Grande to the Pacific Ocean.

"American blood on American soil": Polk and the prelude to war

Mexico severed relations with the United States in March 1845, shortly after the U.S. annexation of Texas. In September U.S. Pres. James K. Polk sent John Slidell on a secret mission to Mexico City to negotiate the disputed Texas border, settle U.S. claims against Mexico, and purchase New Mexico and California for up to $30 million. Mexican Pres. José Joaquín Herrera, aware in advance of Slidell's intention of dismembering the country, refused to receive him. When Polk learned of the snub, he ordered troops under Gen. Zachary Taylor to occupy the disputed area between the Nueces and the Rio Grande (January 1846).

On May 9, 1846, Polk began to prepare a war message to Congress, justifying hostilities on the grounds of Mexican refusal to pay U.S. claims and refusal to negotiate with Slidell. That evening he received word that Mexican troops had crossed the Rio Grande on April 25 and attacked Taylor 's troops, killing or injuring 16 of them. In his quickly revised war message-delivered to Congress on May 11-Polk claimed that Mexico had "invaded our territory and shed American blood on American soil."

Spot Resolutions and Civil Disobedience: American opposition to the war

Congress overwhelmingly approved a declaration of war on May 13, but the United States entered the war divided. Democrats, especially those in the Southwest, strongly favoured the conflict. Most Whigs viewed Polk's motives as conscienceless land grabbing. Indeed, from the outset, Whigs in both the Senate and the House challenged the veracity of Polk's assertion that the initial conflict between U.S. and Mexican forces had taken place in U.S. territory. Further, legislators were at odds over whether Polk had the right to unilaterally declare that a state of war existed. Principally at issue was where the encounter had actually taken place and the willingness of Americans to acknowledge the Mexican contention that the Nueces River formed the border between the two countries. Active Whig opposition not only to the legitimacy of Polk's claim but also to the war itself continued well into the conflict. In December 1846 Polk accused his Whig doubters of treason. In January 1847 the by-then Whig-controlled House voted 85 to 81 to censure Polk for having "unnecessarily and unconstitutionally" initiated war with Mexico.

Among the most-aggressive challenges to the legitimacy of Polk's casus belli was that offered by future president Abraham Lincoln, then a first-term member of the House of Representatives from Illinois. In December 1847 Lincoln introduced eight " Spot Resolutions," which placed the analysis of Polk's claim in a carefully delineated historical context that sought to

obtain a full knowledge of all the facts which go to establish whether the particular spot of soil on which the blood of our citizens was so shed was, or was not, our own soil at that time.

Ultimately, the House did not act on Lincoln's resolutions, and Polk remained steadfast in his claim that the conflict was a just war.

Abolitionists saw the war as an attempt by the slave states to extend slavery and enhance their power with the creation of additional slave states out of the soon-to-be-acquired Mexican lands. One abolitionist who agreed with that interpretation was author Henry David Thoreau, who was incarcerated in July 1846 when he refused to pay six years' worth of back poll taxes because he felt the U.S. government's prosecution of the war with Mexico was immoral. Although he spent only a single night in jail (his aunt, against his wishes, paid the taxes, thus securing his release), Thoreau documented his opposition to the government's actions in his famous book-length essay Civil Disobedience (1849), insisting that if an injustice of government is

of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.

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Mexican-American War | Significance, Battles, Results, Timeline, & Facts

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Mexican-American War, war between the U.S. and Mexico from 1846 to 1848. It was caused by a territorial dispute stemming from the United States' annexation of Texas in 1845 and from contention over whether Texas ended at the Nueces River or the Rio Grande.

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In the 1850s trains were leaving Washington for the West twice daily.

Expansion westward seemed perfectly natural to many Americans in the mid-nineteenth century. Like the Massachusetts Puritans who hoped to build a "city upon a hill, "courageous pioneers believed that America had a divine obligation to stretch the boundaries of their noble republic to the Pacific Ocean. Independence had been won in the Revolution and reaffirmed in the War of 1812. The spirit of nationalism that swept the nation in the next two decades demanded more territory. The "every man is equal" mentality of the Jacksonian Era fueled this optimism. Now, with territory up to the Mississippi River claimed and settled and the Louisiana Purchase explored, Americans headed west in droves. Newspaper editor John O'Sullivan coined the term "manifest destiny" in 1845 to describe the essence of this mindset.

A symbol of Manifest Destiny, the figure "Columbia" moves across the land in advance of settlers, replacing darkness with light and ignorance with civilization.

The religious fervor spawned by the Second Great Awakening created another incentive for the drive west. Indeed, many settlers believed that God himself blessed the growth of the American nation. The Native Americans were considered heathens. By Christianizing the tribes, American missionaries believed they could save souls and they became among the first to cross the Mississippi River.

Economic motives were paramount for others. The fur trade had been dominated by European trading companies since colonial times. German immigrant John Jacob Astor was one of the first American entrepreneurs to challenge the Europeans. He became a millionaire in the process. The desire for more land brought aspiring homesteaders to the frontier. When gold was discovered in California in 1848, the number of migrants increased even more.

At the heart of manifest destiny was the pervasive belief in American cultural and racial superiority. Native Americans had long been perceived as inferior, and efforts to "civilize" them had been widespread since the days of John Smith and Miles Standish. The Hispanics who ruled Texas and the lucrative ports of California were also seen as "backward."

In 1840, the entire southwestern corner of the United States was controlled by foreign powers (shown in orange), and the territorial dispute over the Oregon Territory (light green) had not been settled. By 1850 the U.S. had control of lands from the Atlantic to the Pacific, covering almost all of today's continental United States.

Expanding the boundaries of the United States was in many ways a cultural war as well. The desire of southerners to find more lands suitable for cotton cultivation would eventually spread slavery to these regions. North of the Mason-Dixon line, many citizens were deeply concerned about adding any more slave states. Manifest destiny touched on issues of religion, money, race, patriotism, and morality. These clashed in the 1840s as a truly great drama of regional conflict began to unfold.

Prairie Schooner
Americans began exploring Oregon Country in the early 1800s, and the Overlanders began arriving in the 1840s. Read their stories on this website, loaded with images and fascinating detail.

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Levi-Strauss
The most famous '49er of all did not make his fortune by finding gold, rather he sold pants - his name was Levi-Strauss.

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In the 1850s trains were leaving Washington for the West twice daily. Expansion westward seemed perfectly natural to many Americans in the mid-nineteenth century. Like the Massachusetts Puritans who hoped to build a "city upon a hill, "courageous pioneers believed that America had a divine obligation to stretch the boundaries of their noble republic to the Pacific Ocean.

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The Industrial Revolution in America - History of Massachusetts Blog

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The Industrial Revolution completely transformed the United States until it eventually grew into the largest economy in the world and became the most powerful global superpower. The industrial revolution occurred in a number of places across the world including England, North America, Continental Europe, Eastern Europe and Asia. While the…

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Interchangeable parts: https://nvaughn.weebly.com/interchangeable-parts.html
Industrial Revolution: https://historyofmassachusetts.org/industrial-revolution-america/
Rise of organised labor: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hccc-worldhistory2/chapter/organized-labor/
The transportation Revolution: http://pressbooks-dev.oer.hawaii.edu/ushistory/chapter/on-the-move-the-transportation-revolution/
Eli Whitney's cotton gin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyvxFCMShNQ
Life of a  slave: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ajn9g5Gsv98

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25.6.5: Organized Labor

The concentration of workers in factories, mines, and mills facilitated the development of trade unions during the Industrial Revolution. After the initial decades of political hostility towards organized labor, skilled male workers emerged as the early beneficiaries of the labor movement.

Learning Objective

Describe the grievances that gave rise to organized labor

Key Points

The rapid expansion of industrial society during the Industrial Revolution drew women, children, rural workers, and immigrants into the industrial work force in large numbers and in new roles. This pool of unskilled and semi-skilled labor spontaneously organized in fits and starts throughout the early phases of industrialization and would later be an important arena for the development of trade unions.

As collective bargaining and early worker unions grew with the onset of the Industrial Revolution, the government began to clamp down on what it saw as the danger of popular unrest at the time of the Napoleonic Wars. In 1799, the Combination Act was passed, which banned trade unions and collective bargaining by British workers. Although the unions were subject to often severe repression until 1824, they were already widespread in some cities and workplace militancy manifested itself in many different ways.

By the 1810s, the first labor organizations to bring together workers of divergent occupations were formed. Possibly the first such union was the General Union of Trades, also known as the Philanthropic Society, founded in 1818 in Manchester. Under the pressure of both workers and the middle and upper-class activists sympathetic of the workers' repeal, the law banning unions was repealed in 1824. However, the Combinations of Workmen Act 1825 severely restricted their activity.

The first attempts at a national general union were made in the 1820s and 1830s. The National Association for the Protection of Labor was established in 1830 by John Doherty. The Association quickly enrolled approximately 150 unions, consisting mostly of textile workers but also mechanics, blacksmiths, and various others. In 1834, Welsh socialist Robert Owen established the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union. The organization attracted a range of socialists from Owenites to revolutionaries and played a part in the protests after the Tolpuddle Martyrs' case.

In the later 1830s and 1840s, trade unionism was overshadowed by political activity. Of particular importance was Chartism, a working-class movement for political reform in Britain that existed from 1838 to 1858. The strategy employed the large-scale support to put pressure on politicians to concede manhood suffrage. Chartism thus relied on constitutional methods to secure its aims.

More permanent trade unions followed from the 1850s. They were usually better resourced but often less radical. In some trades, unions were led and controlled by skilled workers, which essentially excluded the interests of the unskilled labor. Women were largely excluded from trade union formation, membership, and hierarchies until the late 20th century. Unions were eventually legalized in 1871 with the adoption of the Trade Union Act 1871.

Key Terms

Tolpuddle Martyrs

A group of 19th century Dorset agricultural laborers who were convicted of swearing a secret oath as members of the Friendly Society of Agricultural Laborers. At the time, friendly societies had strong elements of what are now considered to be the predominant role of trade unions. The group were subsequently sentenced to penal transportation to Australia.

Chartism

A working-class movement for political reform in Britain that existed from 1838 to 1857. It took its name from the People's Charter of 1838 and was a national protest movement. The strategy employed was to use the large scale of support for numerous petitions and the accompanying mass meetings to put pressure on politicians to concede manhood suffrage.

Radical War

A week of strikes and unrest, also known as the Scottish Insurrection of 1820, that was a culmination of Radical demands for reform in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland which became prominent in the early years of the French Revolution, but were then repressed during the long Napoleonic Wars.

Luddites

A group of English textile workers and self-employed weavers in the 19th century who used the destruction of machinery as a form of protest. The group was protesting the use of machinery in a "fraudulent and deceitful manner" to get around standard labor practices. They were fearful that the years they had spent learning the craft would go to waste and unskilled machine operators would rob them of their livelihood.

Combination Act

A 1799 Act of Parliament that prohibited trade unions and collective bargaining by British workers.

Combinations of Workmen Act 1825

An 1825 Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom, which prohibited trade unions from attempting to collectively bargain for better terms and conditions at work and suppressed the right to strike.

The rapid expansion of industrial society during the Industrial Revolution drew women, children, rural workers, and immigrants into the industrial work force in large numbers and in new roles. This pool of unskilled and semi-skilled labor spontaneously organized in fits and starts throughout the early phases of industrialization and would later be an important arena for the development of trade unions. Trade unions have sometimes been seen as successors to the guilds of medieval Europe, although the relationship between the two is disputed as the masters of the guilds employed workers (apprentices and journeymen) who were not allowed to organize. The concentration of labor in mills, factories, and mines facilitated the organization of workers to help advance the interests of working people. A union could demand better terms by withdrawing all labor and causing a consequent cessation of production. Employers had to decide between giving in to the union demands at a cost to themselves or suffering the cost of the lost production. Skilled workers were hard to replace and these were the first groups to successfully advance their conditions through this kind of bargaining.

Trade unions and collective bargaining were outlawed from no later than the middle of the 14th century when the Ordinance of Laborers was enacted in the Kingdom of England. As collective bargaining and early worker unions grew with the onset of the Industrial Revolution, the government began to clamp down on what it saw as the danger of popular unrest at the time of the Napoleonic Wars. In 1799, the Combination Act was passed, which banned trade unions and collective bargaining by British workers. Although the unions were subject to often severe repression until 1824, they were already widespread in some cities.

Workplace militancy manifested itself in many different ways. For example, Luddites were a group of English textile workers and self-employed weavers who in the 19th century destroyed weaving machinery as a form of protest. The group was protesting the use of machinery to get around standard labor practices, fearing that the years they had spent learning the craft would go to waste and unskilled machine operators would rob them of their livelihoods. One of the first mass work strikes emerged in 1820 in Scotland, an event known today as the Radical War. 60,000 workers went on a general strike. Their demands went far beyond labor regulations and included a general call for reforms. The strike was quickly crushed.

By the 1810s, the first labor organizations to bring together workers of divergent occupations were formed. Possibly the first such union was the General Union of Trades, also known as the Philanthropic Society, founded in 1818 in Manchester. The latter name was to hide the organization's real purpose in a time when trade unions were still illegal.

Under the pressure of both workers and the middle and upper class activists sympathetic of the workers' repeal, the law banning unions was repealed in 1824. However, the Combinations of Workmen Act 1825 severely restricted their activity. It prohibited trade unions from attempting to collectively bargain for better terms and conditions at work and suppressed the right to strike. That did not stop the fledgling labor movements and unions began forming rapidly.

The first attempts at setting up a national general union were made in the 1820s and 1830s. The National Association for the Protection of Labor was established in 1830 by John Doherty, after an apparently unsuccessful attempt to create a similar national presence with the National Union of Cotton Spinners. The Association quickly enrolled approximately 150 unions, consisting mostly of textile workers, but also including mechanics, blacksmiths, and various others. Membership rose to between 10,000 and 20,000 individuals spread across the five counties of Lancashire, Cheshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, and Leicestershire within a year. To establish awareness and legitimacy, the union started the weekly Voice of the People publication, with the declared intention "to unite the productive classes of the community in one common bond of union."

In 1834, Welsh socialist Robert Owen established the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union. The organization attracted a range of socialists from Owenites to revolutionaries and played a part in the protests after the Tolpuddle Martyrs' case. In 1833, six men from Tolpuddle in Dorset founded the Friendly Society of Agricultural Laborers to protest against the gradual lowering of agricultural wages. The Tolpuddle laborers refused to work for less than 10 shillings a week, although by this time wages had been reduced to seven shillings and would be further reduced to six. In 1834, James Frampton, a local landowner and magistrate, wrote to Home Secretary Lord Melbourne to complain about the union. As a result of obscure law that prohibited the swearing of secret oaths, six men were arrested, tried, found guilty, and transported to Australia. Owen's union collapsed shortly afterwards.

In the later 1830s and 1840s, trade unionism was overshadowed by political activity. Of particular importance was Chartism, a working-class movement for political reform in Britain that existed from 1838 to 1858. It took its name from the People's Charter of 1838 and was a national protest movement, with particular strongholds of support in Northern England, the East Midlands, the Staffordshire Potteries, the Black Country, and the South Wales Valleys. Support for the movement was at its highest in 1839, 1842, and 1848, when petitions signed by millions of working people were presented to Parliament. The strategy used the scale of support demonstrated these petitions and the accompanying mass meetings to put pressure on politicians to concede manhood suffrage. Chartism thus relied on constitutional methods to secure its aims, although there were some who became involved in radical activities, notably in south Wales and Yorkshire. The government did not yield to any of the demands and suffrage had to wait another two decades. Chartism was popular among some trade unions, especially London's tailors, shoemakers, carpenters, and masons. One reason was the fear of the influx of unskilled labor, especially in tailoring and shoe making. In Manchester and Glasgow, engineers were deeply involved in Chartist activities. Many trade unions were active in the general strike of 1842, which spread to 15 counties in England and Wales and eight in Scotland. Chartism taught techniques and political skills that inspired trade union leadership.

After the Chartist movement of 1848 fragmented, efforts were made to form a labor coalition. The Miners' and Seamen's United Association in the North-East operated 1851-1854 before it too collapsed because of outside hostility and internal disputes over goals. The leaders sought working-class solidarity as a long-term aim. More permanent trade unions followed from the 1850s. They were usually better resourced but often less radical. The London Trades Council was founded in 1860 and the Sheffield Outrages spurred the establishment of the Trades Union Congress in 1868. By this time, the existence and the demands of the trade unions were becoming accepted by liberal middle-class opinion. Further, in some trades, unions were led and controlled by skilled workers, which essentially excluded the interests of the unskilled labor. For example, in textiles and engineering, union activity from the 1850s to as late as the mid-20th century was largely in the hands of the skilled workers. They supported differentials in pay and status as opposed to the unskilled. They focused on control over machine production and were aided by competition among firms in the local labor market.

The legal status of trade unions in the United Kingdom was eventually established by a Royal Commission on Trade Unions in 1867, which agreed that the establishment of the organizations was to the advantage of both employers and employees. Unions were legalized with the adoption of the Trade Union Act 1871.

Women were largely excluded from trade union formation, membership, and hierarchies until the late 20th century. When women did succeed in challenging male hegemony and made inroads into the representation of labor and combination, it was originally not working-class women but middle-class reformers such as the Women's Protective and Provident League (WPPL), which sought to amiably discuss conditions with employers in the 1870s. It became the Women's Trade Union League, members of which were largely upper-middle-class men and women interested in social reform, who wanted to educate women in trade unionism and fund the establishment of trade unions. Militant socialists broke away from the WPPL and formed the Women's Trade Union Association, but they had little impact. However, there were a few cases in the 19th century where women trade union members took initiative. For example, women played a central role in the 1875 West Yorkshire weavers' strike.

Attributions

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The concentration of workers in factories, mines, and mills facilitated the development of trade unions during the Industrial Revolution. After the initial decades of political hostility towards organized labor, skilled male workers emerged as the early beneficiaries of the labor movement.

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Industrial Transformation in the North, 1800-1850

OpenStaxCollege

[latexpage]

Learning Objectives

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which of the following was not a factor in the transportation revolution?

What was the significance of the Cumberland Road?

What were the benefits of the transportation revolution?

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

Glossary

Cumberland Road

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

Erie Canal

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

Mohawk and Hudson Railroad

the first steam-powered locomotive railroad in the United States

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On the Move: The Transportation Revolution

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Industrial Transformation in the North, 1800-1850 OpenStaxCollege [latexpage] By the end of this section, you will be able to: Describe the development of improved methods of nineteenth-century domestic transportation Identify the ways in which roads, canals, and railroads impacted Americans' lives in the nineteenth century Americans in the early 1800s were a people on the move, as thousands left the eastern coastal states for opportunities in the West.

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Eli Whitney: Father of American Technology - Fast Facts | History

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Irish and German Immigration in the 1800s

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Irish and German Immigration in the 1800s

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Both blacks and women began to participate in evangelical revivals associated with the Second Great Awakening at the end of the 18th century. From these revivals grew the roots of the both the feminist and abolitionist movements.

The American Revolution had largely been a secular affair. The Founding Fathers clearly demonstrated their opposition to the intermingling of politics and religion by establishing the separation of church and state in the first amendment to the Constitution.

In part because religion was separated from the control of political leaders, a series of religious revivals swept the United States from the 1790s and into the 1830s that transformed the religious landscape of the country. Known today as the Second Great Awakening, this spiritual resurgence fundamentally altered the character of American religion. At the start of the Revolution the largest denominations were Congregationalists (the 18th-century descendants of Puritan churches), Anglicans (known after the Revolution as Episcopalians), and Quakers. But by 1800, Evangelical Methodism and Baptists, were becoming the fasting-growing religions in the nation.

The Second Great Awakening is best known for its large camp meetings that led extraordinary numbers of people to convert through an enthusiastic style of preaching and audience participation. A young man who attended the famous 20,000-person revival at Cane Ridge, Kentucky, in 1802, captures the spirit of these camp meetings activity:

The noise was like the roar of Niagara. The vast sea of human beings seemed to be agitated as if by a storm. I counted seven ministers, all preaching at one time, some on stumps, others on wagons ... Some of the people were singing, others praying, some crying for mercy. A peculiarly strange sensation came over me. My heart beat tumultuously, my knees trembled, my lips quivered, and I felt as though I must fall to the ground.

This young man was so moved that he went on to become a Methodist minister. As this quotation suggests, evangelical ministers reached their audience at an emotional level that powerfully moved large crowds.

In 1839, J. Maze Burbank presented this image to the Royal Society in London with the caption: "A camp meeting, or religious revival in America, from a sketch taken on the spot."

The evangelical impulse at the heart of the Second Great Awakening shared some of the egalitarian thrust of Revolutionary ideals. Evangelical churches generally had a populist orientation that favored ordinary people over elites. For instance, individual piety was seen as more important for salvation than the formal university training required for ministers in traditional Christian churches.

The immense success of the Second Great Awakening was also furthered by evangelical churches innovative organizational techniques. These were well suited to the frontier conditions of newly settled territories. Most evangelical churches relied on itinerant preachers to reach large areas without an established minister and also included important places for lay people who took on major religious and administrative roles within evangelical congregations.

Religion was a central theme of the 1830s; American Protestants branched off into many different denominations, holding in common the need for meetings and revivals.

The Second Great Awakening marked a fundamental transition in American religious life. Many early American religious groups in the Calvinist tradition had emphasized the deep depravity of human beings and believed they could only be saved through the grace of God. The new evangelical movement, however, placed greater emphasis on humans' ability to change their situation for the better. By stressing that individuals could assert their "free will" in choosing to be saved and by suggesting that salvation was open to all human beings, the Second Great Awakening embraced a more optimistic view of the human condition. The repeated and varied revivals of these several decades helped make the United States a much more deeply Protestant nation than it had been before.

Finally, the Second Great Awakening also included greater public roles for white women and much higher African-American participation in Christianity than ever before.

Evangelicalism as a Social Movement
Why did so many people flock to evangelicalism in the early 19th century? The Second Great Awakening was more than just a religious movement; it provided a new social outlet. There was an excitement to it, and a sense of belonging. People even changed denomination if they felt one preacher was more interesting than the last. This essay puts a social twist on early evangelicalism.

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Peter Cartwright on Cane Ridge and the New Lights
No matter whether they were saints or sinners, they would be taken under a warm song or sermon and seized with a convulsive jerking all over, which they could not by any possibility avoid... -from Autobiography of Peter Cartwright. What were revivals really like? Find out from someone who was there! Peter Cartwright was about 16 years old when he went to the Cane Ridge Camp Meeting. He went on to become a Methodist preacher and lead his own revivals.

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What makes Methodism different from other Christian denominations? Find out at the homepage of the United Methodist Church.
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Jonathan Edwards was a big name in the First Great Awakening, which began in the 1740s. His writings were also instrumental in the Second Great Awakening, more than 30 years after his death.
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religious transformation and the second great awakening

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Religious Transformation and the Second Great Awakening [ushistory.org]

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Both blacks and women began to participate in evangelical revivals associated with the Second Great Awakening at the end of the 18th century. From these revivals grew the roots of the both the feminist and abolitionist movements. The American Revolution had largely been a secular affair.

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Abolitionists movement prior to civil war

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Abolitionists movement prior to civil war

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Facts, information and articles about Abolitionist Movement, one of the causes of the civil war

Abolitionist Movement summary: The Abolitionist movement in the United States of America was an effort to end slavery in a nation that valued personal freedom and believed "all men are created equal." Over time, abolitionists grew more strident in their demands, and slave owners entrenched in response, fueling regional divisiveness that ultimately led to the American Civil War.

Slavery Comes To The New World

African slavery began in North America in 1619 at Jamestown, Virginia. The first American-built slave ship, Desire, launched from Massachusetts in 1636, beginning the slave trade between Britain's American colonies and Africa. From the beginning, some white colonists were uncomfortable with the notion of slavery. At the time of the American Revolution against the English Crown, Delaware (1776) and Virginia (1778) prohibited importation of African slaves; Vermont became the first of the 13 colonies to abolish slavery (1777); Rhode Island prohibited taking slaves from the colony (1778); and Pennsylvania began gradual emancipation in 1780.

The Maryland Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Free Negroes and Others Unlawfully Held in Bondage was founded in 1789, the same year the former colonies replaced their Articles of Confederation with the new Constitution, "in order to form a more perfect union."

When the U.S. Constitution was written, it made no specific mention of slavery, but it provided for the return of fugitives (which encompassed criminals, indentured servants and slaves). It allowed each slave within a state to be counted as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of determining population and representation in the House of Representatives (Article I, Section 3, says representation and direct taxation will be determined based on the number of "free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other persons.")

The Constitution prohibited importation of slaves, to begin in 1808, but again managed to do so without using the words "slave" or "slavery." Slave trading became a capital offense in 1819. There existed a general feeling that slavery would gradually pass away. Improvements in technology-the cotton gin and sewing machine-increased the demand for slave labor, however, in order to produce more cotton in Southern states. By the 1830s, many Southerners had shifted from, "Slavery is a necessary evil," to "Slavery is a positive good." The institution existed because it was "God's will," a Christian duty to lift the African out of barbarism while still exerting control over his "animal passions."

Learn More About Slavery In America

The Missouri Compromise And Dred Scott

Missouri's appeal for statehood brought a confrontation between free and slave states in Congress in 1820; each feared the other would gain the upper hand. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 set a policy of admitting states in pairs, one slave, one free. (Maine came in at the same time as Missouri.) The compromise prohibited slavery above parallel 36 degrees, 30 minutes in the lands of the Louisiana Purchase, and it included a national Fugitive Slave Law requiring all Americans to return runaway slaves to their owners. The Fugitive Slave Law was upheld in Prigg v. Pennsylvania, 1842, but the Missouri Compromise's prohibitions on the spread of slavery would be found unconstitutional in the 1857 Dred Scott decision.

Learn more about Dred Scott

The Abolitionism Movement Spreads

Although many New Englanders had grown wealthy in the slave trade before the importation of slaves was outlawed, that area of the country became the hotbed of abolitionist sentiment. Abolitionist newspapers and pamphlets sprang into existence. These were numerous enough by 1820 that South Carolina instituted penalties for anyone bringing written anti-slavery material into the state.

These publications argued against slavery as a social and moral evil and often used examples of African American writings and other achievements to demonstrate that Africans and their descendents were as capable of learning as were Europeans and their descendents in America, given the freedom to do so. To prove their case that one person owning another one was morally wrong, they first had to convince many, in all sections of the country, that Negroes, the term used for the race at the time, were human. Yet, even many people among the abolitionists did not believe the two races were equal.

In 1829, David Walker, a freeman of color originally from the South, published An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World in Boston, Massachusetts. It was a new benchmark, pushing abolitionists toward extreme militancy. He called for slaves to rise up against their masters and to defend themselves: "It is no more harm for you to kill a man who is trying to kill you, than it is for you to take a drink of water when thirsty." As early as 1800, a Virginia slave known as Gabriel Prosser had attempted an uprising there, but it failed when two slaves betrayed the plan to their masters.

Walker's publication was too extreme even for most abolition leaders, including one of the most renowned, William Lloyd Garrison. In 1831, Garrison founded The Liberator, which would become the most famous and influential of abolitionist newspapers. That same year, Virginia debated emancipation, marking the last movement for abolition in the South prior to the Civil War. Instead, that year the Southampton Slave Riot, also called Nat Turner's Rebellion, resulted in Virginia passing new regulations against slaves. Fears of slave revolts like the bloody Haitian Revolution of 1791-1803 were never far from Southerners' minds. Publications like An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World led white Southerners to conclude Northern abolitionists intended to commit genocide against them.

In 1833 in Philadelphia, the first American Anti-Slavery Society Convention convened. In a backlash, anti-abolition riots broke out in many northeastern cities, including New York and Philadelphia, during 1834-35. Several Southern states, beginning with the Carolinas, made formal requests to other states to suppress abolition groups and their literature. In Illinois, the legislature voted to condemn abolition societies and their agitation; Delegate Abraham Lincoln voted with the majority, then immediately co-sponsored a bill to mitigate some of the language of the earlier one. The U.S. House of Representatives adopted a gag rule, automatically tabling abolitionist proposals.

The first national Anti-Slavery Convention was held in New York City in 1837, and the following year the second Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women met in Philadelphia; the latter resulted in pro-slavery riots. The Liberty Party, a political action group, held its first national convention, at Albany, N.Y., in 1839. That same year, Africans mutinied aboard the Spanish slave ship Amistad and asked New York courts to grant them freedom. Their plea was answered affirmatively by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1841.

Frederick Douglass: A Black Abolitionist

Frederick Douglass-a former slave who had been known as Frederick Bailey while in slavery and who was the most famous black man among the abolitionists-broke with William Lloyd Garrison's newspaper, The Liberator, after returning from a visit to Great Britain, and founded a black abolitionist paper, The North Star. The title was a reference to the directions given to runaway slaves trying to reach the Northern states and Canada: Follow the North Star. Garrison had earlier convinced the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society to hire Douglass as an agent, touring with Garrison and telling audiences about his experiences in slavery. In England, however, Douglass had experienced a level of independence he'd never known in America and likely wanted greater independece for his actions here.

Working with Douglass on The North Star was another black man, Martin R. Delaney, who gave up publishing his own paper, The Mystery, to join with Douglass. Born to a free mother in Virginia (in what is now the eastern panhandle of West Virginia), Delaney had never been a slave, but he had traveled extensively in the South. After Uncle Tom's Cabin became a bestseller, he attempted to achieve similar success for himself by penning a semi-fictional account of his travels, Blake: The Huts of America. In 1850, he was one of three black men accepted into Harvard Medical School, but white students successfully petitioned to have them removed. No longer believing that merit and reason could allow members of his race to have an equal opportunity in white society, he became an ardent black nationalist. In 1859, he traveled to Africa and negotiated with eight tribal chiefs in Abbeokuta for land, on which he planned to establish a colony for skilled and educated African Americans. The agreement fell apart, and he returned to America where, near the end of the Civil War, he became the first black officer on a general's staff in the history of the U.S. Army.

The Seneca Falls Convention

In 1848, the first Women's Rights convention was held, in Seneca Falls, N.Y. Outside of the Society of Friends ("Quakers"), women were often denied the opportunity to speak at abolitionist meetings. The women's rights movement produced many outspoken opponents of slavery, including Elizabeth Cody Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. In fact, women's equality and abolition became inextricably linked in the minds of many Southerners. In the 20th century, that lingering animosity nearly defeated the constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote.

Although Delaney's planned African colony failed, in 1849 Great Britain recognized the African colony of Liberia as a sovereign state. It had been founded in 1822 as a colony for free-born blacks, freed slaves and mulattoes (mixed race) from the United States. A number of Americans who opposed slavery (including Abraham Lincoln for a time and the aforementioned Delany) felt that the two races could never live successfully together, and the best hope for Negroes was to return them to freedom in Africa. However, the slave trade between Africa and the Western Hemisphere (the Caribbean and South America) had never ended, and many American ship owners and captains were enjoying something of a golden era of slave-trading while the U.S. and Europe looked the other way. Even if freed slaves had been sent to Africa, many would have wound up back in slavery south of the United States. Only in the late 1850s did Britain step up its anti-slavery enforcement on the high seas, leading America to increase its efforts somewhat.

When the federal government passed a second, even more stringent fugitive slave act in 1850, several states responded by passing personal liberty laws. The following year, Sojourner Truth (Isabella Baumfree) gave a now-famous speech, "Ain't I a Woman," at the Women's Rights convention in Akron, Ohio. Born a slave in New York, she walked away from her owner after she felt she had contributed enough to him. In the late 1840s, she dictated a memoir, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave, published by Garrison in 1850. She began to tour, speaking against slavery and in favor of women's rights.

Learn more about the Seneca Falls Convention

Harriet Tubman and The Underground Railroad

While Sojourner Truth, Douglass, Delaney and others wrote and spoke to end slavery, a former slave named Harriet Tubman, nee Harriet Ross, was actively leading slaves to freedom. After escaping from bondage herself, she made repeated trips into Dixie to help others. Believed to have helped some 300 slaves to escape, she was noted for warning those she was assisting that she would shoot any of them who turned back, because they would endanger herself and others she was assisting.

Tubman was an agent of the Underground Railroad, a system of "safe houses" and way stations that secretly helped runaways. The trip might begin by hiding in the home, barn or other location owned by a Southerner opposed to slavery, and continuing from place to place until reaching safe haven in a free state or Canada. Those who reached Canada did not have to fear being returned under the Fugitive Slave Act. Several communities and individuals claim to have created the term "Underground Railroad." In the southern section of states on the north bank of the Ohio River, a "reverse underground railroad" operated; blacks in those states were kidnapped, whether they had ever been slaves or not, and taken South to sell through a series of clandestine locations.

Learn more about Harriet Tubman
Learn more about the Underground Railroad

Harriet Beecher Stowe: Abolitionist and Author

In 1852, what may have been the seminal event of the abolition movement occurred. Harriet Beecher Stowe, an abolitionist who had come to know a number of escaped slaves while she was living in Cincinnati, authored the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. It presented a scathing view of Southern slavery, filled with melodramatic scenes such as that of the slave Eliza escaping with her baby across the icy Ohio River:

The huge green fragment of ice on which she alighted pitched and creaked as her weight came on it but she stayed there not a moment. With wild cries and desperate energy she leaped to another and still another cake;-stumbling,-leaping,-slipping-springing upwards again! Her shoes are-gone her stockings cut from her feet-while blood marked every step; but she saw nothing, felt nothing, till dimly, as in a dream, she saw the Ohio side and a man helping her up the bank.

Critics pointed out that Stowe had never been to the South, but her novel became a bestseller in the North (banned in the South) and the most effective bit of propaganda to come out of the abolitionist movement. It galvanized many who had been sitting on the sidelines. Reportedly, when President Abraham Lincoln met Stowe during the Civil War he said to her, "So you're the little woman who started this big war."
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Abolitionists Invoke A Higher Law

Abolitionists became increasingly strident in their condemnations of slave owners and "the peculiar institution of slavery." Often, at Fourth of July gatherings of abolition societies, they reportedly used the occasion to denounce the U.S. Constitution as a "covenant with death, and an agreement with hell." Many of them came to believe in "higher law," that a moral commitment to ending slavery took precedent over observing those parts of the Constitution that protected slavery and, in particular, they refused to obey the Fugitive Slave Act. Slave owners or their representatives traveling north to reclaim captured runaways were sometimes set upon on abolitionists mobs; even local lawmen were sometimes attacked. In the South, this fueled the belief that the North expected the South to obey all federal laws but the North could pick and choose, further driving the two regions apart.

Abolitionism, Politics and the Election Of Abraham Lincoln

The abolition movement became an important element of political parties. Although the Native American Party (derisively called the Know-Nothing Party because when member were asked about the secretive group they claimed to "know nothing") opposed immigrants, they also opposed slavery. So did many Whigs and the Free Soil Party. In 1856, these coalesced into the Republican Party. Four years later, its candidate, Abraham Lincoln, captured the presidency of the United States.

John Brown: Abolitionism's Fiery Crusader

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 allowed the citizens of those territories to determine for themselves whether the state would be slave or free. Proponents of both factions poured into the Kansas Territory, with each side trying to gain supremacy, often through violence. After pro-slavery groups attacked the town of Lawrence in 1856, a radical abolitionist named John Brown led his followers in retaliation, killing five pro-slavery settlers. The territory became known as "Bleeding Kansas."

Learn more about John Brown

Dred Scott V. Sanford

The 1857 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Dred Scott v. Sanford denied citizenship to anyone of African blood and held the Missouri Compromise of 1820 to be unconstitutional. While Southern states had been passing laws prohibiting "Negro citizenship" and further restricting the rights even of freemen of color (Virginia in 1857 prohibited slaves from smoking and from standing on sidewalks, among other restrictions), one Northern state after another had been passing laws granting citizenship to their black residents. The Court's findings upended that, and the ruling outraged many Northerners. Abraham Lincoln revived his personal political career, coming out of a self-imposed semi-retirement to speak out against the Dred Scott decision.

The year 1859 saw two events that were milestones in the history of slavery and abolition in America. The ship Clotilde landed in Mobile, Alabama. Though the importation of slaves had been illegal in America since 1808, Clotilde carried 110 to 160 African slaves. The last slave ship ever to land in the United States, it clearly demonstrated how lax the enforcement of the anti-importation laws was.

Learn more about the Dred Scott Decision

John Brown's Raid On Harpers Ferry

Nearly 1,000 miles northeast of Mobile, on the night of October 16, 1859, John Brown-the radical abolitionist who had killed proslavery settlers in Kansas-led 21 men in a raid to capture the U.S. arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia). Though Brown denied it, his plan was to use the arsenal's weapons to arm a slave uprising. He and his followers, 16 white men and five black ones, holed up in the arsenal after they were discovered, and were captured there by a group of U.S. Marines commanded by an Army lieutenant colonel, Robert E. Lee. Convicted of treason against Virginia, Brown was hanged December 2.

Initial reaction in the South was that this was the work of a small group of fanatics, but when Northern newspapers, authors and legislators began praising him as a martyr-a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier eulogizing Brown was published in the New York Herald Tribune less than a month after the execution-their actions were taken as further proof that Northern abolitionists wished to carry out genocide of white Southerners. The flames were fanned higher as information came out that Brown had talked other abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass, about his plans and received financial assistance from some of them.
Learn more about John Brown's Raid On Harpers Ferry

Abraham Lincoln: Abolitionist President

Following Abraham Lincoln's election to the presidency in 1860, Southern states began seceding from the Union. Though personally opposed to slavery and convinced the United States was going to have to be all free or all slave states-"a house divided against itself cannot stand"-he repeatedly said he would not interfere with slavery where it existed. But he adamantly opposed its expansion into territories where it did not exist, and slave owners were determined that they had to be free to take their human property with them if they chose to move into those territories.

Less than two years into the civil war that began over Southern secession, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. It freed all slaves residing in areas of the nation currently in rebellion. Often ridiculed, both then and now, because it only freed slaves in areas that did not recognize Lincoln's authority, it meant that Union Army officers no longer had to return runaway slaves to their owners because, as the armies advanced, slaves in the newly captured areas were considered free. It also effectively prohibited European nations that had long since renounced slavery from entering the war on the side of the South.

Learn more about Abraham Lincoln
Learn more about the Emancipation Proclamation

The 13th Amendment: The Abolitionism Movement Triumphs

The 13th Amendment to the Constitution, declared ratified on December 18, 1865, ended slavery in the United States-at least in name. During the Reconstruction Era, Southern states found ways to "hire" black workers under terms that were slavery in all but name, even pursuing any who ran off, just as they had in the days of the Underground Railroad.

Abolition had been achieved, but the lessons learned by those in the abolition movement would be applied to other social concerns in the decades to come, notably the temperance and woman's suffrage movements.

Articles Featuring The Abolitionist Movement From History Net Magazines

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Abolitionist Movement summary: The Abolitionist movement in the United States of America was an effort to end slavery in a nation that valued personal freedom and believed "all men are created equal." Over time, abolitionists grew more strident in their demands, and slave owners entrenched in response, fueling regional divisiveness that ultimately led to the American Civil War.

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

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By the 1840s America was quickly becoming a " house divided." The issue of slavery and its expansion into the western territories had largely separated political parties and the North and South. Many Americans feared the nation would become so broken that states may secede, after the Nullification Crisis a decade earlier, it was clear, many within the United States felt it their right to secede. Congress faced with the large acquisition of territory from the Mexican American War needed a drastic compromise. The Compromise of 1850 was Henry Clay and later Congress's solution to the problem. The Compromise sought to end sectional tensions plaguing the country, however, it may have only delayed the inevitable.

When James K. Polk became president in 1845, he set his sights on expanding the United States. The first act of his presidency was approving the offer of annexation sent to Texas by the Tyler Administration. In exchange for becoming a part of the United States, the American government would defend Texas's southern border fixed at the Rio Grande River, while Mexico claimed that the border lie farther north on the Nueces River. By December 1845, Texas had agreed to the deal, and Polk signed a resolution accepting Texas as the 28th state. As the US and Texas negotiated, Mexico broke diplomatic ties with the United States. Mexico had never federally acknowledged Texas independence and saw this action as an act of war.

Polk sent troops to the disputed border of Texas and offered a deal to buy the land Mexico claimed in Texas, and additionally in what is now California and New Mexico, from the Mexican government for 25 to 30 million dollars. In the year leading up to the conflict, Mexico's government was not in a position to negotiate. Mexico had four different presidents in that one year, the final government holding power was nationalistic and claimed Texas was still a part of Mexico's territory. In April 1846 Mexican soldiers attacked a small number of American soldiers, sparking a war over the disputed border. The Mexican-American War lasted only two years, and concluded with the American army capturing Mexico City. Yet, the war had a long lasting impact on both countries. The United States and Mexico signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo concluding the war establishing Texas's southern border as the Rio Grande and giving America the New Mexico Territory and California for 15 million dollars. The land the US acquired became known as the Mexican Cession. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo radically expanded the United States, and completed the goals of Polk's Manifest Destiny, while also forcing the nation to confront questions about slavery and self-determination in the new American territory.

Having completed all his campaign promises, Polk did not run for a second term. However, his acquisition of the Mexican Cession created tension his successor would have to calm. Texas was a state committed to slavery and claimed a large portion of New Mexico, which they never truly controlled or governed. Citizens of New Mexico, in contrast to Texas, had long prohibited slavery within the territory. California also required immediate action, after the war military leaders governed the state, and as early as 1848, Americans started to immigrate to California in search of gold. These new citizens voted unanimously in 1849 to outlaw slavery within the territory. Southerners who had supported the expansion of slavery west saw these events as a crossroads for the future of slavery. Additionally, Northern states had recently passed "Liberty Laws" rendering the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 largely ineffective, Southerners began to fear that the Federal Government would soon end the practice of slavery throughout the nation.

Mexican-American War hero Zachary Taylor was elected the new president in 1848. Taylor had been a confusing choice for president. He had been a mostly unpolitical figure before 1848, never voting or even revealing political positions before running for president. He initially did not even declare for a party during the election, until Whig leaders pressured him into committing to the Whigs, in order to gain enough support to be elected president. Because many of his policy positions were nebulous, Americans across parties and borders supported him, impressing their own beliefs onto him. Southerners, knowing Taylor owned slaves, believed he would support the westward expansion of slavery. Whig leaders like Abraham Lincoln and William Seward reminiscent of the only successful Whig presidential candidate, William Henry Harrison, saw a lot of Harrison within Taylor-both were war heroes and famous throughout the country. Division among Democrats also aided Taylor's campaign. Southern Democrats supported the expansion of slavery, while in the North, many Democrats, led by former president Martin Van Buren, had broken away to create the Free-Soil Party, a stated anti-slavery party. Taylor won the election of 1848 and inherited the new land and the regional tension that came with it.

Taylor's actual beliefs only stoked sectional tensions. Despite owning slaves, Taylor believed it impractical to expand slavery into New Mexico and California, as the cash crops that slavery cultivated in the South could not be grown in the new territories. Further angering the many Southerners who voted for him, Taylor said he would not veto the Wilmot Proviso, which sought to make all lands west of Texas free territories. Taylor's solution to the question of slavery in New Mexico and California was simply for them to both become free states immediately, a solution which did not please either side. Taylor ran as a candidate dedicated to saving the Union, but his policy positions pushed the Union further into crisis.

In 1849. Senator Henry Clay dedicated himself to solving the sectional crisis by cultivating compromise between Northern Whigs and Southern Democrats in the Senate. He proposed an omnibus bill which included a multi-part plan to address the sectional tensions. The bill included California entering the Union as a free state, defining Texas's border in return for debt relief, establishing New Mexico and Utah as official territories, and finally banning the slave trade in the District of Columbia in exchange for a new fugitive slave law. Henry Clay's proposition was met with radical opposition. John C. Calhoun and other pro-slavery Southerners were angered by introducing California as a free state, while many Whigs saw this as a reasonable compromise allowing slavery to continue. Future Secretary of State William Seward famously gave his "Higher Law" speech in rebuttal saying, "Shall we, who are founding institutions, social and political, for countless millions; shall we, who know by experience the wise and the just, and are free to choose them, and to reject the erroneous and the unjust; shall we establish human bondage, or permit it by our sufferance to be established?"

The compromise, along with the resulting tensions, exploded on the Senate floor on April 17. Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri and Vice President Millard Fillmore engaged in a vicious argument, concluding in a violent interaction: Fillmore scolded Benton that he was out of order, and compromise leader Henry S. Foote of Mississippi drew a pistol on Benton. The tension carried into July as nine slaveholding states sent delegates to Nashville, Tennessee, to discuss a course of action in case the compromise passed. Radicals argued for immediate secession, but moderate Southerners prevailed arguing for compromise with the Whigs. In that same month, Zachary Taylor died of a digestive ailment. As vice-president Millard Fillmore succeeded Taylor. Fillmore had privately expressed support for Clay's compromise and created optimism among the moderates in Congress. However even with Fillmore's help, on July 31, the omnibus bill was voted down due to the opposition of northern Whigs and southern Democrats. The next day on the Senate floor, Henry Clay announced he would pass each part of the Bill individually. Yet, the Kentucky Senator was 73 years old and suffering from the tuberculous that would eventually take his life. The disease forced Clay out of the capital for treatment, leaving Stephen A. Douglas in charge of the new compromise.

Fillmore, fearing violence between the Texas militia and Federal soldiers over the west Texas border, took an active role in the compromise. Fillmore denied Texas's claim to New Mexico and negotiated with both of Texas's senators. The Senators accepted Clay's first deal and agreed to new borders with the stipulation that the United States would assume Texan debts. After Texas capitulated, the Senate moved quickly to pass a slightly altered form of Clay's plan in individual bills. After long debates in the House, the portions were slightly altered and finally put into law.

The final compromise came to be known as the Compromise of 1850 and consisted of five separate bills. The first of these bills created a new, stricter, Fugitive Slave Law. The new law required federal officials in all states, including those in which slavery was prohibited, to help return escaped slaves to their owners. The second law ended the slave trade in D.C. Slavery remained legal in the district but ended the public trading areas near the Executive Mansion (the White House) and Congress, which embarrassed many Northerners. Next, Congress admitted California to the Union as a free state. Penultimately, the New Mexico and Utah territories were officially created and given popular sovereignty to decide the issue of slavery. Finally, Texas's borders were changed, and the U.S. government took on the weight of their debts.

After the passage of the five bills, Americans across the country celebrated the "compromise that saved the Union." However, while the deal delayed conflict over slavery and its expansion for ten years, it assisted in pushing the Union into civil war. The Fugitive Slave Law would generate terrible violence upon both free and fugitive black Americans. Any free black person in the United States could be arrested as an escaped slave, as slave hunters only had to declare to a judge that a black person was a fugitive, and they could then be arrested and extradited without a warrant or trial. To many Northerners, the violence of slavery was often abstract; the Fugitive Slave Act brought that violence home to the North.

Along with forcing many Americans to confront the horrors of slavery first-hand, The Fugitive Slave Act also inspired Harriet Beecher Stowe to write Uncle Tom's Cabin which convinced many Northerners, who may not have seen slavery or its injustice first-hand, to join the abolitionist cause. Though the Fugitive Slave Act was constructed to appease the South, it also expedited the conversion of the North to an abolitionist region, deepening the sectional tensions between the North and South. The Whig party completely broke down during the same decade, being replaced by a party founded by radical abolitionists-the Republican party. The ten-year armistice established by the compromise only pushed the nation further against slavery, making many in the South fear the end of slavery, and many in the North crave the end of slavery, the very issue which would push the South to secede after Abraham Lincoln's election as president.

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By the 1840s America was quickly becoming a "house divided." The issue of slavery and its expansion into the western territories had largely separated political parties and the North and South. Many Americans feared the nation would become so broken that states may secede, after the Nullification Crisis a decade earlier, it was clear, many within the United States felt it their right to secede.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The American Presidential Election of 1860

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Irish and German immigration in the 1800s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=14&v=sZ_uCUcoFwo
Second Great awakening: http://www.ushistory.org/us/22c.asp
Abolitionist Movement Prior to Civil War: https://www.historynet.com/abolitionist-movement
Women's Rights Movement in the 1800's: http://www.ushistory.org/us/26c.asp
Compromise of 1850: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/compromise-1850
Kansas Nebraska Act: https://socialstudiesforkids.com/articles/ushistory/kansas-nebraska-act.htm
Lincoln Douglas Debates: https://www.britannica.com/event/Lincoln-Douglas-debates
Election of 1860: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vna0ile2ogg

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Emancipation Proclamation: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/10-facts-emancipation-proclamation
Fall of Fort Sumter: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/fort-sumter
Clara Barton and the Red Cross: https://www.redcross.org/about-us/who-we-are/history/clara-barton.html
Battle of Gettysburg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUXpCfcJ7Ng
Battle of Vicksburg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eSgimZ8GKQ
Southern Surrender: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/appomattox-court-house

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

How it ended

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

In context

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

Before the Battle

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

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

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

During the Battle

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

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

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

Aftermath

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

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

Fort Sumter: Featured Resources

Related Battles

Charleston Harbor, SC | April 12, 1861

Result: Confederate Victory

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

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

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Trapped by the Federals near Appomattox Court House, Confederate general Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to Union general Ulysses S. Grant, precipitating the capitulation of other Confederate forces and leading to the end of the bloodiest conflict in American history.

How it ended

Union victory. Lee's formal surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, brought the war in Virginia to an end. While this event is considered the most significant surrender of the Civil War, several other Confederate commanders had to capitulate and negotiate paroles and amnesty for Southern combatants before President Andrew Johnson could officially proclaim an end to the Civil War. That formal declaration occurred sixteen months after Appomattox, on August 20, 1866.

In context

General Lee's final campaign began on March 25, 1865, with a Confederate attack on Fort Stedman, near Petersburg. General Grant's forces counterattacked a week later on April 1 at Five Forks, forcing Lee to abandon Richmond and Petersburg the following day. The Confederate Army's retreat moved southwest along the Richmond & Danville Railroad. Heavily outnumbered by the enemy and low on supplies, Lee was in dire trouble. Nevertheless, he led a series of grueling night marches, hoping to reach supply trains in Farmville, Virginia, and eventually join Maj. Gen. Joseph E. Johnston's army in North Carolina. Union troops captured the valuable supplies at Farmville on April 7.

On April 8, the Confederates discovered that their army was blocked by Federal cavalry. Confederate commanders tried to break through the cavalry screen, hoping that the horsemen were unsupported by other troops. But Grant had anticipated Lee's attempt to escape and ordered two corps (Twenty-fourth and Fifth), under the commands of Maj. Gen. John Gibbon and Bvt. Maj. Gen. Charles Griffin, to march all night to reinforce the Union cavalry and trap Lee. On April 9, those corps drove back the Confederates.

Rather than destroy his army and sacrifice the lives of his soldiers to no purpose, Lee decided to surrender the Army of Northern Virginia. Three days later, a formal ceremony marked the disbanding of Lee's army and the parole of his men, ending the war in Virginia. The Grant-Lee agreement served not only as a signal that the South had lost the war but also as a model for the rest of the surrenders that followed.

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The Battle of Appomattox Court House page includes history articles, photo galleries, maps, and other recommended links for this 1865 Civil War battle in Virginia.

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The 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

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SECTION. 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

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Amendment XIV

Section 1.

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

Section 2.

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

Section 3.

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

Section 4.

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

Section 5.

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

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All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.

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National Constitution Center - The 15th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

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The 15th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

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SECTION. 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

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Amendment 13:  https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendment/amendment-xiii
AMendment 14: https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv
Amendment 15: https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendment/amendment-xv
Election of 1876: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzCu8qYVrG8
Plessy VS Ferguson: https://www.tes.com/lessons/osolUrCVxcVyVA/plessy-v-ferguson

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Transcontinental Railroad: https://www.reporterherald.com/2019/05/04/transcontinental-railroad-completed-150-years-ago/
Massacre at Wounded knee: https://www.britannica.com/event/Wounded-Knee-Massacre
Dawes General Allotment Act: http://www.nativepartnership.org/site/PageServer?pagename=airc_hist_allotmentact
Homestead and Morrill Acts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hsQ0FlCxVE

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Wounded Knee Massacre | Facts, History, & Legacy

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Wounded Knee Massacre (December 29, 1890), the slaughter of approximately 150–300 Lakota Indians by U.S. Army troops in the area of Wounded Knee Creek in southwestern South Dakota. The massacre was the climax of the U.S. Army’s late 19th-century efforts to repress the Plains Indians.

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In 1887 Congress passed the General Allotment Act also known as the 'Dawes Act'. "Friends" of American Indians believed that this act and other assimilationist practices were an alternative to the extinction of Indian people. The Cherokee and the other Five Civilized Tribes which included the Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, and Seminole resisted the act.

The act stated that the head of each family would receive 160 acres of tribal land and each single person would receive 80 acres. Title to the land would be held in trust by the government for 25 years. After 25 years each individual would receive United States citizenship and fee simple title to their land.

Tribal lands not allotted to Native Americans on the reservation were to be sold to the United States and the land would be opened for homesteading. Proceeds from the land sales were to be placed in trust and used by the government as an account for supplies provided to Indian people. The Cherokees western land extension was sold to the United States in 1891 and in 1893 opened, mostly to non-Indian setters, in a famous land run.

When the allotment process began in 1887, the total land held by American Indian tribes on reservations equaled 138,000,000 acres. By the end of the allotment period landholdings had been reduced to 48,000,000 acres. Since 1934 the landholdings have slowly increased to 56,000,000 acres.

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History and Culture: Allotment Act - 1887 - American Indian Relief Council is now Northern Plains Reservation Aid

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In 1887 Congress passed the General Allotment Act also known as the 'Dawes Act'. "Friends" of American Indians believed that this act and other assimilationist practices were an alternative to the extinction of Indian people. The Cherokee and the other Five Civilized Tribes which included the Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, and Seminole resisted the act.

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Sound Smart: The Homestead Act | History

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Bessemer Process: http://belajar-engineering.blogspot.com/2010/11/bessemer-process-bessemer-converter.html
Growth of Invention: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6tRp-zRUJs
Rise of Big Business: http://www.american-historama.org/1866-1881-reconstruction-era/rise-of-big-business.htm
Antitrust Movement:  https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws
Labor Movement:  https://aflcio.org/about-us/history

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The Industrial Economy: Crash Course US History #23

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Rise of Big Business: US History for kids ***

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Find a summary, definition and facts about the Rise of Big Business for kids. The Rise of Big Business and Corporations in the 1800's. The Rise of Big Business in America for kids, children, homework and schools.

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Free and open markets are the foundation of a vibrant economy. Aggressive competition among sellers in an open marketplace gives consumers - both individuals and businesses - the benefits of lower prices, higher quality products and services, more choices, and greater innovation. The FTC's competition mission is to enforce the rules of the competitive marketplace - the antitrust laws. These laws promote vigorous competition and protect consumers from anticompetitive mergers and business practices. The FTC's Bureau of Competition, working in tandem with the Bureau of Economics, enforces the antitrust laws for the benefit of consumers.

The Bureau of Competition has developed a variety of resources to help explain its work. For an overview of the types of matters investigated by the Bureau, read Competition Counts. This Guide to the Antitrust Laws contains a more in-depth discussion of competition issues for those with specific questions about the antitrust laws. From the table at the bottom, you will find Fact Sheets on a variety of competition topics, with examples of cases and Frequently Asked Questions. Within each topic you will find links to more detailed guidance materials developed by the FTC and the U.S. Department of Justice.

For additional information about the work of the Bureau, or to report a suspected antitrust violation, contact us. To learn more about how the Bureau is organized and who to contact with a competition question, consult Inside BC. The Commission cannot represent individuals or businesses, and these resources are not intended to substitute for legal advice.

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Free and open markets are the foundation of a vibrant economy. Aggressive competition among sellers in an open marketplace gives consumers - both individuals and businesses - the benefits of lower prices, higher quality products and services, more choices, and greater innovation.

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Some of the earliest organizing efforts in the United States were young women working at mills. From that point forward, the labor movement has played a central role in the advancement of women's rights.

1834 First turnout of "mill girls" in Lowell, Massachusetts, to protect wage cuts

1843 Lowell Female Labor Reform Association begins public petitioning for 10-hour day

1871 After her dress shop is destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire, Mary Harris "Mother" Jones begins working as a labor organizer

1903 Women's Trade Union League formed at the AFL convention

1909 "Uprising of the 20,000" female shirtwaist makers in New York strike against sweatshop conditions

1911 Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire in New York kills nearly 150 workers

1912 Bread and Roses strike begun by immigrant women in Lawrence, Massachusetts, ended with 23,000 men, women and children on strike and with as many as 20,000 on the picket line

1933 Frances Perkins becomes the U.S. secretary of labor, the first woman to be appointed to the U.S. Cabinet

1963 Equal Pay Act bans wage discrimination based on gender

1974 Coalition of Labor Union Women founded

2009 President Barack Obama signs the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which restored the rights of working women to sue over pay discrimination

The Labor Movement and Immigrant Rights

One of the driving forces in immigration to the United States is the search for good jobs. Fighting for the rights of immigrant workers has long been part of the labor movement.

1877 National uprising of railroad workers 10 Irish coal miners ("Molly Maguires") hanged in Pennsylvania; nine more subsequently were hanged

1909 Unorganized immigrant steelworkers strike in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, and win all demands

1912 Bread and Roses strike begun by immigrant women in Lawrence, Massachusetts, ended with 23,000 men, women and children on strike and with as many as 20,000 on the picket line

1973 Labor Council for Latin American Advancement founded

2000 AFL-CIO Executive Council calls for reform in the nation's immigration laws for undocumented workers

2006 The AFL-CIO and the National Day Laborer Organizing Network form a partnership to collaborate with local worker centers on immigration reform and other issues

The Labor Movement and Workplace Safety

Much of the labor movement's history is a response to dangerous work conditions. Making sure that workplaces are safe is one of the driving reasons that working people organize to express their voice.

1909 "Uprising of the 20,000" female shirtwaist makers in New York strike against sweatshop conditions

1911 Triangle Shirtwaist factory in fire in New York kills nearly 150 workers

1945 Frances Perkins ends her long tenure as secretary of labor, leaving behind a legacy that reduced workplace accidents, created laws against child labor and expanded workers' rights

1970 Occupational Safety and Health Act passed

The Labor Movement and Civil Rights

The civil rights movement and the labor movement have been intertwined from the beginning. Civil rights leaders have always been labor leaders, too. America's union movement champions those who lack a voice in our society. Union members played a critical role in the civil rights struggles of the past and that involvement continues today.

When Martin Luther King Jr. was jailed for civil disobedience, unions and union members frequently came to his aid with the legal and financial help he needed. Union members marched in Washington in 1963 and in countless cities around the country. King was killed while in Memphis to aid striking sanitation workers.

Today, the union movement is in the forefront of efforts to ensure that the gains of the past are maintained and to fight for those still denied opportunity and equality. From its struggles to ensure U.S. workplaces are free of discrimination to its battles to ensure that the hard-earned right to vote is secure for all, the union movement continues to fight for the poor and the oppressed.

1619 Slaves from Africa first imported to colonies

1664 First slavery codes begin trend of making African servants slaves for life

1676 Bacon's Rebellion of servants and slaves in Virginia

1800 Gabriel Prosser's slave insurrection in Virginia

1865 Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution abolishes slavery

1869 Colored National Labor Union formed

1870 Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution adopted; states the right to vote may not be abrogated by color

1925 A. Philip Randolph helps create the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters

1941 A. Philip Randolph threatens march on Washington to protest racial discrimination in defense jobs

1963 March on Washington for jobs and justice

1964 Civil Rights Act bans institutional forms of racial discrimination

1965 AFL-CIO forms A. Philip Randolph Institute

1965 César Chávez forms AFL-CIO United Farm Workers Organizing Committee

1968 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, during sanitation workers' strike

1972 Coalition of Black Trade Unionists formed

1973 Labor Council for Latin American Advancement founded

1992 Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance created within AFL-CIO

1997 Pride At Work, a national coalition of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender workers and their supporters, becomes an AFL-CIO constituency group; AFL-CIO membership renewed growth

The Labor Movement and Workplace Rights

Another key force behind working people organizing is so that they can earn enough to support their families. Good wages are part of that calculation, but so are health care, paid sick leave and other rights that make sure that working people can do their jobs and take care of their families.

1619 The first labor strike on American soil was organized and staged by Polish workers and artisans in Jamestown

1677 First recorded prosecution against strikers in New York City

1791 First strike in building trades by Philadelphia carpenters for a 10-hour day Bill of Rights adopted

1835 General strike for 10-hour day in Philadelphia

1843 Lowell Female Labor Reform Association begins public petitioning for 10-hour day

1847 New Hampshire enacts first state 10-hour-day law

1860 Great shoemaker's strike in New England

1885 Successful strike by Knights of Labor on the Southwest (or Gould) System; the Missouri Pacific; the Missouri, Kansas and Texas; and the Wabash

1886 General strike in Chicago turns bloody in Haymarket Square; seven "anarchists" charged and sentenced to death

1890 Carpenters President Peter J. McGuireand the union strike and win the eight-hour day for some 28,000 members

1892 Iron and steelworkers union defeated in lockout at Homestead, Pennsylvania

1892 Integrated general strike in New Orleans succeeds

1894 Boycott of Pullman sleeping cars leads to general strike on railroads

1903 To improve enforcement of child labor laws, Mother Jones organizes a children's march from Philadelphia to New York

1912 Bread and Roses strike begun by immigrant women in Lawrence, Massachusetts, ended with 23,000 men, women and children on strike and with as many as 20,000 on the picket line

1914 Ludlow Massacre of 13 women and children and seven men in Colorado coal miners' strike

1919 One of every five workers walked out in wave of nationwide strikes, including national clothing, coal and steel strikes, a general strike in Seattle, and a police strike in Boston

1937 Auto Workers win sit-down strike against General Motors in Flint, Michigan

1937 Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters win contract with Pullman Co.

1946 Largest strike wave in U.S. history

1981 President Ronald Reagan breaks air traffic controllers' strike

1981 AFL-CIO rallies 400,000 in Washington on Solidarity Day

1990 United Mine Workers of America win strike against Pittston Coal

1997 The AFL-CIO defeats legislation giving the president the ability to "Fast Track" trade legislation without assured protection of workers' rights and the environment

2001 Labor unions join with community allies to enact "living wage" ordinances in 76 communities across the nation

2003 The AFL-CIO establishes Working America to reach out to nonunion members and mobilize workers through door-to-door canvassing in neighborhoods

The Labor Movement and Retirement

Working people don't work forever. A healthy and secure retirement should be an attainable goal for any worker who wants it. The labor movement has fought and still fights to make this dream true for as many as possible.

1935 Frances Perkins drafts the Social Security Act, greatly increasing retirement security for Americans

1944 Nelson Cruikshank begins working for the AFL and works hard to expand or establish Social Security, Medicare and national health care

2001 AFL-CIO launches Alliance for Retired Americans to recruit activists and mobilize older Americans

The Labor Movement and Shared Prosperity

The labor movement works to ensure working people receive a fair return on their work. Unions focus on raising wages and working standards and help moderate the excessive compensation of executives.

1765 Artisans and laborers in Sons of Liberty protest oppressive British taxes

1770 British troops kill five dock workers in Boston Massacre

1773 Laborers protest royal taxation in the Boston Tea Party

1786 Philadelphia printers conduct first successful strike for increased wages

1900 The AFL and National Civic Federation promote trade agreements with employers; U.S. Industrial Commission declares trade unions good for democracy

2001 Labor unions and community allies enact "living wage" ordinances in 76 communities across the nation

The Labor Movement and Labor Law

The labor movement has long advanced the rights of working people by advocating for progressive labor and employment laws.

1842 Commonwealth v. Hunt decision frees unions from some prosecutions

1847 New Hampshire enacts first state 10-hour-day law

1898 Erdman Act prohibits discrimination against railroad workers because of union membership and provides for mediation of railway labor disputes

1902 Anthracite strike arbitrated after President Theodore Roosevelt intervenes

1912 Bill creating Department of Labor passes at the end of congressional session

1913 Woodrow Wilson takes office as president and appoints the first secretary of labor, William B. Wilson of the Mine Workers

1926 Railway Labor Act sets up procedures to settle railway labor disputes and forbids discrimination against union members

1931 Davis-Bacon Act provides for prevailing wages on publicly funded construction projects

1932 Norris-LaGuardia Act prohibits federal injunctions in most labor disputes

1935 National Labor Relations Act passed

1935 Social Security Act passed

1938 Fair Labor Standards Act establishes first minimum wage and 40-hour week

1947 Taft-Hartley Act restricts union members' activities

1959 Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (Landrum-Griffin) passed

1962 President John F. Kennedy's order gives federal workers the right to bargain

1963 Equal Pay Act bans wage discrimination based on gender

1964 Civil Rights Act bans institutional forms of racial discrimination

2002 President George W. Bush pledges to strip collective bargaining rights from 170,000 civil servants in the new Transportation Security Administration and denies bargaining rights to airport-security screening personnel

2009 President Obama signs the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which restored the rights of working women to sue over pay discrimination

Trade Unions and the AFL-CIO History Timeline

1866 National Labor Union founded

1869 Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor founded

1869 Colored National Labor Union founded

1881 Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions formed

1882 First Labor Day parade held in New York City

1886 American Federation of Labor founded

1903 Women's Trade Union League formed at the AFL convention

1905 Industrial Workers of the World founded

1908 The AFL endorses Democrat William Jennings Bryan for U.S. president

1918 Leadership of IWW sentenced to federal prison charges of disloyalty to the United States

1919 International Labor Organization founded in France

1924 Samuel Gompers dies; William Green becomes AFL president

1925 A. Philip Randolph helps create the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters

1935 Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) formed within the AFL

1936 The AFL and the CIO create Non-Partisan League and help President Roosevelt win re-election to a second term

1938 The Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO) forms as an independent federation; John L. Lewis president

1940 John L. Lewis resigns; Phillip Murray becomes CIO president

1943 The CIO forms first political action committee to get out the union vote for President Roosevelt

1949 The first two of 11 unions with Communist leaders are purged from the CIO

1952 William Green and Phillip Murray die; George Meany and Walter Reuther become presidents of the AFL and the CIO, respectively

1955 The AFL and the CIO merge; George Meany president

1957 The AFL-CIO expels two affiliates for corruption

1965 The AFL-CIO forms A. Philip Randolph Institute

1965 César Chávez forms AFL-CIO United Farm Workers Organizing Committee

1972 Coalition of Black Trade Unionists formed

1973 Labor Council for Latin American Advancement founded

1974 Coalition for Labor Union Women founded

1979 Lane Kirkland elected president of the AFL-CIO

1989 Organizing Institute created

1990 United Steelworkers of America Labor Alliance created within the AFL-CIO

1992 Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance created within the AFL-CIO

1995 Thomas Donahue becomes interim president of the AFL-CIO

1995 John Sweeney elected AFL-CIO president

1997 Pride At Work, a national coalition of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender workers becomes an AFL-CIO constituency group

2002 The AFL-CIO forms the Industrial Union Council

2003 The AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department launches the Helmets to Hardhats program

2003 The AFL-CIO establishes Working America to reach out to nonunion members and mobilize workers through door-to-door canvassing in neighborhoods

2005 Change to Win holds its founding convention in St. Louis, created among seven unions previously members of the AFL-CIO

2006 The AFL-CIO and the National Day Laborer Organizing Networkform a partnership to collaborate with local worker centers on immigration reform and other issues

2008 The AFL-CIO establishes the Union Veterans Council

2009 Richard Trumka elected AFL-CIO president

2009 The first of three unions leave Change to Win to reaffiliate with the AFL-CIO

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Some of the earliest organizing efforts in the United States were young women working at mills. From that point forward, the labor movement has played a central role in the advancement of women's rights.

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Scroll Down to the 1880 sections.

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This collection of recorded interviews documents the stories of people whose lives were shaped by Ellis Island. Passengers, families, immigration officials, military personnel, detainees, and former island employees share their perspectives and relive the moments that formed our collective history. Educational, uplifting, harrowing, and inspiring, these precious cultural artifacts give meaning and texture to our collections.

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Discover | Statue of Liberty & Ellis Island

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This collection of recorded interviews documents the stories of people whose lives were shaped by Ellis Island. Passengers, families, immigration officials, military personnel, detainees, and former island employees share their perspectives and relive the moments that formed our collective history. Educational, uplifting, harrowing, and inspiring, these precious cultural artifacts give meaning and texture to our collections.

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The industrial boom of the late nineteenth century led Americans and immigrants from the world over to leave farming life and head to the city.

Americans increasingly moved into cities over the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a movement motivated in large measure by industrialization.

Eleven million people migrated from rural to urban areas between 1870 and 1920, and a majority of the twenty-five million immigrants who came to the United States in these same years moved into the nation's cities.

By 1920, more Americans lived in cities than in rural areas for the first time in US history.

From farm to city

Today most Americans live in cities or suburbs, but from colonial times into the early twentieth century a majority of Americans lived in the countryside and worked on farms. Only two percent of Americans live on farms or ranches today, but in 1790 ninety percent of the population did. What caused this shift?

The movement of populations from rural to urban areas is called urbanization. Urbanization in the United States increased gradually in the early 1800s and then accelerated in the years after the Civil War. By 1890, twenty-eight percent of Americans lived in urban areas, and by 1920 more Americans lived in towns and cities than in rural areas.

The Second Industrial Revolution and urbanization

The principal force driving America's move into cities was the Second Industrial Revolution.

In the United States the industrial revolution came in two waves. The first saw the rise of factories and mechanized production in the late 1700s and early 1800s and included steam-powered spinning and weaving machines, the cotton gin, steamboats, locomotives, and the telegraph. The Second Industrial Revolution took off following the Civil War with the introduction of interchangeable parts, assembly-line production, and new technologies, including the telephone, automobile, electrification of homes and businesses, and more.

The businesses and factories behind the industrial revolution were located in the nation's towns and cities. Eleven million Americans migrated from the countryside to cities in the fifty years between 1870 and 1920. During these same years an additional 25 million immigrants, most from Europe, moved to the United States-one of the largest mass migrations in human history-and while some settled on farms, most moved into the nation's growing towns and cities.

Cities in the Gilded Age were studies in contrasts. The wealthy lived in urban mansions while the poor crowded into tenement houses, apartment buildings with tiny rooms, no ventilation, and poor sanitation. Not until journalist and reformer Jacob Riis published his eye-opening photoessay How the Other Half Lives in 1890 did cities begin passing ordinances to make tenement housing safer.

The Second Industrial Revolution also changed the physical composition of cities. The invention in the 1850s of the Otis elevator and Bessemer steelmaking process (an inexpensive process for the mass production of steel) created the material means for the rise of tall city buildings, some so tall they were said to scrape the sky- skyscrapers. The advent of trolleys and subways also allowed city dwellers to move about with ease on public transportation, encouraging developers to build new suburbs, allowing people to live outside the city center and commute to work.

Late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American cities were energetic centers of culture and community, rich with ethnic enclaves such as "Little Italy," places in which people of different backgrounds and worldviews lived and worked in close proximity. With museums and public libraries, colleges and universities, churches and synagogues, clubs and organizations, saloons and dance halls, shops and street life, cities were vibrant and diverse places. But America's cities could also be geographically concentrated areas of poverty, disease, and violence.

New York City in the Gilded Age

The diversity of the nation's cities was nowhere more on display than in the nation's largest city, New York. At the turn of the twentieth century, New York City was the national capital of finance, industry, shipping and trade, publishing, the arts, and immigration, a magnet that drew to it much of the best and most avant-garde in art and literature. With a population of more than three million in 1900 and 4.7 million by 1910, New York was more than twice as populous than Chicago, the nation's second-ranked city, three times as large as third-ranked Philadelphia, and six to nine times as large as St. Louis, Boston, Baltimore, and Cleveland, all urban centers of immigrants.

By 1910, New York's millionaires had built palatial mansions along much of Fifth Avenue, while, at the same time, many New Yorkers lived in poverty. The Lower East Side was the most crowded neighborhood on earth, housing tens of thousands in ill-lighted, overcrowded tenements, many without running water, flush toilets, or electricity. An 1893 observer in this section of the city wrote of the "fermenting garbage in the gutter and the smell of stale beer" and the sight of exhausted sweatshop workers toiling away, sewing clothes for the garment industry.

What do you think?

What drew Americans and immigrants to move into the nation's cities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? Do you think the city offered them a better life?

What were some of the contrasts in life between the rich and the poor in cities such as New York at the turn of the twentieth century?

Historians reach for words like "revolution" and "world-historical" in describing big historical changes. Would you consider the movement from farms to cities, from colonial times to today, to be revolutionary? Why or why not?

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America moves to the city (article) | Khan Academy

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

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Rise of Immigration:  https://www.libertyellisfoundation.org/immigration-timeline
Growth of cities:  https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/the-gilded-age/gilded-age/a/america-moves-to-the-city
Tenement Life: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/the-gilded-age/gilded-age/a/america-moves-to-the-city
Growth of Mass Communication: https://www.eolss.net/Sample-Chapters/C04/E6-33-02-01.pdf

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Op-Ed Contributor

SACRAMENTO - ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER, the governor of California, may have electrified his supporters by deciding to hold a special election in November on his reforms for electoral redistricting, the state budget and teacher tenure. The trouble is that Mr. Schwarzenegger may have electrified his detractors even more, and his needless rush to enact his worthy measures through a $45 million electoral circus may doom them in the end.

Since January, when Mr. Schwarzenegger mounted a very public attack on the government employees unions that constantly manipulate the unpopular State Legislature in Sacramento, an ill wind has blown -- right into Mr. Schwarzenegger's face.

For example, throughout the spring the nightly news was dominated by clips of furious nurses protesting the governor's decision to delay the imposition of a new California law requiring hospitals to reduce their patient-to-nurse ratio to 5-to-1. The coverage usually failed to note that Mr. Schwarzenegger was trying to preserve a patient-nurse ratio of 6-to-1, widely accepted in the United States, because a 5-to-1 ratio would be extremely hard to achieve. There is a nationwide shortage of nurses, and many experts believe that California hospitals could achieve the new ratio only by closing care units -- thus hurting rather than helping patients.

Then Mr. Schwarzenegger became embroiled in protests by unionized state workers claiming he wanted to replace their pensions with 401(k)-like accounts. Night after night the local news featured state workers clasping hands to chests in grief, claiming their pensions were going to be privatized. It was quite a set of performances, especially considering that these workers had to know that Mr. Schwarzenegger's reforms would not have affected them in the slightest. Only workers hired after July 2007 would have had to accept the new program.

In both cases, the unions cleverly made the debate about "Arnold" rather than about the specific policy, and the news media lapped it up. Worse, the governor let them get away with it. Rather than remaining above the fray, he got caught up in name-calling, referring to the political leaders fighting his budget plans as "the Three Stooges." He failed to explain to voters what was really going on. He was on the defensive. His poll numbers plunged.

In these tough times, Mr. Schwarzenegger's vaunted political independence is a handicap. He has few allies in Sacramento with whom to form a coalition. Yes, he's a moderate who has created the most bipartisan administration since the days of Pat Brown and Ronald Reagan, appointing scores of Democrats to top jobs and judgeships. But the Democratic-majority Legislature is crammed with rigid ideologues on both sides who care little about the governor's evenhandedness. Of 120 legislators, I'd describe fewer than 10 as moderates.

And now Mr. Schwarzenegger is compounding his mistakes by pursuing his special election. Yes, reform is needed, but in opening a special-election season he's handing the unions a vast platform from which to pummel him. It's nice to know he's gutsy, but he should be spending his time fixing nuts-and-bolts problems, not gearing up a messy political campaign.

Besides, it's unclear what the hurry is. For example, one proposal would have future voting districts drawn up by a panel of retired judges. This would be a vast improvement over the current situation, in which the Legislature uses computer programs to painstakingly divide voters based on party registration and sticks them in bizarrely shaped districts controlled by one party. But even if the measure is approved in the special vote in November, the reforms won't be in place in time to improve California's 2006 election.

Another proposal is a budget-cutting tool that prevents spending from exceeding the average of the preceding three years. In lean years it will prompt modest, budgetwide cuts rather than the usual automatic growth. Known as the Live Within Our Means measure, it is vociferously opposed by the education lobby. The state schools superintendent, Jack O'Connell, a serial exaggerator, insists that it would eviscerate school financing.

In fact, the measure would take a small percentage of money from education, health care, prisons, welfare, environmental and other agencies, yet protect required services. If revenues fell midyear, the governor could find more cuts. Contrary to what the unions would have you believe, California schools are at the comfortable median nationally in per-pupil financing, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. The unions apparently thought the system was flush enough last year that they fought a bill that would have saved schools $300 million annually by letting them hire non-union landscapers and bus drivers. There's plenty of such non-classroom waste, should cuts be needed. But in the hubbub over the special election, these are the sorts of facts that will probably get overlooked.

Mr. Schwarzenegger's third reform, and the one that seems most likely to get voter approval, would give teachers tenure after five years on the job rather than the current two years. While this is sensible enough -- most teachers with only two years of experience are probably just learning how to control their classes -- it isn't real reform. It avoids the real problem with "certified" teachers: far too many get useless degrees with little useable knowledge, leaving them incapable of teaching math, history, reading or writing. If Mr. Schwarzenegger wants better quality tenured teachers, he will have to take on California's dismal teacher colleges.

The next few months are fairly easy to predict. Public employee unions, with their reserved buses and mass-produced "protest" signs, have nothing but time on their hands. The governor has little. The unions will make the debate about "Arnold," and the press will most likely play along.

What's tougher to predict is whether Mr. Schwarzenegger will be a step ahead this time. Unfortunately, aside from the intelligence and strategic abilities he showed in getting elected, there's no evidence to suggest Mr. Schwarzenegger won't let it get personal once again.

Op-Ed Contributor Jill Stewart writes a syndicated column on California politics.

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Opinion | Rise of the Political Machines

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Op-Ed article by Jill Stewart says Gov Arnold Schwarzenegger is seeking to reform electoral redistricting, state budget and teacher tenure, but his needless rush to hold special election may doom these worthy measures; says his effort to open special-election season has electrified his detractors and handed unions vast platform from which to pummel him; says he should be spending his time fixing nuts-and-bolts problems, not gearing up messy political campaign (M)

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Rise of Political machines:https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/20/opinion/rise-of-the-political-machines.html
Progressive Reform: http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/timeline/progress/
Rise of Organised Labor: https://aflcio.org/about-us/history
Women's suffrage and Prohibition Movement: https://amazingwomeninhistory.com/womens-suffrage-and-temperance-movement/
Isolationism vs Imperialism: https://teachers.henrico.k12.va.us/tucker/strusky_m/2360cwebpage/presentation/2008vus9a_imperialism/VUS9a_imperialism.htm
Election of 1912: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdl8RzFcArU

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Progressive Era to New Era - American Memory Timeline- Classroom Presentation | Teacher Resources - Library of Congress

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The Progressive Era to New Era timeline (1900-1929) timeline covers the automobiles, urbanization, conservation, immigration, prohibition, World War I and women's suffrage with primary sources from American Memory.

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Some of the earliest organizing efforts in the United States were young women working at mills. From that point forward, the labor movement has played a central role in the advancement of women's rights.

1834 First turnout of "mill girls" in Lowell, Massachusetts, to protect wage cuts

1843 Lowell Female Labor Reform Association begins public petitioning for 10-hour day

1871 After her dress shop is destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire, Mary Harris "Mother" Jones begins working as a labor organizer

1903 Women's Trade Union League formed at the AFL convention

1909 "Uprising of the 20,000" female shirtwaist makers in New York strike against sweatshop conditions

1911 Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire in New York kills nearly 150 workers

1912 Bread and Roses strike begun by immigrant women in Lawrence, Massachusetts, ended with 23,000 men, women and children on strike and with as many as 20,000 on the picket line

1933 Frances Perkins becomes the U.S. secretary of labor, the first woman to be appointed to the U.S. Cabinet

1963 Equal Pay Act bans wage discrimination based on gender

1974 Coalition of Labor Union Women founded

2009 President Barack Obama signs the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which restored the rights of working women to sue over pay discrimination

The Labor Movement and Immigrant Rights

One of the driving forces in immigration to the United States is the search for good jobs. Fighting for the rights of immigrant workers has long been part of the labor movement.

1877 National uprising of railroad workers 10 Irish coal miners ("Molly Maguires") hanged in Pennsylvania; nine more subsequently were hanged

1909 Unorganized immigrant steelworkers strike in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, and win all demands

1912 Bread and Roses strike begun by immigrant women in Lawrence, Massachusetts, ended with 23,000 men, women and children on strike and with as many as 20,000 on the picket line

1973 Labor Council for Latin American Advancement founded

2000 AFL-CIO Executive Council calls for reform in the nation's immigration laws for undocumented workers

2006 The AFL-CIO and the National Day Laborer Organizing Network form a partnership to collaborate with local worker centers on immigration reform and other issues

The Labor Movement and Workplace Safety

Much of the labor movement's history is a response to dangerous work conditions. Making sure that workplaces are safe is one of the driving reasons that working people organize to express their voice.

1909 "Uprising of the 20,000" female shirtwaist makers in New York strike against sweatshop conditions

1911 Triangle Shirtwaist factory in fire in New York kills nearly 150 workers

1945 Frances Perkins ends her long tenure as secretary of labor, leaving behind a legacy that reduced workplace accidents, created laws against child labor and expanded workers' rights

1970 Occupational Safety and Health Act passed

The Labor Movement and Civil Rights

The civil rights movement and the labor movement have been intertwined from the beginning. Civil rights leaders have always been labor leaders, too. America's union movement champions those who lack a voice in our society. Union members played a critical role in the civil rights struggles of the past and that involvement continues today.

When Martin Luther King Jr. was jailed for civil disobedience, unions and union members frequently came to his aid with the legal and financial help he needed. Union members marched in Washington in 1963 and in countless cities around the country. King was killed while in Memphis to aid striking sanitation workers.

Today, the union movement is in the forefront of efforts to ensure that the gains of the past are maintained and to fight for those still denied opportunity and equality. From its struggles to ensure U.S. workplaces are free of discrimination to its battles to ensure that the hard-earned right to vote is secure for all, the union movement continues to fight for the poor and the oppressed.

1619 Slaves from Africa first imported to colonies

1664 First slavery codes begin trend of making African servants slaves for life

1676 Bacon's Rebellion of servants and slaves in Virginia

1800 Gabriel Prosser's slave insurrection in Virginia

1865 Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution abolishes slavery

1869 Colored National Labor Union formed

1870 Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution adopted; states the right to vote may not be abrogated by color

1925 A. Philip Randolph helps create the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters

1941 A. Philip Randolph threatens march on Washington to protest racial discrimination in defense jobs

1963 March on Washington for jobs and justice

1964 Civil Rights Act bans institutional forms of racial discrimination

1965 AFL-CIO forms A. Philip Randolph Institute

1965 César Chávez forms AFL-CIO United Farm Workers Organizing Committee

1968 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, during sanitation workers' strike

1972 Coalition of Black Trade Unionists formed

1973 Labor Council for Latin American Advancement founded

1992 Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance created within AFL-CIO

1997 Pride At Work, a national coalition of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender workers and their supporters, becomes an AFL-CIO constituency group; AFL-CIO membership renewed growth

The Labor Movement and Workplace Rights

Another key force behind working people organizing is so that they can earn enough to support their families. Good wages are part of that calculation, but so are health care, paid sick leave and other rights that make sure that working people can do their jobs and take care of their families.

1619 The first labor strike on American soil was organized and staged by Polish workers and artisans in Jamestown

1677 First recorded prosecution against strikers in New York City

1791 First strike in building trades by Philadelphia carpenters for a 10-hour day Bill of Rights adopted

1835 General strike for 10-hour day in Philadelphia

1843 Lowell Female Labor Reform Association begins public petitioning for 10-hour day

1847 New Hampshire enacts first state 10-hour-day law

1860 Great shoemaker's strike in New England

1885 Successful strike by Knights of Labor on the Southwest (or Gould) System; the Missouri Pacific; the Missouri, Kansas and Texas; and the Wabash

1886 General strike in Chicago turns bloody in Haymarket Square; seven "anarchists" charged and sentenced to death

1890 Carpenters President Peter J. McGuireand the union strike and win the eight-hour day for some 28,000 members

1892 Iron and steelworkers union defeated in lockout at Homestead, Pennsylvania

1892 Integrated general strike in New Orleans succeeds

1894 Boycott of Pullman sleeping cars leads to general strike on railroads

1903 To improve enforcement of child labor laws, Mother Jones organizes a children's march from Philadelphia to New York

1912 Bread and Roses strike begun by immigrant women in Lawrence, Massachusetts, ended with 23,000 men, women and children on strike and with as many as 20,000 on the picket line

1914 Ludlow Massacre of 13 women and children and seven men in Colorado coal miners' strike

1919 One of every five workers walked out in wave of nationwide strikes, including national clothing, coal and steel strikes, a general strike in Seattle, and a police strike in Boston

1937 Auto Workers win sit-down strike against General Motors in Flint, Michigan

1937 Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters win contract with Pullman Co.

1946 Largest strike wave in U.S. history

1981 President Ronald Reagan breaks air traffic controllers' strike

1981 AFL-CIO rallies 400,000 in Washington on Solidarity Day

1990 United Mine Workers of America win strike against Pittston Coal

1997 The AFL-CIO defeats legislation giving the president the ability to "Fast Track" trade legislation without assured protection of workers' rights and the environment

2001 Labor unions join with community allies to enact "living wage" ordinances in 76 communities across the nation

2003 The AFL-CIO establishes Working America to reach out to nonunion members and mobilize workers through door-to-door canvassing in neighborhoods

The Labor Movement and Retirement

Working people don't work forever. A healthy and secure retirement should be an attainable goal for any worker who wants it. The labor movement has fought and still fights to make this dream true for as many as possible.

1935 Frances Perkins drafts the Social Security Act, greatly increasing retirement security for Americans

1944 Nelson Cruikshank begins working for the AFL and works hard to expand or establish Social Security, Medicare and national health care

2001 AFL-CIO launches Alliance for Retired Americans to recruit activists and mobilize older Americans

The Labor Movement and Shared Prosperity

The labor movement works to ensure working people receive a fair return on their work. Unions focus on raising wages and working standards and help moderate the excessive compensation of executives.

1765 Artisans and laborers in Sons of Liberty protest oppressive British taxes

1770 British troops kill five dock workers in Boston Massacre

1773 Laborers protest royal taxation in the Boston Tea Party

1786 Philadelphia printers conduct first successful strike for increased wages

1900 The AFL and National Civic Federation promote trade agreements with employers; U.S. Industrial Commission declares trade unions good for democracy

2001 Labor unions and community allies enact "living wage" ordinances in 76 communities across the nation

The Labor Movement and Labor Law

The labor movement has long advanced the rights of working people by advocating for progressive labor and employment laws.

1842 Commonwealth v. Hunt decision frees unions from some prosecutions

1847 New Hampshire enacts first state 10-hour-day law

1898 Erdman Act prohibits discrimination against railroad workers because of union membership and provides for mediation of railway labor disputes

1902 Anthracite strike arbitrated after President Theodore Roosevelt intervenes

1912 Bill creating Department of Labor passes at the end of congressional session

1913 Woodrow Wilson takes office as president and appoints the first secretary of labor, William B. Wilson of the Mine Workers

1926 Railway Labor Act sets up procedures to settle railway labor disputes and forbids discrimination against union members

1931 Davis-Bacon Act provides for prevailing wages on publicly funded construction projects

1932 Norris-LaGuardia Act prohibits federal injunctions in most labor disputes

1935 National Labor Relations Act passed

1935 Social Security Act passed

1938 Fair Labor Standards Act establishes first minimum wage and 40-hour week

1947 Taft-Hartley Act restricts union members' activities

1959 Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (Landrum-Griffin) passed

1962 President John F. Kennedy's order gives federal workers the right to bargain

1963 Equal Pay Act bans wage discrimination based on gender

1964 Civil Rights Act bans institutional forms of racial discrimination

2002 President George W. Bush pledges to strip collective bargaining rights from 170,000 civil servants in the new Transportation Security Administration and denies bargaining rights to airport-security screening personnel

2009 President Obama signs the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which restored the rights of working women to sue over pay discrimination

Trade Unions and the AFL-CIO History Timeline

1866 National Labor Union founded

1869 Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor founded

1869 Colored National Labor Union founded

1881 Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions formed

1882 First Labor Day parade held in New York City

1886 American Federation of Labor founded

1903 Women's Trade Union League formed at the AFL convention

1905 Industrial Workers of the World founded

1908 The AFL endorses Democrat William Jennings Bryan for U.S. president

1918 Leadership of IWW sentenced to federal prison charges of disloyalty to the United States

1919 International Labor Organization founded in France

1924 Samuel Gompers dies; William Green becomes AFL president

1925 A. Philip Randolph helps create the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters

1935 Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) formed within the AFL

1936 The AFL and the CIO create Non-Partisan League and help President Roosevelt win re-election to a second term

1938 The Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO) forms as an independent federation; John L. Lewis president

1940 John L. Lewis resigns; Phillip Murray becomes CIO president

1943 The CIO forms first political action committee to get out the union vote for President Roosevelt

1949 The first two of 11 unions with Communist leaders are purged from the CIO

1952 William Green and Phillip Murray die; George Meany and Walter Reuther become presidents of the AFL and the CIO, respectively

1955 The AFL and the CIO merge; George Meany president

1957 The AFL-CIO expels two affiliates for corruption

1965 The AFL-CIO forms A. Philip Randolph Institute

1965 César Chávez forms AFL-CIO United Farm Workers Organizing Committee

1972 Coalition of Black Trade Unionists formed

1973 Labor Council for Latin American Advancement founded

1974 Coalition for Labor Union Women founded

1979 Lane Kirkland elected president of the AFL-CIO

1989 Organizing Institute created

1990 United Steelworkers of America Labor Alliance created within the AFL-CIO

1992 Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance created within the AFL-CIO

1995 Thomas Donahue becomes interim president of the AFL-CIO

1995 John Sweeney elected AFL-CIO president

1997 Pride At Work, a national coalition of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender workers becomes an AFL-CIO constituency group

2002 The AFL-CIO forms the Industrial Union Council

2003 The AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department launches the Helmets to Hardhats program

2003 The AFL-CIO establishes Working America to reach out to nonunion members and mobilize workers through door-to-door canvassing in neighborhoods

2005 Change to Win holds its founding convention in St. Louis, created among seven unions previously members of the AFL-CIO

2006 The AFL-CIO and the National Day Laborer Organizing Networkform a partnership to collaborate with local worker centers on immigration reform and other issues

2008 The AFL-CIO establishes the Union Veterans Council

2009 Richard Trumka elected AFL-CIO president

2009 The first of three unions leave Change to Win to reaffiliate with the AFL-CIO

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Some of the earliest organizing efforts in the United States were young women working at mills. From that point forward, the labor movement has played a central role in the advancement of women's rights.

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The American Presidential Election of 1912

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assassination of archduke Franz Ferdinand: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/page/assassination-archduke-ferdinand
New technology to WW1: https://www.loc.gov/collections/world-war-i-rotogravures/articles-and-essays/military-technology-in-world-war-i/
President Wilson's 14 points: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbdhxLVlrhI
Treaty of Versailles: https://historycooperative.org/tough-terms-treaty-versailles/

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Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand 

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Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand 

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First World War timeline – First World War - overview

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Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

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The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 eventually led to the outbreak of the First World War.

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World War I was less than one year old when British writer H. G. Wells lamented the fate of humanity at the hands of "man's increasing power of destruction" (H. G. Wells, "Civilization at the Breaking Point," New York Times, May 27, 1915, 2). Although considered a father of science fiction, Wells was observing something all too real-technology had changed the face of combat in World War I and ultimately accounted for an unprecedented loss of human life.

[Detail] "Huge siege guns of the Central Powers used in the smashing of forts." War of the Nations, 110.

Infantry warfare had depended upon hand-to-hand combat. World War I popularized the use of the machine gun-capable of bringing down row after row of soldiers from a distance on the battlefield. This weapon, along with barbed wire and mines, made movement across open land both difficult and dangerous. Thus trench warfare was born. The British introduced tanks in 1916; they were used with airplanes and artillery to advance the front. The advent of chemical warfare added to the soldier's perils.

"French, British, and German Types of Battle Tanks." War of the Nations, 167.

Sea and airborne weapons made killing from a distance more effective as well. Guns mounted on ships were able to strike targets up to twenty miles inland. The stealth and speed of German submarines gave Germany a considerable advantage in its dominance of the North Sea. Although airplanes were technologically crude, they offered a psychological advantage. Fighter pilot aces such as Manfred von Richthofen, Germany's "Red Baron," became celebrities and heroes, capturing the world's imagination with their daring and thrilling mid-air maneuvers.

[Detail] "The Insidious and Deadly Gas That Creeps Noiselessly Down Toward the Foe." War of the Nations, 210.

Newspapers charted the public's reaction-horror and vengeance-to these technological advancements. A few weeks after the Germans first used poison gas in Ypres, Belgium, on April 22, 1915, a London newswire to the New York Times described the brutal details of the attack and the immediate effects on the soldiers, concluding: "It is without doubt the most awful form of scientific torture." Yet a Daily Chronicle [London] editorial urged Britain to retaliate with poison gas use of its own (quoted in New York Times, May 7, 1915, 2). In fact, Germany claimed that the Allies were already using mines charged with poison gas. So horrified were people by chemical warfare that the use of poison gases was banned for future wars, although not until 1925.

When Germany's plan for a swift military victory went unrealized, the pace of war bogged down. Both sides tried to break this stalemate through the use of force. In previous wars, victory was achieved through territorial supremacy; in World War I it was accomplished by simply outlasting the opponent-a "war of attrition." When fighting first broke out in August 1914, many hoped the war would be short-lived; few predicted a conflict that would last for more than four years and scar an entire generation with its unprecedented brutality.

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Military Technology in World War I | Articles & Essays | Newspaper Pictorials: World War I Rotogravures, 1914-1919 | Digital Collections | Library of Congress

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World War I was less than one year old when British writer H. G. Wells lamented the fate of humanity at the hands of "man's increasing power of destruction" (H. G. Wells, "Civilization at the Breaking Point," New York Times, May 27, 1915, 2).

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Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points | History