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Table of Contents

1. Emancipation and Reconstruction

2. Andrew Johnson and Presidential Reconstruction

3. Radical Reconstruction

4. Reconstruction Comes to an End

Reconstruction (1865-1877), the turbulent era following the Civil War, was the effort to reintegrate Southern states from the Confederacy and 4 million newly-freed people into the United States. Under the administration of President Andrew Johnson in 1865 and 1866, new southern state legislatures passed restrictive " Black Codes " to control the labor and behavior of former enslaved people and other African Americans.

Outrage in the North over these codes eroded support for the approach known as Presidential Reconstruction and led to the triumph of the more radical wing of the Republican Party. During Radical Reconstruction, which began with the passage of the Reconstruction Act of 1867, newly enfranchised Black people gained a voice in government for the first time in American history, winning election to southern state legislatures and even to the U.S. Congress. In less than a decade, however, reactionary forces-including the Ku Klux Klan -would reverse the changes wrought by Radical Reconstruction in a violent backlash that restored white supremacy in the South.

Emancipation and Reconstruction

At the outset of the Civil War, to the dismay of the more radical abolitionists in the North, President Abraham Lincoln did not make abolition of slavery a goal of the Union war effort. To do so, he feared, would drive the border slave states still loyal to the Union into the Confederacy and anger more conservative northerners. By the summer of 1862, however, enslaved people, themselves had pushed the issue, heading by the thousands to the Union lines as Lincoln's troops marched through the South.

Their actions debunked one of the strongest myths underlying Southern devotion to the "peculiar institution"-that many enslaved people were truly content in bondage-and convinced Lincoln that emancipation had become a political and military necessity. In response to Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which freed more than 3 million enslaved people in the Confederate states by January 1, 1863, Black people enlisted in the Union Army in large numbers, reaching some 180,000 by war's end.

Did you know? During Reconstruction, the Republican Party in the South represented a coalition of Black people (who made up the overwhelming majority of Republican voters in the region) along with "carpetbaggers" and "scalawags," as white Republicans from the North and South, respectively, were known.

Emancipation changed the stakes of the Civil War, ensuring that a Union victory would mean large-scale social revolution in the South. It was still very unclear, however, what form this revolution would take. Over the next several years, Lincoln considered ideas about how to welcome the devastated South back into the Union, but as the war drew to a close in early 1865, he still had no clear plan.

In a speech delivered on April 11, while referring to plans for Reconstruction in Louisiana, Lincoln proposed that some Black people-including free Black people and those who had enlisted in the military-deserved the right to vote. He was assassinated three days later, however, and it would fall to his successor to put plans for Reconstruction in place.

Andrew Johnson and Presidential Reconstruction

At the end of May 1865, President Andrew Johnson announced his plans for Reconstruction, which reflected both his staunch Unionism and his firm belief in states' rights. In Johnson's view, the southern states had never given up their right to govern themselves, and the federal government had no right to determine voting requirements or other questions at the state level.

Under Johnson's Presidential Reconstruction, all land that had been confiscated by the Union Army and distributed to the formerly enslaved people by the army or the Freedmen's Bureau (established by Congress in 1865) reverted to its prewar owners. Apart from being required to uphold the abolition of slavery (in compliance with the 13th Amendment to the Constitution), swear loyalty to the Union and pay off war debt, southern state governments were given free rein to rebuild themselves.

As a result of Johnson's leniency, many southern states in 1865 and 1866 successfully enacted a series of laws known as the " black codes," which were designed to restrict freed Black peoples' activity and ensure their availability as a labor force. These repressive codes enraged many in the North, including numerous members of Congress, which refused to seat congressmen and senators elected from the southern states.

In early 1866, Congress passed the Freedmen's Bureau and Civil Rights Bills and sent them to Johnson for his signature. The first bill extended the life of the bureau, originally established as a temporary organization charged with assisting refugees and formerly enslaved people, while the second defined all persons born in the United States as national citizens who were to enjoy equality before the law. After Johnson vetoed the bills-causing a permanent rupture in his relationship with Congress that would culminate in his impeachment in 1868-the Civil Rights Act became the first major bill to become law over presidential veto.

Radical Reconstruction

After northern voters rejected Johnson's policies in the congressional elections in late 1866, Radical Republicans in Congress took firm hold of Reconstruction in the South. The following March, again over Johnson's veto, Congress passed the Reconstruction Act of 1867, which temporarily divided the South into five military districts and outlined how governments based on universal (male) suffrage were to be organized. The law also required southern states to ratify the 14th Amendment, which broadened the definition of citizenship, granting "equal protection" of the Constitution to formerly enslaved people, before they could rejoin the Union. In February 1869, Congress approved the 15th Amendment (adopted in 1870), which guaranteed that a citizen's right to vote would not be denied "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

By 1870, all of the former Confederate states had been admitted to the Union, and the state constitutions during the years of Radical Reconstruction were the most progressive in the region's history. The participation of African Americans in southern public life after 1867 would be by far the most radical development of Reconstruction, which was essentially a large-scale experiment in interracial democracy unlike that of any other society following the abolition of slavery.

Southern Black people won election to southern state governments and even to the U.S. Congress during this period. Among the other achievements of Reconstruction were the South's first state-funded public school systems, more equitable taxation legislation, laws against racial discrimination in public transport and accommodations and ambitious economic development programs (including aid to railroads and other enterprises).

Reconstruction Comes to an End

After 1867, an increasing number of southern whites turned to violence in response to the revolutionary changes of Radical Reconstruction. The Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist organizations targeted local Republican leaders, white and Black, and other African Americans who challenged white authority. Though federal legislation passed during the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant in 1871 took aim at the Klan and others who attempted to interfere with Black suffrage and other political rights, white supremacy gradually reasserted its hold on the South after the early 1870s as support for Reconstruction waned.

Racism was still a potent force in both South and North, and Republicans became more conservative and less egalitarian as the decade continued. In 1874-after an economic depression plunged much of the South into poverty-the Democratic Party won control of the House of Representatives for the first time since the Civil War.

When Democrats waged a campaign of violence to take control of Mississippi in 1875, Grant refused to send federal troops, marking the end of federal support for Reconstruction-era state governments in the South. By 1876, only Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina were still in Republican hands. In the contested presidential election that year, Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes reached a compromise with Democrats in Congress: In exchange for certification of his election, he acknowledged Democratic control of the entire South.

The Compromise of 1876 marked the end of Reconstruction as a distinct period, but the struggle to deal with the revolution ushered in by slavery's eradication would continue in the South and elsewhere long after that date.

A century later, the legacy of Reconstruction would be revived during the civil rights movement of the 1960s, as African Americans fought for the political, economic and social equality that had long been denied them.

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Reconstruction - Civil War End, Changes & Act of 1867

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Reconstruction, the turbulent era following the U.S. Civil War, was an effort to reunify the divided nation, address and integrate African Americans into society by rewriting the nation's laws and Constitution. The steps taken gave rise to the Ku Klux Klan and other divisive groups.

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African American Odyssey Introduction |Overview |Object List | Search Part 1: Forever Free |Black Exodus
Part 2

The Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 freed African Americans in rebel states, and after the Civil War, the Thirteenth Amendment emancipated all U.S. slaves wherever they were. As a result, the mass of Southern blacks now faced the difficulty Northern blacks had confronted--that of a free people surrounded by many hostile whites. One freedman, Houston Hartsfield Holloway, wrote, "For we colored people did not know how to be free and the white people did not know how to have a free colored person about them."

Even after the Emancipation Proclamation, two more years of war, service by African American troops, and the defeat of the Confederacy, the nation was still unprepared to deal with the question of full citizenship for its newly freed black population. The Reconstruction implemented by Congress, which lasted from 1866 to 1877, was aimed at reorganizing the Southern states after the Civil War, providing the means for readmitting them into the Union, and defining the means by which whites and blacks could live together in a nonslave society. The South, however, saw Reconstruction as a humiliating, even vengeful imposition and did not welcome it.

During the years after the war, black and white teachers from the North and South, missionary organizations, churches and schools worked tirelessly to give the emancipated population the opportunity to learn. Former slaves of every age took advantage of the opportunity to become literate. Grandfathers and their grandchildren sat together in classrooms seeking to obtain the tools of freedom.

After the Civil War, with the protection of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, African Americans enjoyed a period when they were allowed to vote, actively participate in the political process, acquire the land of former owners, seek their own employment, and use public accommodations. Opponents of this progress, however, soon rallied against the former slaves' freedom and began to find means for eroding the gains for which many had shed their blood.

Celebration of Emancipation

Thomas Nast's depiction of emancipation at the end of the Civil War envisions the future of free blacks in the U.S. and contrasts it with various cruelties of the institution of slavery.

Thomas Nast.

Emancipation.
Philadelphia: S. Bott, 1865.
Wood engraving.
Prints and Photographs Division.
Reproduction Number: LC-USZ62-2573 (5-9)

Victorious Soldiers Return

Alfred R. Waud.

Mustered Out.
Little Rock, Arkansas, April 20, 1865.
Drawing. Chinese white on green paper.
Published in Harper's Weekly, May 19, 1866.
Prints and Photographs Division.
Reproduction Number: LC-USZ62-175 (5-1)

Alfred Waud's drawing captures the exuberance of the Little Rock, Arkansas, African American community as the U. S. Colored Troops returned home at the end of the Civil War. The victorious soldiers are joyously greeted by women and children.

Black Exodus to Kansas

During Reconstruction freed slaves began to leave the South. One such group, originally from Kentucky, established the community of Nicodemus in 1877 in Graham County on the high, arid plains of northwestern Kansas. However, because of several crop failures and resentment from the county's white settlers, all but a few homesteaders abandoned their claims. A rising population of 500 in 1880 had declined to less than 200 by 1910.

Standard Atlas of Graham Co. Kansas, Including a Plat Book of the Villages, Cities, and Townships.
Lithograph map.
Chicago: A. Ogle, 1906.
Geography and Map Division. (5-8a)

A page of photographs and a township map from a 1906 county land ownership atlas provide evidence that some of these black migrants still owned land in and around this small village. Their impressive determination in an area with few good natural resou rces has resulted in the only surviving all-black community in Kansas.

Standard Atlas of Graham Co. Kansas, Including a Plat Book of the Villages, Cities, and Townships.
Index of families in Nicodemus.
Chicago: A. Ogle, 1906.
Geography and Map Division. (5-8b)

Ho For Kansas!

The Nicodemus Town Company was incorporated in 1877 by six black and two white Kansans. It was the oldest of about twenty towns established predominately for blacks in the West. After the Civil War there was a general exodus of blacks from the South. These migrants became known as "Exodusters" and the migration became known as the "Exoduster" movement. Some applied to be part of colonization projects to Liberia and locations outside the United States; others were willing to move north and west. Benjamin Singleton led an exodus of African Americans from various points in the South to Kansas.

Ho for Kansas! Nashville, Tennessee, March 18, 1878.

Copyprint of broadside.
Historic American Buildings Survey, Prints and Photographs Division. (5-13)

African American Population Distribution, 1890

Statistical Atlas of the United States Based on the Results of the Eleventh Census. Plate 11.
Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1898.
Lithograph.
Geography and Map Division. (5-18)

African American population distribution and migration patterns can be traced using maps published in the statistical atlases prepared by the U. S. Census Bureau for each decennial census from 1870 to 1920. The atlas for the 1890 census includes this map showing the percentage of "colored" to the total population for each county. Although the heaviest concentrations are overwhelmingly in Maryland, Virginia, and the southeastern states, there appear to be emerging concentrations in the northern urban areas (New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Toledo, and Chicago), southern Ohio, central Missouri, eastern Kansas, and scattered areas in the West (Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and California), reflecting migration patterns that began during Reconstruction.

Reconstruction and Its Aftermath: Part 1 | Part 2
African American Odyssey Introduction |Overview |Object List | Search

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Reconstruction and its Aftermath, a part of the African American Odyssey exhibition, is about the difficulty free blacks faced during the reconstruction period.

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African American Odyssey Introduction |Overview |Object List | Search Part 1: Forever Free |Black Exodus Part 2 The Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 freed African Americans in rebel states, and after the Civil War, the Thirteenth Amendment emancipated all U.S. slaves wherever they were.

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Reconstruction - The Civil War (U.S. National Park Service)

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Reconstruction became a struggle over the meaning of freedom, with former slaves, former slaveholders and Northerners adopting different definitions. Eventually, faced with increasing opposition by white Southerners and some Northerners, the government abandoned efforts for black equality in favor of sectional reconciliation between whites.

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President Lincoln was re-elected in 1864 and was assassinated at Ford Theater in Washington, D. C., April 14,1865, by John Wilkes Booth. His Reconstruction plan had been underway since well before Lee's surrender at Appamattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865.

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Watergate Update - Keeping Students Informed About Watergate by Jennifer Egas | This newsletter was created with Smore, an online tool for creating beautiful newsletters for for individual educators, schools and districts

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Civil Rights News Update - Keeping Students Informed About the Civil Rights Movement! by Jennifer Egas | This newsletter was created with Smore, an online tool for creating beautiful newsletters for for individual educators, schools and districts

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1950s/1960s Update! - The Cold War, McCarthyism & the Vietnam War by Jennifer Egas | This newsletter was created with Smore, an online tool for creating beautiful newsletters for for individual educators, schools and districts

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Progressive News Update - Keeping Students Informed About the Progressive Movement by Jennifer Egas | This newsletter was created with Smore, an online tool for creating beautiful newsletters for for individual educators, schools and districts

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The Cold War Update - Keeping Students Up-to-Date on the Cold War! by Jennifer Egas | This newsletter was created with Smore, an online tool for creating beautiful newsletters for for individual educators, schools and districts

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Design and share beautiful flyers just like this one!

Spread the word with an online flyer. They're easy to make and impossible to mess up :)

Comparing and Contrasting Imperialism and Colonialism

Imperialism: the policy of a government/country in which the country/government uses military power (as well as other forms of power) to influence other countries/territories. Imperialism is the "idea of overtaking others based on power to control others outside of their state."

Colonialism: the practice in which a power (government/country) establishes colonies or settlements outside its own borders for its own political and economic benefit. The colonizing nation seeks to use the materials and land in the colonies for its own good.

The main difference between imperialism and colonialism is that imperialism is the "idea" of controlling land in areas outside its own borders. Colonialism is the "practice" of act of overtaking another area in order to exploit the assets in the colony(ies.) ( www.internationalrelations.org.)

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Design and share beautiful flyers just like this one! Spread the word with an online flyer. They're easy to make and impossible to mess up :) Imperialism: the policy of a government/country in which the country/government uses military power (as well as other forms of power) to influence other countries/territories.

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This Smore covers the late 1970s and early 1980s...

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The Carter & Reagan Presidencies - Keeping Students Informed about the 1970s and 1980s by Jennifer Egas | This newsletter was created with Smore, an online tool for creating beautiful newsletters for for individual educators, schools and districts

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Keeping students informed about the rise of "big business!"

The Rise of "Big Business" in the Late 19th Century!

The term "Big Business" applied to large corporations that by mergers and acquisitions had consolidated and eliminated many smaller companies that previously existed. The term originated in the late 1800s and was a derogatory term for corporations and unfair business practices.

Corporations were financed and organized on such a massive scale that they were able to influence social and political policies. Opponents held that the big corporations had too much power in government and used that influence to gain favorable legislation. This led to social unrest that included strikes, riots and even the rise of labor unions.

"Boss Tweed"

William "Boss" Tweed was an American politician who is most well-known for being the "boss" of Tammany Hall in the 1870s. Tammany Hall was the Democratic Party political machine in New York. In his prime "Boss Tweed" was the 3rd largest landowner in New York. He was a director of the Erie Railroad, the Tenth National Bank, New York Printing Company and was the proprietor of the Metropolitan Hotel in New York City.

He was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1852 and the New York Board of Supervisors in 1858. That year he became the head of Tammany Hall.

He was elected to the New York State Senate in 1867, but his greater influence came from being appointed a member of numerous boards and commissions. He controlled political patronage in New York City through Tammany Hall. He was able to ensure the loyalty of voters through jobs he could create and dispense on city-related projects.

He was convicted of stealing an estimated $25M-$45M from NYC taxpayers through political corruption. Later it has been estimated that "Boss" Tweed stole more than $200M!

After being convicted "Boss" Tweed could not make bail, so he escaped. He was reincarcerated and died in the Ludlow Street Jail.

As a result of the corruption that occurred through Tammany Hall over a period of 176 years, the label "Tammany Hall" is synonymous with uncontrolled government corruption. (You will hear these labels ("Tammany Hall" and "Boss Tweed" applied to situations today!

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Design and share beautiful flyers just like this one! Spread the word with an online flyer. They're easy to make and impossible to mess up :) Keeping students informed about the rise of "big business!" The term "Big Business" applied to large corporations that by mergers and acquisitions had consolidated and eliminated many smaller companies that previously existed.

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Design and share beautiful flyers just like this one!

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Keeping Students Informed-Urbanization & the "Gilded Age"

The "Gilded Age"

The term "Gilded Age" came into use in the 1920s and 1930s and was used first by author Mark Twain in the 1870s and referred to a period that was "glittery" on the surface but corrupt underneath. Per the website, Digital History, "In the popular view, the late 19th century was a period of greed and guile: of rapacious Robber Barons, unscrupulous speculators, and corporate buccaneers, of shady business practices, scandal-plagued politics, and vulgar display."

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Design and share beautiful flyers just like this one! Spread the word with an online flyer. They're easy to make and impossible to mess up :) Keeping Students Informed-Urbanization & the "Gilded Age" The term "Gilded Age" came into use in the 1920s and 1930s and was used first by author Mark Twain in the 1870s and referred to a period that was "glittery" on the surface but corrupt underneath.

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Reconstruction:  Howard University's Site!

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Reconstruction:  Howard University's Site!

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The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands (or the Freedmen's Bureau) was organized to provide relief and assistance to the former slaves, including health services, educational services, and abandoned land services. Congress passed an act on March 3, 1865 to establish the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands.

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America's Reconstruction: People & Politics After the Civil War

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America's Reconstruction: People & Politics After the Civil War

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Reconstruction, one of the most turbulent and controversial eras in American history, began during the Civil War and ended in 1877. It witnessed America's first experiment in interracial democracy. Just as the fate of slavery was central to the meaning of the Civil War, so the divisive politics of Reconstruction turned on the status the former slaves would assume in the reunited nation. Reconstruction remains relevant today because the issues central to it -- the role of the federal government in protecting citizens' rights, and the possibility of economic and racial justice -- are still unresolved.

Northern victory in the Civil War decided the fate of the Union and of slavery, but posed numerous problems. How should the nation be reunited? What system of labor should replace slavery? What would be the status of the former slaves?

Central to Reconstruction was the effort of former slaves to breathe full meaning into their newly acquired freedom, and to claim their rights as citizens. Rather than passive victims of the actions of others, African Americans were active agents in shaping Reconstruction.

After rejecting the Reconstruction plan of President Andrew Johnson, the Republican Congress enacted laws and Constitutional amendments that empowered the federal government to enforce the principle of equal rights, and gave black Southerners the right to vote and hold office. The new Southern governments confronted violent opposition from the Ku Klux Klan and similar groups. In time, the North abandoned its commitment to protect the rights of the former slaves, Reconstruction came to an end, and white supremacy was restored throughout the South.

For much of this century, Reconstruction was widely viewed as an era of corruption and misgovernment, supposedly caused by allowing blacks to take part in politics. This interpretation helped to justify the South's system of racial segregation and denying the vote to blacks, which survived into the 1960s. Today, as a result of extensive new research and profound changes in American race relations, historians view Reconstruction far more favorably, as a time of genuine progress for former slaves and the South as a whole.

For all Americans, Reconstruction was a time of fundamental social, economic, and political change. The overthrow of Reconstruction left to future generations the troublesome problem of racial justice.

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America's Reconstruction: People and Politics After the Civil War

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Reconstruction, one of the most turbulent and controversial eras in American history, began during the Civil War and ended in 1877. It witnessed America's first experiment in interracial democracy. Just as the fate of slavery was central to the meaning of the Civil War, so the divisive politics of Reconstruction turned on the status the former slaves would assume in the reunited nation.

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Reconstruction- Part 1: Introduction | NCpedia

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This article is from the Encyclopedia of North Carolina edited by William S. Powell. Copyright © 2006 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher. For personal use and not for further distribution. Please submit permission requests for other use directly to the publisher.

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1870

1870: Thomas Nast, star political cartoonist of Harper's Weekly, began a campaign of lampoon the corrupt "ring" that secretly ran New York City. Nast's biting depictions of the Tweed Ring helped bring down Boss Tweed.

February 3, 1870: The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which gave the right to vote to black males, became law when the required number of states ratified it.

June 9, 1870: Charles Dickens, British novelist, died at the age of 58.

July 15, 1870: Georgia became the last of the Confederate states to return to the Union.

July 19, 1870: The Franco-Prussian War began. The war was provoked by Otto von Bismarck, the Prussian leader, as part of his plan to unite Germany.

October 12, 1870: Robert E. Lee, Confederate general in the Civil War, died at the age of 63 at Lexington, Virginia.

1871

January 1871: Italian troops led by Giuseppe Garibaldi briefly fought against Prussians in France during the Franco-Prussian War.

March 26, 1871: The Paris Commune, a temporary government formed after an uprising during the Franco-Prussian War, was proclaimed in Paris.

May 28, 1871: The Paris Commune was suppressed as the French Army took over the city during what becomes known as "The Bloody Week."

Summer 1871: Photographer William Henry Jackson takes a number of photographs on the Yellowstone Expedition. The scenery he captured was so remarkable that it led to the creation of the National Parks.

July 15, 1871: Thomas "Tad" Lincoln, the son of Abraham Lincoln, died in Chicago at the age of 18. He was buried beside his father in Springfield, Illinois.

November 10, 1871: The journalist and adventurer Henry Morton Stanley located David Livingstone in Africa, and said the famous greeting: "Dr. Livingstone, I presume."

1872

January 6, 1872: Notorious Wall Street character Jim Fisk was fatally shot in a Manhattan hotel lobby. As he died, his partner Jay Gould and Boss Tweed stood vigil at his bedside. Legendary detective Thomas Byrnes apprehended Fisk's assassin.

March 1, 1872: Yellowstone National Park was established as the first National Park in the United States.

April 2, 1872: Samuel F.B. Morse, American artist and inventor of the telegraph and Morse Code, died at the age of 80 in New York City.

Spring 1872: After supervising work on the Brooklyn Bridge in the caisson under the East River, Washington Roebling came to the surface too quickly and was stricken with "the bends." He would be in poor health for years afterward.

June 1, 1872: James Gordon Bennett, who in many ways invented the modern newspaper by founding the New York Herald, died in New York City.

November 5, 1872: President Ulysses S. Grant wins a second term in the election of 1872, defeating legendary newspaper editor turned candidate Horace Greeley.

November 29, 1872: Horace Greeley, who weeks earlier lost the presidential election, died in New York City.

1873

April 1, 1873: The steamship Atlantic struck rocks on the coast of Canada and at least 500 passengers and crew perished in one of the worst maritime disasters of the 19th century.

May 4, 1873: David Livingstone, Scottish explorer of Africa, died in Africa of malaria at the age of 60.

September 1873: A stock market crashed sets off the Panic of 1873, one of the great financial panics of the 19th century.

1874

January 17, 1874: Chang and Eng Bunker, conjoined twins who became famous as the Siamese Twins, died at the age of 62.

March 11, 1874: Charles Sumner, Massachusetts senator who in 1856 had been beaten in the U.S. Capitol in an event leading up to the Civil War, died at the age of 63.

1875

1876

March 10, 1876: Alexander Graham Bell made the first successful telephone call, saying, "Watson, come here, I need you."

April 10, 1876: Alexander Turney Stewart, renowned New York City merchant, died.

July 4, 1876: The United States celebrated its centennial with celebrations in cities and towns across the country.

August 2, 1876: Wild Bill Hickok, gunfighter and lawman, was shot and killed while playing cards in Deadwood, Dakota Territory.

August 25, 1876: The first crossing of the unfinished Brooklyn Bridge was accomplished by its master mechanic, E.F. Farrington, riding on a wire strung between its towers.

November 7, 1876: The United States presidential election of 1876 was disputed and became the most controversial American election until the election of 2000.

1877

January 4, 1877: Cornelius Vanderbilt, known as "The Commodore," died in New York City. He was by far the wealthiest person in the United States.

March 4, 1877: Rutherford B. Hayes was inaugurated as president, and comes into office under a cloud of suspicion, being called "His Fraudulency."

May 1877: Sitting Bull led followers into Canada to escape the U.S. Army, and Crazy Horse surrendered to U.S. troops.

June 21, 1877: Leaders of the Molly Maguires, a secret society of coal miners in Pennsylvania, were executed.

July 16, 1877: A strike in West Virginia set off the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, which spread nationwide and spurred violent clashes in American cities.

September 5, 1877: Crazy Horse was killed at an army base in Kansas.

1878

1879

August 21, 1879: Villagers at Knock, in rural Ireland, saw visions of the Virgin Mary, St. Joseph, and St. John the Evangelist. The village became a place of Catholic pilgrimage afterward.

October 1879: In Ireland, following mass meetings held earlier in the year, the Land League was formed to organize tenant farmers.

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1870 1870: Thomas Nast, star political cartoonist of Harper's Weekly, began a campaign of lampoon the corrupt "ring" that secretly ran New York City. Nast's biting depictions of the Tweed Ring helped bring down Boss Tweed. February 3, 1870: The 15th Amendment to the U.S.

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PBS - THE WEST - Events from 1870 to 1880

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The Union Pacific in Wyoming hires Chinese laborers for $32.50 a month rather than pay $52.00 a month to whites. From incidents like this one, white laborers across the West develop the opinion that Chinese immigrants are competing unfairly for jobs, a feeling that will lead to violent racial conflict and labor unrest in years to come.

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Brief Timeline of American Literature and Events:1870s

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Brief Timeline of American Literature and Events:1810-1819

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When in 1873 Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner entitled their co-authored novel The Gilded Age, they gave the late nineteenth century its popular name. The term reflected the combination of outward wealth and dazzle with inner corruption and poverty. Given the period's absence of powerful and charismatic presidents, its lack of a dominant central event, and its sometimes tawdry history, historians have often defined the period by negatives. They stress greed, scandals, and corruption of the Gilded Age.

Twain and Warner were not wrong about the era's corruption, but the years between 1877 and 1900 were also some of the most momentous and dynamic in American history. They set in motion developments that would shape the country for generations-the reunification of the South and North, the integration of four million newly freed African Americans, westward expansion, immigration, industrialization, urbanization. It was also a period of reform, in which many Americans sought to regulate corporations and shape the changes taking place all around them.

The End of Reconstruction

Reforms in the South seemed unlikely in 1877 when Congress resolved the previous autumn's disputed presidential election between Democrat Samuel Tilden and Republican Rutherford B. Hayes on the backs of the nation's freed blacks. A compromise gave Hayes the presidency in return for the end of Reconstruction and the removal of federal military support for the remaining biracial Republican governments that had emerged in the former Confederacy. With that agreement, Congress abandoned one of the greatest reforms in American history: the attempt to incorporate ex-slaves into the republic with all the rights and privileges of citizens.

The United States thus accepted a developing system of repression and segregation in the South that would take the name Jim Crow and persist for nearly a century. The freed people in the South found their choices largely confined to sharecropping and low-paying wage labor, especially as domestic servants. Although attempts at interracial politics would prove briefly successful in Virginia and North Carolina, African American efforts to preserve the citizenship and rights promised to black men in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution failed.

The West

Congress continued to pursue a version of reform in the West, however, as part of a Greater Reconstruction. The federal government sought to integrate the West into the country as a social and economic replica of the North. Land redistribution on a massive scale formed the centerpiece of reform. Through such measures as the Homestead and Railroad Acts of 1862, the government redistributed the vast majority of communal lands possessed by American Indian tribes to railroad corporations and white farmers.

To redistribute that land, the government had to subdue American Indians, and the winter of 1877 saw the culmination of the wars that had been raging on the Great Plains and elsewhere in the West since the end of the Civil War. Following the American defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn the previous fall, American soldiers drove the Lakota civil and spiritual leader Sitting Bull and his followers into Canada. They forced the war leader Crazy Horse to surrender and later killed him while he was held prisoner. Sitting Bull would eventually return to the United States, but he died in 1890 at the hands of the Indian police during the Wounded Knee crisis.

The defeat of the Lakotas and the utterly unnecessary Nez Perce War of 1877 ended the long era of Indian wars. There would be other small-scale conflicts in the West such as the Bannock War (1878) and the subjugation of the Apaches, which culminated with the surrender of Geronimo in 1886, but these were largely police actions. The slaughter of Lakota Ghost Dancers at Wounded Knee in 1890 did bring a major mobilization of American troops, but it was a kind of coda to the American conquest since the federal government had already effectively extended its power from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

The treaty system had officially ended in 1871, but Americans continued to negotiate agreements with the Indians. The goal of these agreements, and American land policy in general, was to create millions of new farms and ranches across the West. Not satisfied with already ceded lands, reformers-the so-called "Friends of the Indians" whose champion in Congress was Senator Henry Dawes-sought to divide reservations into individual farms for Indians and then open up most or all of the remaining land to whites. The Dawes Act of 1887 became their major tool, but the work of the Dawes Commission in 1893 extended allotment to the Creeks, Cherokees, Seminoles, Chickasaws, and Choctaws in Indian Territory, which became the core of the state of Oklahoma. Land allotment joined with the establishment of Indian schools and the suppression of native religions in a sweeping attempt to individualize Indians and integrate them one by one into American society. The policy would fail miserably. Indian population declined precipitously; the tribes lost much of their remaining land, and Indians became the poorest group in American society.

Immigration

Between 1877 and 1900 immigrants prompted much more concern among native-born white Americans than did either black people or Indian peoples. During these years there was a net immigration of approximately 7,348,000 people into the United States. During roughly the same period, the population of the country increased by about 27 million people, from about 49 million in 1880 to 76 million in 1900. Before 1880 the immigrants came largely from Western Europe and China. Taking the period between 1860 and 1900 as a whole, Germans comprised 28 percent of American immigrants; the British comprised 18 percent, the Irish 15 percent, and Scandinavians 11 percent. Together they made up 72 percent of the total immigration. At the end of the century, the so-called "New Immigration" signaled the rise of southern and eastern Europe as the source of most immigrants to America. The influx worried many native-born Americans who still thought of the United States as a white Protestant republic. Many of the new immigrants did not, in the racial classifications of the day, count as white. As the century wore on, they were increasingly Catholic and Jewish.

Immigrants entered every section of the country in large numbers except for the South. They settled in northeastern and midwestern cities and on western and midwestern farms. The Pacific and mountain West contained the highest percentage of immigrants of any region in 1880 and 1890.

The immigrants forged networks that shaped how and where they migrated and the kinds of communities they established. Chain migrations linked migrants to prior migrants. Early arrivals wrote home to bring family, friends, and neighbors to the United States. Over large swaths of Minnesota, the Dakotas, and elsewhere German was the primary language of daily life. Tensions between immigrants and the native born over the language to be spoken in public schools, Sunday closures of businesses (sabbatarianism), and temperance reform often put cultural issues and practices at the center of local and state politics.

Taken together, immigration and the end of Reconstruction triggered an anti-democratic movement to restrict access to the ballot box. By the 1870s proponents of restricting suffrage, having defeated an early push for women's suffrage, were calling democracy a mistake. They advocated restrictions on voting as a way to check corruption, elevate political culture, and marginalize those-they had in mind immigrants and blacks-whom they thought incapable of meeting the obligations of republican politics. They sought political changes that would make it far more difficult for the poor and immigrants to vote. Over time, through poll taxes, residence requirements, literacy requirements, and more, they would succeed. The mass politics and high voting rates characteristic of late nineteenth-century America would not outlive the era.

Attempts to restrict suffrage were part of a strong political and social backlash against immigrants that developed over the course of the century. The United States welcomed immigrants because they were essential to its growing economy, but nativists opposed immigrants as antithetical to American culture and society. They thought of immigrants as exotic and inassimilable. In certain situations, however, nativists had allies who were immigrants or the children of immigrants. Workers, both immigrant and native born, often feared that corporations were using contract labor-workers recruited abroad at lower wages than those paid American workers-to undermine American working conditions and the American family, which they defined as a working man whose wife maintained the home. They opposed certain kinds of immigration. One of the forgotten reforms of the period, the Foran Act of 1885, outlawed contract labor, but the law proved difficult to enforce.

Alliances of some native-born Americans with some immigrants against other immigrants proved most effective in the case of the Chinese. Roughly 180,000 Chinese immigrated to the United States between 1849 and 1882, and they became the personification of both the inassimilable immigrant and the contract worker. Although the Chinese came as free laborers, they were often branded as coolies: abject semi-slaves, whose low standard of living allowed them to thrive on wages that could not support white families.

Racists had previously claimed that superior Anglo-Saxons would inevitably replace "inferior" races. But in the West, while Sinophobes saw the Chinese as exotic and inferior, they also thought the Chinese would triumph over the supposedly superior white men because they were efficient workers. Immigrants and the native born formed mobs that attacked the Chinese at Rock Springs, Wyoming, in 1885 and expelled them from Tacoma, Washington, in 1885 and Seattle in 1886. Congress passed ten-year restrictions on Chinese immigration in 1882 and 1892 and a permanent exclusion act in 1902. Late in the nineteenth century, those who opposed immigration from Italy, Hungary, and elsewhere compared those groups to the Chinese.

Some immigrants could wrap themselves in the mantle of Americanism if they were "white" and Protestant. Protestant immigrants, particularly Scandinavians and Scots-Irish, joined the American Protective Association in 1887 to restrict Catholic immigration as it rode a larger wave of anti-Catholicism that swept over the country. Aimed initially at Irish and Catholic schools, anti-Catholicism increased its range as new Catholic immigrants began to arrive.

Agricultural, Commercial, and Industrial Development

Although not all of them intended to stay, most immigrants came to the United States for economic opportunity. Cheap land and relatively high wages, compared to their home countries, were available regardless of citizenship. The Homestead Act did not require that settlers filing for land be American citizens, and the railroads not only sold their land grants cheaply, they advertised widely in Europe.

The results of this distribution of fertile and largely accessible land were astonishing. Everything in the late nineteenth century seemed to move faster than ever before. Americans brought more land under cultivation between 1870 and 1900 (225 million acres) than they had since the English first appeared at Jamestown in 1607 (189 million acres). Farmers abandoned small, worn-out farms in the East and developed new, larger, and more fertile farms in the Midwest and West. They developed so much land because they farmed extensively, not intensively. In terms of yields per acre, American farmers ranked far below Europe. Maintaining fertility demanded labor, which was precisely what American farmers were bent on reducing. They invested not in labor but in technology, particularly improved plows, reapers, and threshers. With westward expansion onto the prairies, a single family with a reaper could increase acreage and thus production without large amounts of hired labor. Arable free lands grew scarcer during the 1880s, forcing more and more land seekers west into arid lands beyond the 98th meridian. In many years these lands lacked adequate rainfall to produce crops. "In God we trusted, in Kansas we busted" written on the side of a wagon cover by a family abandoning its homestead summed up the dangers of going too far out onto the semi-arid and arid plains.

The expansion of agricultural lands led to what superficially seems a paradox: the more farmers there were-and the more productive farmers became-the smaller was agriculture's share of the economy. Farmers had the largest share of the dollar value of American economic output until 1880 when commerce's 29 percent of the gross national product edged out their 28 percent. In 1890 manufacturing and mining at 30 percent share of the GNP both exceeded agriculture's 19 percent share. During the same period, the percentage of workers employed in agriculture fell. A majority of the nation's workers were farmers or farm laborers in 1860, but by 1900 the figure had declined to 40 percent.

Such statistics seemed to reflect a decline in the importance of farming, but in fact, they reflected its significance and efficiency. Farmers produced more than the country could consume with smaller and smaller percentages of its available labor. They exported the excess, and the children of farmers migrated to cities and towns. Where at the beginning of the century exports composed about 10 percent of farm income, they amounted to between 20 and 25 percent by the end of the century. What farmers sold abroad translated into savings and consumption at home that fueled the nation's industry. Migration from rural to urban areas dwarfed both foreign migration and westward migration. American agricultural productivity allowed it to remain the world's greatest agricultural economy while it became the world's largest industrial producer.

The rise of industrial America, the dominance of wage labor, and the growth of cities represented perhaps the greatest changes of the period. Few Americans at the end of the Civil War had anticipated the rapid rise of American industry. For the first time in the nation's history, wage earners had come to outnumber the self-employed, and by the 1880s these wage earners were becoming employees of larger and larger corporations. As the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics and Labor declared in 1873, wage labor was universal: "a system more widely diffused than any form of religion, or of government, or indeed, of any language."[1]

Skilled workers proved remarkably successful at maintaining their position through the 1880s, but they had to fight to do so. The relatively high wages for skilled workers led employers to seek ways to replace skilled with unskilled or semi-skilled workers. Mechanization provided the best tactic for deskilling work and lowering wages. Many of the bitterest strikes of the period were attempts to control working rules and to maintain rather than raise wages. Beginning with the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, through the Great Upheaval of 1886 that culminated in the slaughter at Haymarket Square, then through the Homestead Strike (1892), Pullman Strike (1894), and more, the largest confrontations often involved violence and the intervention by state or federal governments to repress the strikes.

Railroads

Many of these strikes involved the railroads; the whole economy seemed to revolve around the railroads. At the end of the 1870s the railroads renewed their expansion. With a brief break in the 1880s, expansion continued at a reckless pace until 1890. At the end of 1890 more than 20 percent of the 161,000 miles of railroad in the United States had been constructed in the previous four years. By the end of the century the railroad corporations rivaled the United States government in size. In 1891 the Pennsylvania Railroad had 110,000 employees, almost three times the number of men in all the armed forces of the United States. Its capitalization of $842 million was only $150 million less than the national debt. Nationally, 418,957 people worked for railroads in 1880 and nearly 800,000 in 1890: about 3 percent of the entire work force of the nation. By 1900 roughly one-sixth of all capital investments in United States were in the railroads.

The railroads powered the industrial economy. They consumed the majority of iron and steel produced in the United States before 1890. As late as 1882, steel rails accounted for 90 percent of the steel production in the United States. They were the nation's largest consumer of lumber and a major consumer of coal. They also distributed these commodities across the country.

At times, however, railroads threatened to haul the American economy into the abyss. Rail corporations overbuilt, borrowed recklessly, and were often atrociously managed. They ricocheted wildly between rate wars and the creation of pools to fix prices, and they encouraged other industries to follow. Wheat, silver, timber, cattle, and other commodities flooded the market, sent prices tumbling, and dragged many producers into bankruptcy. The signal of every economic collapse in the late nineteenth century was the descent of railroads and the banks associated with them into receivership.

The Economy

The railroads were typical of the economic contradictions of the era. Over the period as a whole, American industry advanced rapidly. By 1900 the United States had one half the world's manufacturing capacity. At the end of the century, it had overtaken Great Britain both in iron and steel production and in coal production. The United States made such great gains because it was the fastest runner in a relatively slow race. The entire period from 1873 to the turn of the century became known as the Long Depression in western Europe. The United States grew faster than European economies, although no faster than nations with similar British colonial backgrounds-Australia and Canada. It actually grew more slowly than Argentina. None of these economies, however, were remotely as large.

The growth was not even. Periods of prosperity alternated with deep downturns in a boom/bust pattern. The economy came out of the depression following the Panic of 1873 at the end of that decade, lurched into a short, sharp depression in 1882-1883, and then fell into a much more severe depression from 1893 to 1897. Until the 1930s this was known as the Great Depression.

Such fluctuations in the American economy were linked to the larger world economy. Important sectors of the American economy globalized, putting American businesses and farmers in competition with other places in the world. One result was a steady downward pressure on prices. The Republican policy of maintaining tariff protection for American industry mitigated deflation on the domestic market, but the return to the gold standard with the Resumption Act of 1875, which later became a major political issue, created compensatory deflationary pressure that contributed to the general decline in prices. This benefitted workers only as long as they were able to maintain their wages.

Economic changes manifested themselves in rates of immigration (which rose during good times and declined during bad), urbanization, types of work, family organization, and more. Social and cultural patterns, in turn, affected the economy by determining who held certain jobs, how those jobs were valued, and where and how work took place. The cumulative effects of these changes were staggering, and many Americans worried that immigration, urbanization, wage labor, and the rise of large corporations undermined values that they thought defined the country itself.

Social Change

The Civil War had seemed to secure the triumph of a world of small producers and the values of free labor, individualism, and contract freedom. Many Americans desperately wanted to believe that those values survived and still ensured success within the new industrial society. Sometimes they attached the old values to new theories. Herbert Spencer, the British writer and philosopher, had many American disciples, of whom William Graham Sumner of Yale was probably the most prominent. Spencer and his disciples tried to understand human social change in terms of Darwinian evolution, utterly obfuscating the mechanisms of biological evolution in the process.

Other Americans simply tried to portray the new economy as essentially the same as the old. They believed that individual enterprise, hard work, and free competition in open markets still guaranteed success to those willing to work hard. An evolving mass print culture of cheap newspapers, magazines, and dime novels offered proselytizers of the old values new forms of communication. Horatio Alger, whose publishing career extended from the end of the Civil War to the end of the century, wrote juvenile novels that reconciled the new economy with the old values of individualism. In his novels, an individual's fate was still in his hands.

Politics

Many other Americans did not think so. They formed a diffuse reform movement contemporaries referred to as antimonopolism. Antimonopolists, including farmers, small businessmen, and workers in the Knights of Labor and other organizations, agreed on the problem, but often differed on the solution. They lamented the rise of large corporations, which to them were synonymous with monopoly. They worried about the dependence on wage labor, the growth of unemployment, particularly during the frequent panics and depressions, the proliferation of tramps as the poor who wandered in search of work were known, and the decline of individual independence. In the 1870s Walt Whitman lamented the human casualties of the new economy. "If the United States, like the countries of the Old World, are also to grow vast crops of poor, desperate, dissatisfied, nomadic, miserably-waged populations such as we see looming upon us of late years-steadily, even if slowly, eating into us like a cancer of lungs or stomach-then our republican experiment, notwithstanding all its surface successes, is at heart an unhealthy failure."[2]

Antimonopolists agreed that the purpose of a republican economy was to sustain independent and prosperous republican citizens, but how to restore the economy to that condition was the problem. Some, probably a majority in the 1870s, sought government intervention to restore competition. Others, who grew in numbers in the 1880s and 1890s, accepted the inevitability of large corporations but desired that they be more tightly regulated. By the 1890s, the Populists, an antimonopolist third party centered on the South and West, advocated government ownership of the railroads and the telegraphs.

In many ways the antimonopolists were successful. They comprised large factions within both the Democratic and Republican Parties and created new third parties from the Greenbackers (1874-1884) to the Populists of the 1890s. In 1896, the climactic election of the period pitted the antimonopolist William Jennings Bryan against the Republican William McKinley. Bryan lost, but many of the reforms antimonopolists advocated would be enacted over the next twenty years.

Many others were already in place. The inevitable compromises involved in passing legislation left a contradictory reform legacy. Some measures sought to restore competition by breaking up trusts or holding companies while others accepted the existence of large corporations but enforced regulations to restrain them. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890 initiated a movement to break up the largest trusts. State railroad commissions, the most effective of which were in Iowa and Texas, and the Interstate Commerce Commission created in 1887 represented attempts to regulate corporations.

Symbols of Their Age

Certain people became better known and better remembered than the presidents of the period because they came to represent both the economy itself and people's ideological views of it. Thomas Edison emerged as perhaps the most admired American of the age because he seemed to represent the triumph of individualism in an industrial economy. He built his famous lab at Menlo Park, New Jersey, in 1876. The public regarded Edison as the "wizard of Menlo Park," but it was ironically the lab-a cooperative enterprise-that produced the inventions from a workable electric light to the phonograph and more. And when in 1890 Edison merged his lab and other businesses into General Electric, the man who was a symbol of economic individualism became the head of a large corporation. That the corporate form captured Edison was not surprising because large corporations that first arose with the railroads before the Civil War were coming to dominate the American economy during the Great Merger movement of the 1890s.

John D. Rockefeller symbolized the darker view of the economy. His Standard Oil became the best-known and the best-hated corporation of the day. Rockefeller ruthlessly consolidated a competitive oil industry, absorbing rivals or driving them out of business. He was unapologetic, and he had only disdain for those who still thought of the economy as depending on individualism and competition. Organization and consolidation was the future. "The day of the combination is here to stay," he proclaimed. "Individualism has gone never to return."[3]

What was also gone was the United States as a purely continental nation. In many ways, the American acquisition of an overseas empire was a continuation of its continental expansion at the expense of American Indian peoples. But with the annexation of Hawaii (1898) and the subsequent annexation of the Philippines and Puerto Rico following the Spanish American War (1898), the United States extended its military and governmental reach beyond its continental boundaries. The war, like so many things, marked the vast changes that took place in a neglected era.

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The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

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When in 1873 Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner entitled their co-authored novel The Gilded Age, they gave the late nineteenth century its popular name. The term reflected the combination of outward wealth and dazzle with inner corruption and poverty.

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America at Leisure | Articles and Essays | America at Work, America at Leisure: Motion Pictures from 1894-1915 | Digital Collections | Library of Congress

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The period from 1894 to 1915 was one in which workers in the United States began to have more leisure time than their predecessors. One reason for this was that industrial employers began to decrease working hours and institute a Saturday half-day holiday, which gave workers more free time for l…

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The Populist Movement's Grievances of the 1880s and 1890s | Bartleby

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Free Essay: Silver being demonetized was another major problem for the Populists and they fought it along with asking for a national government regulated...

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David O. Whitten, Auburn University

The Depression of 1893 was one of the worst in American history with the unemployment rate exceeding ten percent for half a decade. This article describes economic developments in the decades leading up to the depression; the performance of the economy during the 1890s; domestic and international causes of the depression; and political and social responses to the depression.

The Depression of 1893 can be seen as a watershed event in American history. It was accompanied by violent strikes, the climax of the Populist and free silver political crusades, the creation of a new political balance, the continuing transformation of the country's economy, major changes in national policy, and far-reaching social and intellectual developments. Business contraction shaped the decade that ushered out the nineteenth century.

Unemployment Estimates

One way to measure the severity of the depression is to examine the unemployment rate. Table 1 provides estimates of unemployment, which are derived from data on output - annual unemployment was not directly measured until 1929, so there is no consensus on the precise magnitude of the unemployment rate of the 1890s. Despite the differences in the two series, however, it is obvious that the Depression of 1893 was an important event. The unemployment rate exceeded ten percent for five or six consecutive years. The only other time this occurred in the history of the US economy was during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Timing and Depth of the Depression

The National Bureau of Economic Research estimates that the economic contraction began in January 1893 and continued until June 1894. The economy then grew until December 1895, but it was then hit by a second recession that lasted until June 1897. Estimates of annual real gross national product (which adjust for this period's deflation) are fairly crude, but they generally suggest that real GNP fell about 4% from 1892 to 1893 and another 6% from 1893 to 1894. By 1895 the economy had grown past its earlier peak, but GDP fell about 2.5% from 1895 to 1896. During this period population grew at about 2% per year, so real GNP per person didn't surpass its 1892 level until 1899. Immigration, which had averaged over 500,000 people per year in the 1880s and which would surpass one million people per year in the first decade of the 1900s, averaged only 270,000 from 1894 to 1898.
Table 1
Estimates of Unemployment during the 1890s
Source: Romer, 1984

The depression struck an economy that was more like the economy of 1993 than that of 1793. By 1890, the US economy generated one of the highest levels of output per person in the world - below that in Britain, but higher than the rest of Europe. Agriculture no longer dominated the economy, producing only about 19 percent of GNP, well below the 30 percent produced in manufacturing and mining. Agriculture's share of the labor force, which had been about 74% in 1800, and 60% in 1860, had fallen to roughly 40% in 1890. As Table 2 shows, only the South remained a predominantly agricultural region. Throughout the country few families were self-sufficient, most relied on selling their output or labor in the market - unlike those living in the country one hundred years earlier.
Table 2
Agriculture's Share of the Labor Force by Region, 1890
Economic Trends Preceding the 1890s

Between 1870 and 1890 the number of farms in the United States rose by nearly 80 percent, to 4.5 million, and increased by another 25 percent by the end of the century. Farm property value grew by 75 percent, to $16.5 billion, and by 1900 had increased by another 25 percent. The advancing checkerboard of tilled fields in the nation's heartland represented a vast indebtedness. Nationwide about 29% of farmers were encumbered by mortgages. One contemporary observer estimated 2.3 million farm mortgages nationwide in 1890 worth over $2.2 billion. But farmers in the plains were much more likely to be in debt. Kansas croplands were mortgaged to 45 percent of their true value, those in South Dakota to 46 percent, in Minnesota to 44, in Montana 41, and in Colorado 34 percent. Debt covered a comparable proportion of all farmlands in those states. Under favorable conditions the millions of dollars of annual charges on farm mortgages could be borne, but a declining economy brought foreclosures and tax sales.

Railroads opened new areas to agriculture, linking these to rapidly changing national and international markets. Mechanization, the development of improved crops, and the introduction of new techniques increased productivity and fueled a rapid expansion of farming operations. The output of staples skyrocketed. Yields of wheat, corn, and cotton doubled between 1870 and 1890 though the nation's population rose by only two-thirds. Grain and fiber flooded the domestic market. Moreover, competition in world markets was fierce: Egypt and India emerged as rival sources of cotton; other areas poured out a growing stream of cereals. Farmers in the United States read the disappointing results in falling prices. Over 1870-73, corn and wheat averaged $0.463 and $1.174 per bushel and cotton $0.152 per pound; twenty years later they brought but $0.412 and $0.707 a bushel and $0.078 a pound. In 1889 corn fell to ten cents in Kansas, about half the estimated cost of production. Some farmers in need of cash to meet debts tried to increase income by increasing output of crops whose overproduction had already demoralized prices and cut farm receipts.

Railroad construction was an important spur to economic growth. Expansion peaked between 1879 and 1883, when eight thousand miles a year, on average, were built including the Southern Pacific, Northern Pacific and Santa Fe. An even higher peak was reached in the late 1880s, and the roads provided important markets for lumber, coal, iron, steel, and rolling stock.

The post-Civil War generation saw an enormous growth of manufacturing. Industrial output rose by some 296 percent, reaching in 1890 a value of almost $9.4 billion. In that year the nation's 350,000 industrial firms employed nearly 4,750,000 workers. Iron and steel paced the progress of manufacturing. Farm and forest continued to provide raw materials for such established enterprises as cotton textiles, food, and lumber production. Heralding the machine age, however, was the growing importance of extractives - raw materials for a lengthening list of consumer goods and for producing and fueling locomotives, railroad cars, industrial machinery and equipment, farm implements, and electrical equipment for commerce and industry. The swift expansion and diversification of manufacturing allowed a growing independence from European imports and was reflected in the prominence of new goods among US exports. Already the value of American manufactures was more than half the value of European manufactures and twice that of Britain.

Onset and Causes of the Depression

The depression, which was signaled by a financial panic in 1893, has been blamed on the deflation dating back to the Civil War, the gold standard and monetary policy, underconsumption (the economy was producing goods and services at a higher rate than society was consuming and the resulting inventory accumulation led firms to reduce employment and cut back production), a general economic unsoundness (a reference less to tangible economic difficulties and more to a feeling that the economy was not running properly), and government extravagance .

Economic indicators signaling an 1893 business recession in the United States were largely obscured. The economy had improved during the previous year. Business failures had declined, and the average liabilities of failed firms had fallen by 40 percent. The country's position in international commerce was improved. During the late nineteenth century, the United States had a negative net balance of payments. Passenger and cargo fares paid to foreign ships that carried most American overseas commerce, insurance charges, tourists' expenditures abroad, and returns to foreign investors ordinarily more than offset the effect of a positive merchandise balance. In 1892, however, improved agricultural exports had reduced the previous year's net negative balance from $89 million to $20 million. Moreover, output of non-agricultural consumer goods had risen by more than 5 percent, and business firms were believed to have an ample backlog of unfilled orders as 1893 opened. The number checks cleared between banks in the nation at large and outside New York, factory employment, wholesale prices, and railroad freight ton mileage advanced through the early months of the new year.

Yet several monthly series of indicators showed that business was falling off. Building construction had peaked in April 1892, later moving irregularly downward, probably in reaction to over building. The decline continued until the turn of the century, when construction volume finally turned up again. Weakness in building was transmitted to the rest of the economy, dampening general activity through restricted investment opportunities and curtailed demand for construction materials. Meanwhile, a similar uneven downward drift in business activity after spring 1892 was evident from a composite index of cotton takings (cotton turned into yarn, cloth, etc.) and raw silk consumption, rubber imports, tin and tin plate imports, pig iron manufactures, bituminous and anthracite coal production, crude oil output, railroad freight ton mileage, and foreign trade volume. Pig iron production had crested in February, followed by stock prices and business incorporations six months later.

The economy exhibited other weaknesses as the March 1893 date for Grover Cleveland's inauguration to the presidency drew near. One of the most serious was in agriculture. Storm, drought, and overproduction during the preceding half-dozen years had reversed the remarkable agricultural prosperity and expansion of the early 1880s in the wheat, corn, and cotton belts. Wheat prices tumbled twenty cents per bushel in 1892. Corn held steady, but at a low figure and on a fall of one-eighth in output. Twice as great a decline in production dealt a severe blow to the hopes of cotton growers: the season's short crop canceled gains anticipated from a recovery of one cent in prices to 8.3 cents per pound, close to the average level of recent years. Midwestern and Southern farming regions seethed with discontent as growers watched staple prices fall by as much as two-thirds after 1870 and all farm prices by two-fifths; meanwhile, the general wholesale index fell by one-fourth. The situation was grave for many. Farmers' terms of trade had worsened, and dollar debts willingly incurred in good times to permit agricultural expansion were becoming unbearable burdens. Debt payments and low prices restricted agrarian purchasing power and demand for goods and services. Significantly, both output and consumption of farm equipment began to fall as early as 1891, marking a decline in agricultural investment. Moreover, foreclosure of farm mortgages reduced the ability of mortgage companies, banks, and other lenders to convert their earning assets into cash because the willingness of investors to buy mortgage paper was reduced by the declining expectation that they would yield a positive return.

Slowing investment in railroads was an additional deflationary influence. Railroad expansion had long been a potent engine of economic growth, ranging from 15 to 20 percent of total national investment in the 1870s and 1880s. Construction was a rough index of railroad investment. The amount of new track laid yearly peaked at 12,984 miles in 1887, after which it fell off steeply. Capital outlays rose through 1891 to provide needed additions to plant and equipment, but the rate of growth could not be sustained. Unsatisfactory earnings and a low return for investors indicated the system was over built and overcapitalized, and reports of mismanagement were common. In 1892, only 44 percent of rail shares outstanding returned dividends, although twice that proportion of bonds paid interest. In the meantime, the completion of trunk lines dried up local capital sources. Political antagonism toward railroads, spurred by the roads' immense size and power and by real and imagined discrimination against small shippers, made the industry less attractive to investors. Declining growth reduced investment opportunity even as rail securities became less appealing. Capital outlays fell in 1892 despite easy credit during much of the year. The markets for ancillary industries, like iron and steel, felt the impact of falling railroad investment as well; at times in the 1880s rails had accounted for 90 percent of the country's rolled steel output. In an industry whose expansion had long played a vital role in creating new markets for suppliers, lagging capital expenditures loomed large in the onset of depression.

European Influences

European depression was a further source of weakness as 1893 began. Recession struck France in 1889, and business slackened in Germany and England the following year. Contemporaries dated the English downturn from a financial panic in November. Monetary stringency was a base cause of economic hard times. Because specie - gold and silver - was regarded as the only real money, and paper money was available in multiples of the specie supply, when people viewed the future with doubt they stockpiled specie and rejected paper. The availability of specie was limited, so the longer hard times prevailed the more difficult it was for anyone to secure hard money. In addition to monetary stringency, the collapse of extensive speculations in Australian, South African, and Argentine properties; and a sharp break in securities prices marked the advent of severe contraction. The great banking house of Baring and Brothers, caught with excessive holdings of Argentine securities in a falling market, shocked the financial world by suspending business on November 20, 1890. Within a year of the crisis, commercial stagnation had settled over most of Europe. The contraction was severe and long-lived. In England many indices fell to 80 percent of capacity; wholesale prices overall declined nearly 6 percent in two years and had declined 15 percent by 1894. An index of the prices of principal industrial products declined by almost as much. In Germany, contraction lasted three times as long as the average for the period 1879-1902. Not until mid-1895 did Europe begin to revive. Full prosperity returned a year or more later.

Panic in the United Kingdom and falling trade in Europe brought serious repercussions in the United States. The immediate result was near panic in New York City, the nation's financial center, as British investors sold their American stocks to obtain funds. Uneasiness spread through the country, fostered by falling stock prices, monetary stringency, and an increase in business failures. Liabilities of failed firms during the last quarter of 1890 were $90 million - twice those in the preceding quarter. Only the normal year's end grain exports, destined largely for England, averted a gold outflow.

Circumstances moderated during the early months of 1891, although gold flowed to Europe, and business failures remained high. Credit eased, if slowly: in response to pleas for relief, the federal treasury began the premature redemption of government bonds to put additional money into circulation, and the end of the harvest trade reduced demand for credit. Commerce quickened in the spring. Perhaps anticipation of brisk trade during the harvest season stimulated the revival of investment and business; in any event, the harvest of 1891 buoyed the economy. A bumper American wheat crop coincided with poor yields in Europe increase exports and the inflow of specie: US exports in fiscal 1892 were $150 million greater than in the preceding year, a full 1 percent of gross national product. The improved market for American crops was primarily responsible for a brief cycle of prosperity in the United States that Europe did not share. Business thrived until signs of recession began to appear in late 1892 and early 1893.

The business revival of 1891-92 only delayed an inevitable reckoning. While domestic factors led in precipitating a major downturn in the United States, the European contraction operated as a powerful depressant. Commercial stagnation in Europe decisively affected the flow of foreign investment funds to the United States. Although foreign investment in this country and American investment abroad rose overall during the 1890s, changing business conditions forced American funds going abroad and foreign funds flowing into the United States to reverse as Americans sold off foreign holdings and foreigners sold off their holdings of American assets. Initially, contraction abroad forced European investors to sell substantial holdings of American securities, then the rate of new foreign investment fell off. The repatriation of American securities prompted gold exports, deflating the money stock and depressing prices. A reduced inflow of foreign capital slowed expansion and may have exacerbated the declining growth of the railroads; undoubtedly, it dampened aggregate demand.

As foreign investors sold their holdings of American stocks for hard money, specie left the United States. Funds secured through foreign investment in domestic enterprise were important in helping the country meet its usual balance of payments deficit. Fewer funds invested during the 1890s was one of the factors that, with a continued negative balance of payments, forced the United States to export gold almost continuously from 1892 to 1896. The impact of depression abroad on the flow of capital to this country can be inferred from the history of new capital issues in Britain, the source of perhaps 75 percent of overseas investment in the United States. British issues varied as shown in Table 3.
Table 3
British New Capital Issues, 1890-1898 (millions of pounds, sterling)
Source: Hoffmann, p. 193

Simultaneously, the share of new British investment sent abroad fell from one-fourth in 1891 to one-fifth two years later. Over that same period, British net capital flows abroad declined by about 60 percent; not until 1896 and 1897 did they resume earlier levels.

Thus, the recession that began in 1893 had deep roots. The slowdown in railroad expansion, decline in building construction, and foreign depression had reduced investment opportunities, and, following the brief upturn effected by the bumper wheat crop of 1891, agricultural prices fell as did exports and commerce in general. By the end of 1893, business failures numbering 15,242 averaging $22,751 in liabilities, had been reported. Plagued by successive contractions of credit, many essentially sound firms failed which would have survived under ordinary circumstances. Liabilities totaled a staggering $357 million. This was the crisis of 1893.

Response to the Depression

The financial crises of 1893 accelerated the recession that was evident early in the year into a major contraction that spread throughout the economy. Investment, commerce, prices, employment, and wages remained depressed for several years. Changing circumstances and expectations, and a persistent federal deficit, subjected the treasury gold reserve to intense pressure and generated sharp counterflows of gold. The treasury was driven four times between 1894 and 1896 to resort to bond issues totaling $260 million to obtain specie to augment the reserve. Meanwhile, restricted investment, income, and profits spelled low consumption, widespread suffering, and occasionally explosive labor and political struggles. An extensive but incomplete revival occurred in 1895. The Democratic nomination of William Jennings Bryan for the presidency on a free silver platform the following year amid an upsurge of silverite support contributed to a second downturn peculiar to the United States. Europe, just beginning to emerge from depression, was unaffected. Only in mid-1897 did recovery begin in this country; full prosperity returned gradually over the ensuing year and more.

The economy that emerged from the depression differed profoundly from that of 1893. Consolidation and the influence of investment bankers were more advanced. The nation's international trade position was more advantageous: huge merchandise exports assured a positive net balance of payments despite large tourist expenditures abroad, foreign investments in the United States, and a continued reliance on foreign shipping to carry most of America's overseas commerce. Moreover, new industries were rapidly moving to ascendancy, and manufactures were coming to replace farm produce as the staple products and exports of the country. The era revealed the outlines of an emerging industrial-urban economic order that portended great changes for the United States.

Hard times intensified social sensitivity to a wide range of problems accompanying industrialization, by making them more severe. Those whom depression struck hardest as well as much of the general public and major Protestant churches, shored up their civic consciousness about currency and banking reform, regulation of business in the public interest, and labor relations. Although nineteenth century liberalism and the tradition of administrative nihilism that it favored remained viable, public opinion began to slowly swing toward governmental activism and interventionism associated with modern, industrial societies, erecting in the process the intellectual foundation for the reform impulse that was to be called Progressivism in twentieth century America. Most important of all, these opposed tendencies in thought set the boundaries within which Americans for the next century debated the most vital questions of their shared experience. The depression was a reminder of business slumps, commonweal above avarice, and principle above principal.

Government responses to depression during the 1890s exhibited elements of complexity, confusion, and contradiction. Yet they also showed a pattern that confirmed the transitional character of the era and clarified the role of the business crisis in the emergence of modern America. Hard times, intimately related to developments issuing in an industrial economy characterized by increasingly vast business units and concentrations of financial and productive power, were a major influence on society, thought, politics, and thus, unavoidably, government. Awareness of, and proposals of means for adapting to, deep-rooted changes attending industrialization, urbanization, and other dimensions of the current transformation of the United States long antedated the economic contraction of the nineties.

Selected Bibliography

*I would like to thank Douglas Steeples, retired dean of the College of Liberal Arts and professor of history, emeritus, Mercer University. Much of this article has been taken from Democracy in Desperation: The Depression of 1893 by Douglas Steeples and David O. Whitten, which was declared an Exceptional Academic Title by Choice. Democracy in Desperation includes the most recent and extensive bibliography for the depression of 1893.

Clanton, Gene. Populism: The Humane Preference in America, 1890-1900. Boston: Twayne, 1991.

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

Goodwyn, Lawrence. Democratic Promise: The Populist Movement in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976.

Grant, H. Roger. Self Help in the 1890s Depression. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1983.

Higgs, Robert. The Transformation of the American Economy, 1865-1914. New York: Wiley, 1971.

Himmelberg, Robert F. The Rise of Big Business and the Beginnings of Antitrust and Railroad Regulation, 1870-1900. New York: Garland, 1994.

Hoffmann, Charles. The Depression of the Nineties: An Economic History. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing, 1970.

Jones, Stanley L. The Presidential Election of 1896. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964.

Kindleberger, Charles Poor. Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises. Revised Edition. New York: Basic Books, 1989.

Kolko, Gabriel. Railroads and Regulation, 1877-1916. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965.

Lamoreaux, Naomi R. The Great Merger Movement in American Business, 1895-1904. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Rees, Albert. Real Wages in Manufacturing, 1890-1914. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961.

Ritter, Gretchen. Goldbugs and Greenbacks: The Antimonopoly Tradition and the Politics of Finance in America. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Romer, Christina. "Spurious Volatility in Historical Unemployment Data." Journal of Political Economy 94, no. 1. (1986): 1-37.

Schwantes, Carlos A. Coxey's Army: An American Odyssey. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985.

Steeples, Douglas, and David Whitten. Democracy in Desperation: The Depression of 1893. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998.

Timberlake, Richard. "Panic of 1893." In Business Cycles and Depressions: An Encyclopedia, edited by David Glasner. New York: Garland, 1997.

White, Gerald Taylor. Years of Transition: The United States and the Problems of Recovery after 1893. University, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1982.

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The Depression of 1893 was one of the worst in American history with the unemployment rate exceeding ten percent for half a decade. This article describes economic developments in the decades leading up to the depression; the performance of the economy during the 1890s; domestic and international causes of the depression; and political and social responses to the depression.

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What Happened from 1880 to 1889 including Important Events, Key Technology and Inventions

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1880 to 1889 including History, events, news, significant technology advances during the time period and Military and Political Leaders

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With the assassination of President William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, not quite 43, became the 26th and youngest President in the Nation’s history (1901-1909). He brought new excitement and power to the office, vigorously leading Congress and the American public toward progressive reforms and a…

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Theodore Roosevelt - Facts, Presidency & Death | HISTORY

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Theodore Roosevelt became the 26st U.S. President in 1901, and was elected for a second term in 1904. Roosevelt’s complex legacy includes his achievements as a progressive reformer and conservationist who regulated big business and established the national park system. He died in 1919.

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Archduke Franz Ferdinand

Tensions had been brewing throughout Europe-especially in the troubled Balkan region of southeast Europe-for years before World War I actually broke out.

A number of alliances involving European powers, the Ottoman Empire, Russia and other parties had existed for years, but political instability in the Balkans (particularly Bosnia, Serbia and Herzegovina) threatened to destroy these agreements.

The spark that ignited World War I was struck in Sarajevo, Bosnia, where Archduke Franz Ferdinand -heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire-was shot to death along with his wife, Sophie, by the Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip on June 28, 1914. Princip and other nationalists were struggling to end Austro-Hungarian rule over Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The assassination of Franz Ferdinand set off a rapidly escalating chain of events: Austria-Hungary, like many countries around the world, blamed the Serbian government for the attack and hoped to use the incident as justification for settling the question of Serbian nationalism once and for all.

Kaiser Wilhelm II

Because mighty Russia supported Serbia, Austria-Hungary waited to declare war until its leaders received assurance from German leader Kaiser Wilhelm II that Germany would support their cause. Austro-Hungarian leaders feared that a Russian intervention would involve Russia's ally, France, and possibly Great Britain as well.

On July 5, Kaiser Wilhelm secretly pledged his support, giving Austria-Hungary a so-called carte blanche, or "blank check" assurance of Germany's backing in the case of war. The Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary then sent an ultimatum to Serbia, with such harsh terms as to make it almost impossible to accept.

World War I Begins

Convinced that Austria-Hungary was readying for war, the Serbian government ordered the Serbian army to mobilize and appealed to Russia for assistance. On July 28, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and the tenuous peace between Europe's great powers quickly collapsed.

Within a week, Russia, Belgium, France, Great Britain and Serbia had lined up against Austria-Hungary and Germany, and World War I had begun.

The Western Front

According to an aggressive military strategy known as the Schlieffen Plan (named for its mastermind, German Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen), Germany began fighting World War I on two fronts, invading France through neutral Belgium in the west and confronting Russia in the east.

On August 4, 1914, German troops crossed the border into Belgium. In the first battle of World War I, the Germans assaulted the heavily fortified city of Liege, using the most powerful weapons in their arsenal-enormous siege cannons-to capture the city by August 15. The Germans left death and destruction in their wake as they advanced through Belgium toward France, shooting civilians and executing a Belgian priest they had accused of inciting civilian resistance.

First Battle of the Marne

In the First Battle of the Marne, fought from September 6-9, 1914, French and British forces confronted the invading German army, which had by then penetrated deep into northeastern France, within 30 miles of Paris. The Allied troops checked the German advance and mounted a successful counterattack, driving the Germans back to the north of the Aisne River.

The defeat meant the end of German plans for a quick victory in France. Both sides dug into trenches, and the Western Front was the setting for a hellish war of attrition that would last more than three years.

Particularly long and costly battles in this campaign were fought at Verdun (February-December 1916) and the Battle of the Somme (July-November 1916). German and French troops suffered close to a million casualties in the Battle of Verdun alone.

World War I Books and Art

The bloodshed on the battlefields of the Western Front, and the difficulties its soldiers had for years after the fighting had ended, inspired such works of art as " All Quiet on the Western Front" by Erich Maria Remarque and " In Flanders Fields"by Canadian doctor Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae. In the latter poem, McCrae writes from the perspective of the fallen soldiers:

Published in 1915, the poem inspired the use of the poppy as a symbol of remembrance.

Visual artists like Otto Dix of Germany and British painters Wyndham Lewis, Paul Nash and David Bomberg used their firsthand experience as soldiers in World War I to create their art, capturing the anguish of trench warfare and exploring the themes of technology, violence and landscapes decimated by war.

The Eastern Front

On the Eastern Front of World War I, Russian forces invaded the German-held regions of East Prussia and Poland but were stopped short by German and Austrian forces at the Battle of Tannenberg in late August 1914.

Despite that victory, Russia's assault forced Germany to move two corps from the Western Front to the Eastern, contributing to the German loss in the Battle of the Marne.

Combined with the fierce Allied resistance in France, the ability of Russia's huge war machine to mobilize relatively quickly in the east ensured a longer, more grueling conflict instead of the quick victory Germany had hoped to win under the Schlieffen Plan.

Russian Revolution

From 1914 to 1916, Russia's army mounted several offensives on World War I's Eastern Front but was unable to break through German lines.

Defeat on the battlefield, combined with economic instability and the scarcity of food and other essentials, led to mounting discontent among the bulk of Russia's population, especially the poverty-stricken workers and peasants. This increased hostility was directed toward the imperial regime of Czar Nicholas II and his unpopular German-born wife, Alexandra.

Russia's simmering instability exploded in the Russian Revolution of 1917, spearheaded by Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks, which ended czarist rule and brought a halt to Russian participation in World War I.

Russia reached an armistice with the Central Powers in early December 1917, freeing German troops to face the remaining Allies on the Western Front.

America Enters World War I

At the outbreak of fighting in 1914, the United States remained on the sidelines of World War I, adopting the policy of neutrality favored by President Woodrow Wilson while continuing to engage in commerce and shipping with European countries on both sides of the conflict.

Neutrality, however, it was increasingly difficult to maintain in the face of Germany's unchecked submarine aggression against neutral ships, including those carrying passengers. In 1915, Germany declared the waters surrounding the British Isles to be a war zone, and German U-boats sunk several commercial and passenger vessels, including some U.S. ships.

Widespread protest over the sinking by U-boat of the British ocean liner Lusitania-traveling from New York to Liverpool, England with hundreds of American passengers onboard-in May 1915 helped turn the tide of American public opinion against Germany. In February 1917, Congress passed a $250 million arms appropriations bill intended to make the United States ready for war.

Germany sunk four more U.S. merchant ships the following month, and on April 2 Woodrow Wilson appeared before Congress and called for a declaration of war against Germany.

Gallipoli Campaign

With World War I having effectively settled into a stalemate in Europe, the Allies attempted to score a victory against the Ottoman Empire, which entered the conflict on the side of the Central Powers in late 1914.

After a failed attack on the Dardanelles (the strait linking the Sea of Marmara with the Aegean Sea), Allied forces led by Britain launched a large-scale land invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula in April 1915. The invasion also proved a dismal failure, and in January 1916 Allied forces staged a full retreat from the shores of the peninsula after suffering 250,000 casualties.

Did you know? The young Winston Churchill, then first lord of the British Admiralty, resigned his command after the failed Gallipoli campaign in 1916, accepting a commission with an infantry battalion in France.

British-led forces also combated the Ottoman Turks in Egypt and Mesopotamia, while in northern Italy, Austrian and Italian troops faced off in a series of 12 battles along the Isonzo River, located at the border between the two nations.

Battle of the Isonzo

The First Battle of the Isonzo took place in the late spring of 1915, soon after Italy's entrance into the war on the Allied side. In the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo, also known as the Battle of Caporetto (October 1917), German reinforcements helped Austria-Hungary win a decisive victory.

After Caporetto, Italy's allies jumped in to offer increased assistance. British and French-and later, American-troops arrived in the region, and the Allies began to take back the Italian Front.

World War I at Sea

In the years before World War I, the superiority of Britain's Royal Navy was unchallenged by any other nation's fleet, but the Imperial German Navy had made substantial strides in closing the gap between the two naval powers. Germany's strength on the high seas was also aided by its lethal fleet of U-boat submarines.

After the Battle of Dogger Bank in January 1915, in which the British mounted a surprise attack on German ships in the North Sea, the German navy chose not to confront Britain's mighty Royal Navy in a major battle for more than a year, preferring to rest the bulk of its naval strategy on its U-boats.

The biggest naval engagement of World War I, the Battle of Jutland (May 1916) left British naval superiority on the North Sea intact, and Germany would make no further attempts to break an Allied naval blockade for the remainder of the war.

World War I Planes

World War I was the first major conflict to harness the power of planes. Though not as impactful as the British Royal Navy or Germany's U-boats, the use of planes in World War I presaged their later, pivotal role in military conflicts around the globe.

At the dawn of World War I, aviation was a relatively new field; the Wright brothers took their first sustained flight just eleven years before, in 1903. Aircraft were initially used primarily for reconnaissance missions. During the First Battle of the Marne, information passed from pilots allowed the allies to exploit weak spots in the German lines, helping the Allies to push Germany out of France.

The first machine guns were successfully mounted on planes in June of 1912 in the United States, but were imperfect; if timed incorrectly, a bullet could easily destroy the propeller of the plane it came from. The Morane-Saulnier L, a French plane, provided a solution: The propeller was armored with deflector wedges that prevented bullets from hitting it. The Morane-Saulnier Type L was used by the French, the British Royal Flying Corps (part of the Army), the British Royal Navy Air Service and the Imperial Russian Air Service. The British Bristol Type 22 was another popular model used for both reconnaissance work and as a fighter plane.

Dutch inventor Anthony Fokker improved upon the French deflector system in 1915. His "interrupter" synchronized the firing of the guns with the plane's propeller to avoid collisions. Though his most popular plane during WWI was the single-seat Fokker Eindecker, Fokker created over 40 kinds of airplanes for the Germans.

The Allies debuted the Handley-Page HP O/400, the first two-engine bomber, in 1915. As aerial technology progressed, long-range heavy bombers like Germany's Gotha G.V. (first introduced in 1917) were used to strike cities like London. Their speed and maneuverability proved to be far deadlier than Germany's earlier Zeppelin raids.

By the war's end, the Allies were producing five times more aircraft than the Germans. On April 1, 1918, the British created the Royal Air Force, or RAF, the first air force to be a separate military branch independent from the navy or army.

Second Battle of the Marne

With Germany able to build up its strength on the Western Front after the armistice with Russia, Allied troops struggled to hold off another German offensive until promised reinforcements from the United States were able to arrive.

On July 15, 1918, German troops launched what would become the last German offensive of the war, attacking French forces (joined by 85,000 American troops as well as some of the British Expeditionary Force) in the Second Battle of the Marne. The Allies successfully pushed back the German offensive and launched their own counteroffensive just three days later.

After suffering massive casualties, Germany was forced to call off a planned offensive further north, in the Flanders region stretching between France and Belgium, which was envisioned as Germany's best hope of victory.

The Second Battle of the Marne turned the tide of war decisively towards the Allies, who were able to regain much of France and Belgium in the months that followed.

The Harlem Hellfighters and Other All-Black Regiments

By the time World War I began, there were four all-Black regiments in the U.S. military: the 24th and 25th Infantry and the 9th and 10th Cavalry. All four regiments comprised of celebrated soldiers who fought in the Spanish-American War and American-Indian Wars, and served in the American territories. But they were not deployed for overseas combat in World War I.

Blacks serving alongside white soldiers on the front lines in Europe was inconceivable to the U.S. military. Instead, the first African American troops sent overseas served in segregated labor battalions, restricted to menial roles in the Army and Navy, and shutout of the Marines, entirely. Their duties mostly included unloading ships, transporting materials from train depots, bases and ports, digging trenches, cooking and maintenance, removing barbed wire and inoperable equipment, and burying soldiers.

Facing criticism from the Black community and civil rights organizations for its quotas and treatment of African American soldiers in the war effort, the military formed two Black combat units in 1917, the 92nd and 93rd Divisions. Trained separately and inadequately in the United States, the divisions fared differently in the war. The 92nd faced criticism for their performance in the Meuse-Argonne campaign in September 1918. The 93rd Division, however, had more success.

With dwindling armies, France asked America for reinforcements, and General John Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Forces, sent regiments in the 93 Division to over, since France had experience fighting alongside Black soldiers from their Senegalese French Colonial army. The 93 Division's 369 regiment, nicknamed the Harlem Hellfighters, fought so gallantly, with a total of 191 days on the front lines, longer than any AEF regiment, that France awarded them the Croix de Guerre for their heroism. More than 350,000 African American soldiers would serve in World War I in various capacities.

Toward Armistice

By the fall of 1918, the Central Powers were unraveling on all fronts.

Despite the Turkish victory at Gallipoli, later defeats by invading forces and an Arab revolt that destroyed the Ottoman economy and devastated its land, and the Turks signed a treaty with the Allies in late October 1918.

Austria-Hungary, dissolving from within due to growing nationalist movements among its diverse population, reached an armistice on November 4. Facing dwindling resources on the battlefield, discontent on the homefront and the surrender of its allies, Germany was finally forced to seek an armistice on November 11, 1918, ending World War I.

Treaty of Versailles

At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Allied leaders stated their desire to build a post-war world that would safeguard itself against future conflicts of such a devastating scale.

Some hopeful participants had even begun calling World War I "the War to End All Wars." But the Treaty of Versailles, signed on June 28, 1919, would not achieve that lofty goal.

Saddled with war guilt, heavy reparations and denied entrance into the League of Nations, Germany felt tricked into signing the treaty, having believed any peace would be a "peace without victory," as put forward by President Wilson in his famous Fourteen Points speech of January 1918.

As the years passed, hatred of the Versailles treaty and its authors settled into a smoldering resentment in Germany that would, two decades later, be counted among the causes of World War II.

World War I Casualties

World War I took the lives of more than 9 million soldiers; 21 million more were wounded. Civilian casualties numbered close to 10 million. The two nations most affected were Germany and France, each of which sent some 80 percent of their male populations between the ages of 15 and 49 into battle.

The political disruption surrounding World War I also contributed to the fall of four venerable imperial dynasties: Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia and Turkey.

Legacy of World War I

World War I brought about massive social upheaval, as millions of women entered the workforce to replace men who went to war and those who never came back. The first global war also helped to spread one of the world's deadliest global pandemics, the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918, which killed an estimated 20 to 50 million people.

World War I has also been referred to as "the first modern war." Many of the technologies now associated with military conflict-machine guns, tanks, aerial combat and radio communications-were introduced on a massive scale during World War I.

The severe effects that chemical weapons such as mustard gas and phosgene had on soldiers and civilians during World War I galvanized public and military attitudes against their continued use. The Geneva Convention agreements, signed in 1925, restricted the use of chemical and biological agents in warfare and remain in effect today.

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World War I: Summary, Causes & Facts | HISTORY

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World War I began in 1914, after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and lasted until 1918. During the conflict, Germany, Austria‑Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire (the Central Powers) fought against Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Romania, Japan and the United States (the Allied Powers).

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There were MANY causes of WWI. It was a very complex set of alliances. Read more at the link below.

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Read Fast Facts from CNN about World War I, which lasted from 1914 to 1918.

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Check out History.com's information on this amazing decade!

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The Roaring Twenties: Definition and Facts | HISTORY

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The Roaring Twenties were a period of rapid economic growth and social change. Read about flappers, Prohibition, the Harlem Renaissance and more.

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Check out this link to learn more about the Harlem Renaissance!

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The Harlem Renaissance was the development of the Harlem neighborhood in New York City as a black cultural mecca in the early 20th Century and the subsequent social and artistic explosion that resulted. Lasting roughly from the 1910s through the mid-1930s, the period is considered a golden age in African American culture, manifesting in literature, music, stage performance and art.

Great Migration

The northern Manhattan neighborhood of Harlem was meant to be an upper-class white neighborhood in the 1880s, but rapid overdevelopment led to empty buildings and desperate landlords seeking to fill them.

In the early 1900s, a few middle-class black families from another neighborhood known as Black Bohemia moved to Harlem, and other black families followed. Some white residents initially fought to keep African Americans out of the area, but failing that many whites eventually fled.

Outside factors led to a population boom: From 1910 to 1920, African American populations migrated in large numbers from the South to the North, with prominent figures like W.E.B. Du Bois leading what became known as the Great Migration.

In 1915 and 1916, natural disasters in the south put black workers and sharecroppers out of work. Additionally, during and after World War I, immigration to the United States fell, and northern recruiters headed south to entice black workers to their companies.

By 1920, some 300,000 African Americans from the South had moved north, and Harlem was one of the most popular destinations for these families.

Langston Hughes

This considerable population shift resulted in a Black Pride movement with leaders like Du Bois working to ensure that black Americans got the credit they deserved for cultural areas of life. Two of the earliest breakthroughs were in poetry, with Claude McKay's collection Harlem Shadows in 1922 and Jean Toomer's Crane in 1923.

Novelist and du Bois protege Jessi Redmond Fauset's 1924 novel There Is Confusion explored the idea of black Americans finding a cultural identity in a white-dominated Manhattan. Fauset was literary editor of the NAACP magazine The Crisis and developed a magazine for black children with Du Bois.

The debut event of Fauset's novel was engineered for a larger purpose by sociologist Charles Spurgeon Johnson, who was integral in shaping the Harlem literary scene. Johnson used the novel's debut party to organize resources to create Opportunity, the National Urban League magazine he founded and edited, a success that bolstered writers like Langston Hughes.

Hughes was at that party along with other promising black writers and editors, as well as powerful white New York publishing figures. Soon many writers found their work appearing in mainstream magazines like Harper's.

Zora Neale Hurston

Anthropologist and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston courted controversy through her involvement with a publication called FIRE!!

Helmed by white author and Harlem writers' patron Carl Van Vechten, the magazine exoticized the lives of Harlem residents. Van Vechten's previous fiction stirred up interest among whites to visit Harlem and take advantage of the cultural and night life there.

Though Van Vechten's work was condemned by older luminaries like DuBois, it was embraced by Hurston, Hughes and others.

Louis Armstrong

The music that percolated in and then boomed out of Harlem in the 1920s was jazz, often played at speakeasies offering illegal liquor. Jazz became a great draw for not only Harlem residents, but outside white audiences also.

Some of the most celebrated names in American music regularly performed in Harlem- Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith, Fats Waller and Cab Calloway, often accompanied by elaborate floor shows. Tap dancers like John Bubbles and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson were also popular.

Cotton Club

With the groundbreaking new music came a vibrant nightlife. The Savoy opened in 1927, an integrated ballroom with two bandstands that featured continuous jazz and dancing well past midnight, sometimes in the form of battling bands helmed by Fletcher Henderson, Jimmie Lunceford and King Oliver.

While it was fashionable to frequent Harlem nightlife, entrepreneurs realized that some white people wanted to experience black culture without having to socialize with African Americans and created clubs to cater to them.

The most successful of these was the Cotton Club, which featured frequent performances by Ellington and Calloway. Some in the community derided the existence of such clubs, while others believed they were a sign that black culture was moving towards greater acceptance.

Paul Robeson

The cultural boom in Harlem gave black actors opportunities for stage work that had previously been withheld. Traditionally, if black actors appeared onstage, it was in a minstrel show musical and rarely in a serious drama with non-stereotypical roles.

At the center of this stage revolution was the versatile Paul Robeson, an actor, singer, writer, activist, and more. Robeson first moved to Harlem in 1919 while studying law at Columbia University and continually maintained a social presence in the area, where he was considered an inspirational but approachable figure.

Robeson believed that arts and culture were the best paths forward for Black Americans to overcome racism and make advances in a white-dominated culture.

Josephine Baker

Black musical revues were staples in Harlem, and by the mid-1920s had moved south to Broadway, expanding into the white world. One of the earliest of these was Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle's Shuffle Along, which launched the career of Josephine Baker.

White patron Van Vechten helped bring more serious black stage work to Broadway, though largely the work of white authors and considered to fall short of the potential. It wasn't until 1929 that a black-authored play about black lives, Wallace Thurman and William Rapp's Harlem, played Broadway.

Playwright Willis Richardson offered more serious opportunities for black actors with a several one-act plays written in the 1920s, as well as articles in Opportunity magazine outlining his goals. Stock companies like the Krigwa Players and the Harlem Experimental Theater also gave black actors serious roles.

Aaron Douglas

The visual arts were never welcoming to black artists, with art schools, galleries and museums shutting them out. Sculptor Meta Warrick Fuller, a protege of Auguste Rodin, explored African American themes in her work and influenced Du Bois to champion black visual artists.

The most celebrated Harlem Renaissance artist is Aaron Douglas, often called as "the Father of Black American Art," who adapted African techniques to realize paintings and murals, as well as book illustration.

Sculptor Augusta Savage's 1923 bust of Du Bois garnered considerable attention. She followed that up with small, clay portraits of everyday African Americans, and would later be pivotal enlisting black artists into the Federal Art Project, a division of the Work Progress Administration (WPA).

James VanDerZee 's photography captured Harlem daily life, as well as by commissioned portraits in his studio that he worked to fill with optimism and separate philosophically from the horrors of the past.

Harlem Renaissance Ends

The end of Harlem's creative boom began with the stock market crash of 1929 and wavered until Prohibition ended in 1933, which meant white patrons no longer sought out the illegal alcohol in uptown clubs.

By 1935 many pivotal Harlem residents had moved on seeking work, replaced by the continuous flow of refugees from the South, many requiring public assistance.

That same year, a riot broke out following the arrest of a young shoplifter, resulting in three dead, hundreds injured, and millions of dollars in property damage, as well as serving as a marker of the end of the Harlem Renaissance.

SOURCES

Harlem Stomp! A Cultural History of the Harlem Renaissance. Laban Carrick Hill.
The Harlem Renaissance: Hub of African-American Culture, 1920-1930. Steven Watson.
The Harlem Renaissance: A Historical Dictionary For The Era. Bruce Kellner, Editor.

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The Harlem Renaissance was the development of the Harlem neighborhood in New York City as a black cultural mecca in the early 20th Century and the subsequent social and artistic explosion that resulted. Lasting roughly from the 1910s through the mid-1930s, the period is considered a golden age in African American culture, manifesting in literature, music, stage performance and art.

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Check out this amazing link to more information about the birth of the Harlem Renaissance.

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National Museum of African American History and Culture

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With the end of the Civil War in 1865, hundreds of thousands of African Americans newly freed from the yoke of slavery in the South began to dream of fuller participation in American society, including political empowerment, equal economic opportunity, and economic and cultural self-determination.

Unfortunately, by the late 1870s, that dream was largely dead, as white supremacy was quickly restored to the Reconstruction South. White lawmakers on state and local levels passed strict racial segregation laws known as "Jim Crow laws" that made African Americans second-class citizens. While a small number of African Americans were able to become landowners, most were exploited as sharecroppers, a system designed to keep them poor and powerless. Hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) perpetrated lynchings and conducted campaigns of terror and intimidation to keep African Americans from voting or exercising other fundamental rights.

With booming economies across the North and Midwest offering industrial jobs for workers of every race, many African Americans realized their hopes for a better standard of living-and a more racially tolerant environment-lay outside the South. By the turn of the 20th century, the Great Migration was underway as hundreds of thousands of African Americans relocated to cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, Philadelphia, and New York. The Harlem section of Manhattan, which covers just three square miles, drew nearly 175,000 African Americans, giving the neighborhood the largest concentration of black people in the world. Harlem became a destination for African Americans of all backgrounds. From unskilled laborers to an educated middle-class, they shared common experiences of slavery, emancipation, and racial oppression, as well as a determination to forge a new identity as free people.

The Great Migration drew to Harlem some of the greatest minds and brightest talents of the day, an astonishing array of African American artists and scholars. Between the end of World War I and the mid-1930s, they produced one of the most significant eras of cultural expression in the nation's history-the Harlem Renaissance. Yet this cultural explosion also occurred in Cleveland, Los Angeles and many cities shaped by the great migration. Alain Locke, a Harvard-educated writer, critic, and teacher who became known as the "dean" of the Harlem Renaissance, described it as a "spiritual coming of age" in which African Americans transformed "social disillusionment to race pride."

The Harlem Renaissance encompassed poetry and prose, painting and sculpture, jazz and swing, opera and dance. What united these diverse art forms was their realistic presentation of what it meant to be black in America, what writer Langston Hughes called an "expression of our individual dark-skinned selves," as well as a new militancy in asserting their civil and political rights.

Among the Renaissance's most significant contributors were intellectuals W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Cyril Briggs, and Walter Francis White; electrifying performers Josephine Baker and Paul Robeson; writers and poets Zora Neale Hurston, Effie Lee Newsome, Countee Cullen; visual artists Aaron Douglas and Augusta Savage; and an extraordinary list of legendary musicians, including Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Eubie Blake, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Ivie Anderson, Josephine Baker, Fats Waller, Jelly Roll Morton, and countless others.

At the height of the movement, Harlem was the epicenter of American culture. The neighborhood bustled with African American-owned and run publishing houses and newspapers, music companies, playhouses, nightclubs, and cabarets. The literature, music, and fashion they created defined culture and "cool" for blacks and white alike, in America and around the world.

As the 1920s came to a close, so did the Harlem Renaissance. Its heyday was cut short largely due to the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and resulting Great Depression, which hurt African American-owned businesses and publications and made less financial support for the arts available from patrons, foundations, and theatrical organizations.

However, the Harlem Renaissance's impact on America was indelible. The movement brought notice to the great works of African American art, and inspired and influenced future generations of African American artists and intellectuals. The self-portrait of African American life, identity, and culture that emerged from Harlem was transmitted to the world at large, challenging the racist and disparaging stereotypes of the Jim Crow South. In doing so, it radically redefined how people of other races viewed African Americans and understood the African American experience.

Most importantly, the Harlem Renaissance instilled in African Americans across the country a new spirit of self-determination and pride, a new social consciousness, and a new commitment to political activism, all of which would provide a foundation for the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In doing so, it validated the beliefs of its founders and leaders like Alain Locke and Langston Hughes that art could be a vehicle to improve the lives of the African Americans.

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A New African American Identity: The Harlem Renaissance

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Between the end of World War I and the mid-1930s, African Americans produced one of the most significant eras of cultural expression in the nation's history-the Harlem Renaissance.

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Citation: C N Trueman "The Jazz Age"
historylearningsite.co.uk. The History Learning Site, 22 May 2015. 3 Aug 2018.

In 1920's America - known as the Jazz Age, the Golden Twenties or the Roaring Twenties - everybody seemed to have money. The nightmare that was the Wall Street Crash of October 1929, was inconceivable right up until it happened. The 1920's saw a break with the traditional set-up in America. The Great War had destroyed old perceived social conventions and new ones developed.

The young set themselves free especially, the young women. They shocked the older generation with their new hair style (a short bob) and the clothes that they wore were often much shorter than had been seen and tended to expose their legs and knees. The wearing of what were considered skimpy beach wear in public could get the Flappers, as they were known, arrested for indecent exposure. They wore silk stockings rolled just above the knee and they got their hair cut at male barbers. The President of Florida University said the lowcut gowns andshort skirts "areborn of the devilthey are carryingthe present generation to destruction".
An advert for lipstick - Flapper style
The Flappers also went out without a man to look after them, went to all-night parties, drove motor cars, smoked in public and held men's hands without wearing gloves. Mothers formed the Anti-Flirt League to protest against the acts of their daughters. But after the horror of the First World War, the younger generation mistrusted the older generation and 'did their own thing' which flew in the face of the establishment.

The person who the Flappers most looked up to was Clara Bow - the vamp in the film "It".

Linked to the growth of an alternate generation, was the growth in jazz. This lead to new dances being created which further angered the older generation. The Charleston, One Step and Black Bottom were only for the young and the last one angered the establishment by name alone. The most famous jazzmen were Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller and Benny Goodman. The combination of the new music, new dances and new fashions outraged many:

"The music is sensuous, the female is only half dressed and the motions may not be described in a family newspaper. Suffice it to say that there are certain houses appropriate for such dances but these houses have been closed by law. "The Catholic Telegraph".

Along with jazz went the 'crazies' when people would do crazy things for fun such as sitting on top of a flag pole for as long as possible; marathon dances that went on until everybody had dropped and wing flying when you stood strapped onto the wing of a flying plane until it landed.

This was also the era of great sports champions such as Babe Ruth the baseball player and Bobby Jones "the greatest amateur golfer of all time."

The 1920's made Hollywood. 100 million people a week went to the movies. In the 1910's the stars of movies were never named (especially true for women) but by the 1920's stars were world famous. For many films, the star was more important than the film itself and they could earn a fortune. Slapstick comedy was dominated by Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy and Fatty Arbuckle. The leading women were Clara Bow and Mary Pickford and the leading male star was Rudolf Valentino. When he died in 1926 aged just 31 people queued for miles to see his embalmed body and riots broke out.

The decade saw the first "talkie" - "The Jazz Singer" starring Al Jolson. Many silent screen stars lost their jobs as their voices sounded too strange or their accents were difficult to understand.

The stars lived lavish lifestyles - Beverley Hills was the place to live and they cultivated in peoples minds the belief that you could succeed in America regardless of who you were.

Even murderous gang bosses achieved stardom. The most famous of all was Al Capone - the gangster boss who all but controlled Chicago. His fame rivaled that of Hollywood's superstars.
Al Capone
In 1918, Prohibition had been introduced into America. This law banned the sale, transportation and manufacture of alcohol. However, there was a ready market for alcohol throughout the 1920's and the gangsters provided it. Capone's earnings at their peak stood at $60 million a year from alcohol sales alone with $45 million from other illegal ventures. Notorious in Chicago, Capone achieved national celebrity status when he appeared on the front of the celebrated "Time" magazine.

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The Jazz Age In 1920's America - known as the Jazz Age, the Golden Twenties or the Roaring Twenties - everybody seemed to have money. The nightmare that was the Wall Street Crash of October 1929, was inconceivable right up until it happened. The 1920's saw a break with the traditional set-up in America.

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Welcome to the Jazz Age!

It's a Saturday night. You pick up your date in a Ford Model T, and drive a few miles into town. The two of you walk up to an ordinary, insignificant-looking building. You knock on the door three times, and when someone peeks out, you recite a password. Suddenly the door opens, and you walk into an extravagant jazz club. People are dancing. And not just white people, but black people too. Everyone is happy. People are drinking. You tell your date this joint is the 'bee's knees' (a popular slang term of the time used to describe something that was fantastic).

This was a common scene in urban areas during the Jazz Age. When was the Jazz Age, you may ask? The term is basically synonymous with the 1920s. Some historians would say the Jazz Age extended into the 1930s as well, but by and large the decade of the 1920s was the Jazz Age, also called the Age of Jazz. And of course, you may also know the other nickname for this exciting decade: the 'Roaring Twenties.'

The 1920s is considered the Jazz Age because this was the time when jazz music blossomed and became tremendously popular. It was a 'golden age' for the genre. Jazz music was the music of the younger generation. It was fast, heavily syncopated, and often made up on the spot through improvisation. Many older and conservative adults considered it reckless and immoral. In the context of its time, jazz music was nothing short of wild. And the decade was wild too, as we shall see. Let's take a look at the Jazz Age and its characteristics and developments.

The Jazz Age and Prohibition Culture

One thing that is very important to remember about the Jazz Age is that it coincided with Prohibition. Prohibition, or 'National Prohibition,' refers to the period between 1919-1933 when alcohol was prohibited (with a few minor exceptions). During this time, the production, distribution, and sale of alcohol was illegal throughout the entire U.S. This led to the growth of secret, illegal bars called speakeasies. Speakeasies popped up throughout the country, particularly in urban areas. In order to enter the illegal establishment, patrons typically had to recite a password. Once in, they would drink and dance the night away, sometimes accompanied by a live jazz band.

New dance fads were always coming and going, and one of the most remembered is the Charleston. The Jazz Age was a unique time because strong feminist sentiments were running through society. Feminism was a key element of the era. Flappers have become an icon of the Jazz Age. Flappers is a term that refers to young, independent women who defied traditional norms by engaging in activities like smoking, drinking, dancing, and other shenanigans. Before the 1920s, these activities were acceptable only among men. Flappers often wore gaudy jewelry and short hair. Feminism was not only confined to the dance floor of speakeasies. After all, it was in 1920 that women gained the right to vote under the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Jazz Music and the Harlem Renaissance

Popular musicians during this time included Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong. In the decades that followed, Armstrong became famous for his trumpeting and his unique, raspy voice. Like Ellington and Armstrong, many jazz musicians during this time were African-Americans. The speakeasies of the day often afforded the opportunity for blacks and whites to mingle in an environment that was more racially tolerant that mainstream society.

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It's a Saturday night. You pick up your date in a Ford Model T, and drive a few miles into town. The two of you walk up to an ordinary, insignificant-looking building. You knock on the door three times, and when someone peeks out, you recite a password.

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Great Depression: Causes, Definition & Dates | HISTORY

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The Great Depression was the worst economic downturn in world history. Learn about the Dust Bowl, New Deal, causes of the Great Depression, a Great Depression timeline more.

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The American Experience: The Great Depression

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The American Experience: The Great Depression

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Newsreel Announcer (archival): The tremendous crowds which you see gathered outside the stock exchange are due to the greatest crash in the history of the New York Stock Exchange in market prices.

Narrator: December 31st, New Year's Eve. The crash and its terrible consequences were still in the future. Financial leaders, everyone celebrated what had been a decade of prosperity and boundless optimism. They thought the party would last forever. They called it "The New Era," 1929. All the hope and promise and illusion of the 20s converged in that one year.

John Kenneth Galbraith, Economist: The United States is afflicted with new eras. Let us not think for a moment that the illusion, the aberration of the 1920s was unique. It is intimately a part of the American character.

Craig Mitchell, Son of Charles E. Mitchell: The mood of the era, I think, can best be remembered by the hit song - was that 1929, Blue Skies?

Rita Mitchell Cushman, Daughter of Charles E. Mitchell: In the 20s, yes, '28, '29.

Craig Mitchell, Son of Charles E. Mitchell: How did that go?

Rita Mitchell Cushman, Daughter of Charles E. Mitchell: Smiling at me...

Craig Mitchell, Son of Charles E. Mitchell: Yeah. Nothing but blue skies do I see. Yes.

Rita Mitchell Cushman, Daughter of Charles E. Mitchell: ...Never saw the sun shining so bright, Never saw things going so right. Gray days, all of them gone, nothing but blue skies from now on.

That was the whole tenor of the day. I mean, people believed that everything was going to be great always, always. There was a feeling of optimism in the air that you cannot even describe today.

Rita Mitchell Cushman, Daughter of Charles E. Mitchell: And everyone seemed to have an interest in the stock market. Certainly, the boot black, the tailor, the grocer owned shares of one kind or another.

Narrator: This was the first time that many ordinary Americans had begun to invest in stocks. A stock, a share of a company, is bought and sold here on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. The stocks themselves have no fixed value. As in an auction, if the stock is in demand, its price goes up. No demand and the price goes down. For almost eight straight years, stock values had been rising. By 1929, there seemed to be no upper limits in this world of paper, numbers and dreams.

Michael Nesbitt, Grandson of Michael J. Meehan: It was an arena of unbounded opportunity where somebody like my grandfather could come into it and make a fortune. So many people made so much money in the market that late in the 20s, it seemed that you just couldn't go wrong buying stocks in American companies.

Narrator: Here was a whole new way to make a fortune. Unlike the Carnegies and the Rockefellers of previous decades, who built steel mills and dug oil wells, men like Michael Meehan, Jesse Livermore and Charles Mitchell had amassed their fortunes buying and selling stocks, pieces of paper. The public was fascinated. Bankers, brokers and speculators had become celebrities and they lived like royalty.

Rita Mitchell Cushman, Daughter of Charles E. Mitchell: I can hardly believe that a family lived in this kind of house. I mean, today, it would be almost unbelievable. Six stories and these great big rooms.

Craig Mitchell, Son of Charles E. Mitchell: Enormous. We counted it up the other day. We had 16 live-in help in this house -

Rita Mitchell Cushman, Daughter of Charles E. Mitchell: Not counting the chauffeurs and others.

Craig Mitchell, Son of Charles E. Mitchell: - not counting the chauffeurs, yes, aside from all the help we had in the Tuxedo Park house and the Southampton house as well. But those days are gone forever.

Rita Mitchell Cushman, Daughter of Charles E. Mitchell: I should say.

Craig Mitchell, Son of Charles E. Mitchell: But we never thought of it as being grandiose because practically everybody we knew seemed to live in the same way.

Patricia Livermore, Daughter-in-Law of Jesse Livermore: Jesse Livermore had a ticker tape in every home that he owned. They had a beautiful house on 76th Street in Manhattan, on the West side of Central Park. They had a floor at the 813 Fifth Avenue because Dorothy did not like to go to the West Side to change her clothes. So they had a house in Great Neck, they had a summer house in Lake Placid, they had a house in Palm Beach. They had private railroad cars, two yachts. Oh, they lived. They really lived.

Narrator: Few Americans lived like Jesse Livermore, but there was a rising expectation that everyone could have a piece of this prosperity. During his presidential campaign of 1928, candidate Herbert Hoover would make this extraordinary promise.

Herbert Hover (archival): Given a chance to go forward with the policies of the last eight years, we shall soon, with the help of God, be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation.

Robert Sobel, Historian: There was great hope. America came out of World War I with the economy intact. We were the only strong country in the world. The dollar was king. We had a very popular president in the middle of the decade, Calvin Coolidge, and an even more popular one elected in 1928, Herbert Hoover. So things looked pretty good.

Narrator: The economy was changing in this new America. It was the dawn of the consumer revolution. New inventions, mass marketing, factories turning out amazing products like radios, rayon, air conditioners, underarm deodorant.

Robert Sobel, Historian: This is a period in which the American household gets the washing machine, gets a refrigerator, goes off gaslight and gets electricity in some cities. This is period in which people would buy little plugs to put into the outlets in the wall so the electricity wouldn't leak on the floor. "What will they think of next," was a 1920s saying, 'cause new things were continually coming out and they were new things which you could enjoy, not just for the few.

Narrator: One of the most wondrous inventions of the age was consumer credit. Before 1920, the average worker couldn't borrow money. By 1929, "buy now, pay later" had become a way of life.

Robert Sobel, Historian: So there were changes, many changes in the way people viewed the world and all of them optimistic. You extrapolate the curve and what do you have? Permanent prosperity. That was the term one heard in the late 1920s. "We're into the age of permanent prosperity."

Narrator: Wall Street got the credit for this prosperity and Wall Street was dominated by just a small group of wealthy men. Rarely in the history of this nation had so much raw power been concentrated in the hands of a few businessmen, men like William C. Durant.

Aristo Scrobogna, Secretary to William C. Durant: It's almost impossible to realize the power and the significance of the man. In Flint - when Mr. Durant came to Flint occasionally, people used to say, "Durant is in town." Just like that, you know, "Durant is in town." He was bigger than life.

Narrator: Earlier in the century, Durant had founded General Motors. Now, he made his money on Wall Street. Backed by Midwestern auto industrialists, he controlled so much money that he could singlehandedly drive up the price of a stock and then sell, reaping huge profits.

Aristo Scrobogna, Secretary to William C. Durant: He was just at the apotheosis, at the maximum of his power. He managed - according to the voices of the time, according to what was said - anywhere between two to five billion dollars, which in those days was a fabulous - the market was filled with bulls and he was the bull of the bulls.

Narrator: Durant came to Wall Street as one of the titans of industry. Jesse Livermore, whose fortune was estimated at over $100 million, never did anything in his life but play the market.

Robert Sobel, Historian: Everything Jesse Livermore touched turned to gold, it seemed. All he had to do was to press a button and a stock would go up ten points. And that meant, of course, that Jesse Livermore would make a lot of money. So the average American would look at this say, "Gee, if only I knew what he doing, I could make money, too. How do you get in on Jesse Livermore's brains?"

Narrator: Livermore was a speculator, pure and simple. He didn't study the health of a company. He didn't care whether it made a profit or paid a dividend. For him, the stock market was an abstract game of numbers.

Patricia Livermore, Daughter-in-Law of Jesse Livermore: Money was not the end for this man at all. Money was a very peripheral thing for him, but beating the odds, winning a game. That was his objective. He was a numbers man. He lived by the numbers, took an elevator by the numbers. He came into town by the numbers. Everything was done by numbers. When he left his house in the morning, he did not leave at 8:10, he left at 8:07. All of the policemen knew, because of his time schedule, that he would be going down Fifth Avenue, let's say, at 8:37. Well, of course, traffic lights were hand-operated then, had policemen on boxes. So the instant that they saw his car, the lights were green. He never stopped for a red light.

Narrator: The success of large speculators like Livermore and Durant lured smaller investors to Wall Street, but Charles Mitchell, president of National City Bank, virtually invented the idea of mass-marketing stocks and bonds to the general public. This was a totally new idea and a huge success.

Craig Mitchell, Son of Charles E. Mitchell: The bank, prior to father's being elected president in 1921, was geared mainly to doing business with large corporations. Father pointed the bank, for the first time, in the direction of going after the little man and

Rita Mitchell Cushman, Daughter of Charles E. Mitchell: Don't call him the little man. It was Everyman.

Craig Mitchell, Son of Charles E. Mitchell: Well, jedermann (everyman), all right. How old was he then? Thirty-eight years old. And the National City Company had four offices. And then, within three years, there were over 50 offices and by 1929, it was the largest distributor of securities in the world.

Narrator: Even at the height of the speculative frenzy, only a small percentage of the American public actually invested in stocks, but the market had entered popular culture. Wall Street became Main Street. Everyone was talking stocks. Watching the ticker became a national sport. Popular magazines covered financial news. Dozens of best-sellers promised investors the inside track. The characters in the popular comic strip "Gasoline Alley," were investing in a company called "Rubber Keyhole." Stock tips came from everywhere. Some investors followed the advice of Evangeline Adams, an astrologer.

Manly P. Hall, Founder, Philosophical Research Society: She was able to calculate the variations of the stock exchange so accurately that there was practically no difference to having have read it in a ledger somewhere. Among her more interesting clients were Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and J. Pierpont Morgan.

Narrator: In February, Evangeline Adams looked at the stars and predicted a dramatic upswing in stock prices for the coming months. The stock market, once considered a highly risky place to put your money, was now beginning to attract a whole new group of amateur speculators. Among the new players was one Julius Marx. Everyone knew him by his stage name, Groucho.

Arthur Marx, Son of Groucho Marx: But they were poor and it always affected my father 'cause he was always kind of thrifty and worried about his future and what would become of him when no one else wanted him as an actor anymore. So he was always saving money, turning off the lights and turning off the water around the house even after he was in Hollywood and making a lot of money.

Narrator: Of all the Marx brothers, Groucho was the most financially conservative. In 1929, he took his life's savings and put it in a sure thing, the stock market.

Arthur Marx, Son of Groucho Marx: He was always phoning a broker and getting hot tips and wanting to know what the stocks were that - how they were doing. And if he wasn't on the phone, he would take me into Great Neck, which was a little village at the time but they did have a stockbroker called Newman Brothers & Worms and all these men who were investing in the market, they'd all sit there in chairs like a little theater and watch the ticker tape go by.

Narrator: Groucho, along with record numbers of smaller investors, was borrowing money to buy stocks. It was called "buying on margin." You only needed ten percent down. Just $1,000 would get you $10,000 worth of stock. Suddenly, you were in the same league with the big players or so it seemed. But the stock market was not a level playing field.

Patricia Livermore, Daughter-in-Law of Jesse Livermore: In the 20s and 30s, one of the big features of the stock market is the fact that it wasn't controlled and that operators could do a lot of things that are not permitted today.

Narrator: One of the most common tactics was to manipulate the price of a particular stock, a stock like Radio Corporation of America.

Michael Nesbitt, Grandson of Michael J. Meehan: RCA was, in the 20s, what Xerox was in the 60s, what was a great growth stock. The stock went from - I can't remember the exact numbers, but from something like 20 to 400, split many times and made many people, including my grandfather, very wealthy. It was one of the stocks that was manipulated by a pool.

Narrator: Wealthy investors would pool their money in a secret agreement to buy a stock, inflate its price and then sell it to an unsuspecting public. Most stocks in the 1920s were regularly manipulated by insiders like RCA specialist Michael Meehan.

Michael Nesbitt, Grandson of Michael J. Meehan: In those days, that was legal and it was quite common practice for a group of Wall Streeters to take a stock in hand. And they would acquire a position in the stock early on and then, they would see to it that there was good press on the stock, a lot of publicity.

Robert Sobel, Historian: I would say that practically all the financial journals were on the take. This includes reporters for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Herald-Tribune, you name it. So if you were a pool operator, you'd call your friend at The Times and say, "Look, Charlie, there's an envelope waiting for you here and we think that perhaps you should write something nice about RCA." And Charlie would write something nice about RCA. A publicity man called A. Newton Plummer had canceled checks from practically every major journalist in New York City.

Michael Nesbitt, Grandson of Michael J. Meehan: Then, they would begin to - what was called "painting the tape" and they would make the stock look exciting. They would trade among themselves and you'd see these big prints on RCA and people will say, "Oh, it looks as though that stock is being accumulated."

Robert Sobel, Historian: Now, if they are behind it, you want to join them, so you go out and you buy stock also. Now, what's happening is the stock goes from 10 to 15 to 20 and now, it's at 20 and you start buying, other people start buying at 30, 40. The original group, the pool, they've stopped buying. They're selling you the stock. It's now 50 and they're out of it. And what happens, of course, is the stock collapses.

Narrator: On March 8, 1929, Michael Meehan began one of the most successful pools on Wall Street. From the 8th to the 17th, Meehan and the pool pushed up the value of RCA almost 50 percent. On March 18th, they sold and divided up their profits. In today's money, they had made $100 million for one week's work.

Michael Nesbitt, Grandson of Michael J. Meehan: The pools were a little like musical chairs. When the music stopped, somebody owned the stocks and those were the sufferers.

Narrator: If small investors suffered, they would soon be back for more. They knew the game was rigged, but maybe next time, they could beat the system. Wall Street had its critics, among them economist Roger Babson. He questioned the boom and was accused of lack of patriotism, of selling America short.

John Kenneth Galbraith, Economist: Roger Babson warned of the speculation and said, "There's going to be a crash and the aftermath is going to be quite terrible." And people jumped on Babson from all around for saying such a thing, so that people who were cautious about their personal reputation, who did not want to call down on themselves a lot of calumny, kept quiet.

Narrator: Mobster Al Capone was not a cautious man. From his Chicago headquarters, he condemned the wild speculation on Wall Street. "It's a racket," he said, "Those stock market guys are crooked." Capone invested his money in a $100-million bootleg liquor business. Business was good. On Valentine's Day, 1929, he had just eliminated the competition.

March 4th, Inauguration Day. Republican President Calvin Coolidge had run his administration on the belief that business was the basis of America's prosperity. Government should not interfere. Herbert Hoover had won a landslide victory, promising to carry on the tradition.

John Kenneth Galbraith, Economist: This was a time in our history when governments did not, as now, take responsibility for the economy. They presided over it, but the level of economic activity and the level of economic growth and the stability of prices were not yet everyday concerns of the president. And what Coolidge did was to say how wonderful times were, how happy everybody was going to be and how prosperous everyone was going to be. And Hoover's responsibility was to continue that optimism.

Narrator: Politicians came and went, but in the 20s, the businessman was king. New York City had a dapper, corrupt and vastly popular mayor, Jimmy Walker, but behind the scenes were powerful financial leaders like Charles Mitchell.

Craig Mitchell, Son of Charles E. Mitchell: Jimmy Walker was high, wide and fancy with the city finances. One day, Father called Mayor Walker up here and he had some other bankers with him. And Mayor Walker was sort of put on the grill in the upstairs library, while these bankers read the riot act to him to try and get some fiscal responsibility instilled into him. And I know that after the meeting, somebody took me into the library and pointed me out the chair that the mayor had been sitting in and he'd been so nervous - what were those, Louis XIV chairs with all the little -

Rita Mitchell Cushman, Daughter of Charles E. Mitchell: Louis XV.

Craig Mitchell, Son of Charles E. Mitchell: Louis XV chairs with all the little tacks in there, the brass tacks.

Rita Mitchell Cushman, Daughter of Charles E. Mitchell: Yes.

Craig Mitchell, Son of Charles E. Mitchell: And he'd pulled out almost all the brass tacks - they were sitting on the floor - out of sheer nerves.

Narrator: The stock market, too, was getting a severe case of nerves. On Friday, March 22nd, all eyes were on that august government body in Washington, the Federal Reserve Board. The board distrusted the boom. They saw the speculation as reckless and dangerous because it was based more and more on the shaky foundation of borrowed money, margin. The board had the power to curb the borrowing, the market was now dependent on borrowed money. Without margin, it would collapse. The board met day after day. Would they ask for regulation of the stock market? They issued no public statements. Their silence was terrifying.

On Monday, March 21st, investors began to sell. Blue chip stocks plunged. Tuesday, another wave of selling swept the market. As it fell, people holding stock on margin were hit hard. They'd put only ten percent down, but the value of their stock dropped more than 10 percent, so their down payment was gone. To hold their stocks, they'd have to put up more money. On March 26th, millions of investors suddenly found themselves in deep trouble.

Robert Sobel, Historian: Your broker would call you and say, "We need more money. You're wiped out." Unless you could give him more money, he would then sell the stock. Now, he would sell the stock, which would cause the stock to go down to 85, 86 and now, more margin calls are triggered. So one margin call triggers another margin call, triggers another margin call and it goes all the way down.

Narrator: With everyone trying to borrow money to cover the falling value of their stocks, there was a credit crunch. Interest rates soared. At 20 percent, few people could afford to borrow more money. The boom was about to collapse like a house of cards.

Charlie Mitchell was horrified. His success, his entire career, his personal fortune had been based on a rising market. If nobody else was going to stop the crash, Charles Mitchell would.

Craig Mitchell, Son of Charles E. Mitchell: Father, at that point, stepped in and announced that the National City Bank would provide $25 million of credit, which was all very well and very necessary, but he added the fateful words, "whatever the Federal Reserve Board thinks." And Senator Carter Glass, who had been sort of the father of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, took that as a direct slap across the face. But whatever Senator Glass thought, immediately, the credit crisis was alleviated. In fact, within the next 24 hours, call money went from 20 percent to eight percent and that stopped the panic, then, in March.

Narrator: The next day, the market rallied. The Federal Reserve Board remained silent, tacitly accepting defeat. The hero of the day was Charlie Mitchell. He had singlehandedly stopped the crash of '29. With the start of the baseball season, people quickly forgot the break in the market.

New events filled the papers. There was a crisis in Nicaragua, where the nationalist hero, Augusto Sandino, was threatening American marines; tragedy in the British Mandate of Palestine as Jews and Arabs clashed over control of holy sites in Jerusalem. And in Antarctica, Commander Byrd was at his base camp, Little America, waiting for a break in the weather. His elaborately-planned flight over the South Pole was still on ice.

The newsreels had come into their own. Now, in living sound, patrons could keep abreast of the important events of the day.

Woman (archival): The biggest news of the day is not the Naval agreement, not even Prohibition, but the return of the natural waistline.

Patricia Livermore, Daughter-in-Law of Jesse Livermore: Dorothy Livermore was a typical flapper. She has to embody the 20s. She would do almost anything on an impulse. She had some priceless pieces of 18th-century furniture, but the house had settled and the floors were not level. But Mrs. Livermore didn't like to spend money that didn't show, so instead of having the hoist put underneath, she simply solved the problem by having the legs of the furniture cut off to fit the sloping floors, so that the tops of all of the furniture were level, but of course, the legs were on different angles. And this was her typical solution. As long as the tops were level, everything was fine.

Narrator: Everything was not fine that spring with the American economy. It was showing ominous signs of trouble. Steel production was declining. The construction industry was sluggish. Car sales dropped. Customers were getting harder to find. And because of easy credit, many people were deeply in debt. Large sections of the population were poor and getting poorer.

Just as Wall Street had reflected a steady growth in the economy throughout most of the 20s, it would seem that now the market should reflect the economic slowdown. Instead, it soared to record heights. Stock prices no longer had anything to do with company profits, the economy or anything else. The speculative boom had acquired a momentum of its own.

John Kenneth Galbraith, Economist: It was this nature of mass illusion. Prices were going up, people bought. That forced prices up further, that brought in more people. And eventually, the process becomes self-perpetuating. Every increase brings in more people convinced of their God-given right to get rich.

Narrator: The 20s was a decade of all sorts of fast money schemes. Three years earlier, everyone was buying Florida real estate. As prices of land skyrocketed, more people jumped in, hoping to make a killing. Then, overnight, the boom turned to bust and investors lost everything.

Groucho Marx (Film, The Cocoanuts): Florida, folks. Sunshine, sunshine. Perpetual sunshine all the year around. Let's get the auction started before we get a tornado. Right this way. Step forward, everybody.

Narrator: In May, the Marx Brothers were before the cameras with their first film, The Cocoanuts. Its subject? The Florida land boom. Now, in 1929, the gullibility of those naive speculators was something to laugh about.

Groucho Marx (Film, The Cocoanuts): Eight hundred wonderful residences will be built right here. Why, they're as good up, better. You can have any kind of a home you want to. You can get even get stucco. Oh, how you can get stucco. Now is the time to buy while the new boom is on. Remember that old saying, "A new boom sweeps clean." And don't forget the guarantee.

Narrator: Groucho Marx would film these scenes and then rush to his broker to put more of his savings into the booming market, on margin, of course.

Arthur Marx, Son of Groucho Marx: Max Gordon, a Broadway producer, was also heavily in the market and Gordon could never get over the fact that the market was going up and up and up all the time. And he said to my father, "How long has this been going on, Groucho?" And my father said, "I don't know, but my broker down in Great Neck tells me that it's because there's a worldwide market for American goods and it's never going to go down, that the market'll just keep going up and up and up."

Narrator: May 1929. Stock prices were going up and up. With so much money to be made, people were borrowing more money than ever before to buy stocks. Market leaders like William Durant, far from being worried, were ecstatic. Off on his annual visit to Europe, he announced that everything would be fine as long as we all continued to believe: "Confidence - not halfway confidence, but 100-percent confidence - is the real basis for our prosperity."

Astrologer Evangeline Adams was now putting out a newsletter. Her 100,000 subscribers learned how the Zodiac could influence stock prices. Her advice for the coming summer: buy.

Ben Karol, Former Newspaper Delivery Boy: They thought this was a ride that was never going to end, just goes on and on and on and every day, they got more money and they're counting up their paper profits. And they're selling and buying and buying and selling and they're doing great.

Tom McCormick, Former Stock Sales Clerk: Geez, I'd go to get a shoeshine and they'd say, "How's the market?" You'd go to the barber to get a haircut, "How is the market?" Everybody was in the market.

Robert Sobel, Historian: There were people who were looking for the one lucky break, people who were just hoping that they'd strike it right, you know. You take a rifle and you aim it at the ocean and you hope to hit a fish.

Narrator: Along with the market, temperatures soared that summer. It was a record heat wave and a record three months at the Exchange. Some stocks doubled in value. In June, The New York Times index of stocks rose 52 points. In July, another 25.

In the middle of the summer, the Graf Zeppelin was completing its first leisurely trip around the world. The Marx Brothers had finished shooting their film, The Cocoanuts. Commander Byrd was still at his base camp near the South Pole. He, too, had money in the market and radioed his broker for the latest quotes. Back in Cleveland, George Herman Ruth hit his 500th home run and on the radio, they were playing the latest hit tune, "I'm in the Market for You." On August 17th, Michael Meehan's brokerage firm launched a new service.

Michael Nesbitt, Grandson of Michael J. Meehan: One of my grandfather's innovations was putting brokerage houses on the ocean liners - the first one on the Berengaria - and that allowed you during the - whatever it was, during the six- or seven-day passage to Europe, if you were such a stock market addict that you couldn't stand the withdrawal for that period, you could walk into the office and place your order to buy or sell 100 shares of General Motors or General Electric or whatever. And they would radio that order back to New York. It was being very modern at the time. They were very wealthy people on the trans-Atlantic liners and it gave them something to do.

Narrator: At sea and on land, everyone seemed to be making money. It was a stampede of buying. And major speculators like John Jacob Rascob whipped up the frenzy. He told readers of The Ladies' Home Journal that now everyone could be rich.

September 2nd, Labor Day. It was the hottest day of the year. The markets were closed and people were at the beach. A reporter checked in with astrologer Evangeline to ask about the future of stock prices. Her answer: the Dow Jones could climb to heaven. The very next day, September 3rd, the stock market hit its all-time high.

Ben Karol, Former Newspaper Delivery Boy: My father and I had an ongoing discussion about the stock market. And I used to say, "Pop, everybody's getting rich but you. You know, you work so hard and you're never going to make a nickel. All you do is you keep delivering these newspapers and that's about it. The guy who's shining shoes is in the stock market, the grocery clerk is in the stock market, the school teacher's in the stock market. The teller at the bank is in the stock market. Everybody's in the stock market. You're the only one that's not in the stock market." And he used to sit and laugh and say, "You'll see. You'll see. You'll see."

Narrator: On September 5th, economist Roger Babson gave a speech to a group of businessmen. "Sooner or later, a crash is coming and it may be terrific." He'd been saying the same thing for two years, but now, for some reason, investors were listening. The market took a severe dip. They called it the "Babson Break." The next day, prices stabilized, but several days later, they began to drift lower. Though investors had no way of knowing it, the collapse had already begun.

In the weeks to follow, the market fluctuated wildly up and down. On September 12th, prices dropped ten percent. They dipped sharply again in the 20s. Stock markets around the world were falling, too. Then, on September 25th, the market suddenly rallied.

Reuben L. Cain, Former Stock Salesman: I remember well that I thought, "Why is this doing this?" And then I thought, "Well, I'm new here and these people" - like every day in the paper, Charlie Mitchell would have something to say, the J.P. Morgan people would have something to say about how good things were - and I thought, "Well, they know a lot more about this market than I do. I'm fairly new here and I really can't see why it's going up." But then, when they say it can't go down or if it does go down today, it'll go back tomorrow, you think, "Well, they really are like God. They know it all and it must be the way it's going because they say so."

Narrator: As the market floundered, financial leaders were as optimistic as ever, more so. Just five days before the crash, Thomas Lamont, acting head of the highly conservative Morgan Bank, wrote a letter to President Hoover. "The future appears brilliant. Our securities are the most desirable in the world." Charles Mitchell assured nervous investors that things had never been better.

Craig Mitchell, Son of Charles E. Mitchell: Practically every business leader in America, and banker, right around the time of 1929, was saying how wonderful things were and the economy had only one way to go and that was up.

Rita Mitchell Cushman, Daughter of Charles E. Mitchell: Unfortunately, he didn't have a crystal ball to predict the future.

Robert Sobel, Historian: There's an old saying on Wall Street that the two most important emotions are fear and greed and you go from fear to greed in about a fraction of a second. So you're very, very greedy and you say to yourself, "I want to make more." And then, the market goes down ten points and you get frightened. "I want to keep what I have," so you sell everything. And that's how you have a panic. So you can panic on the upside - people rushing in to get in before the train takes off - and a panic on the downside, trying to get off the train before disaster hits.

Narrator: Monday, October 21st. Hoover, along with the political and financial leaders of the country, arrives in Dearborn, Michigan to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Edison's invention of the light bulb. The host is Henry Ford. The country is reminded that in 50 short years, men like Ford, Durant and Edison had transformed America from a third-rate power into the industrial giant of the world. And while they celebrated, their world was beginning to fall apart.

John Kenneth Galbraith, Economist: There came a Wednesday, October 23rd, when the market was a little shaky, weak. And whether this caused some spread of pessimism, one doesn't know. It certainly led a lot of people to think they should get out. And so, Thursday, October the 24th - the first Black Thursday - the market, beginning in the morning, took a terrific tumble.

Craig Mitchell, Son of Charles E. Mitchell: The market opened in an absolutely free fall and some people couldn't even get any bids for their shares and it was wild panic. And an ugly crowd gathered outside the stock exchange and it was described as making weird and threatening noises. It was, indeed, one of the worst days that had ever been seen down there.

Narrator: There was a glimmer of hope on Black Thursday. Directly across from the New York Stock Exchange was a low, stately building, the House of Morgan. Twenty-two years earlier, J. Pierpont Morgan had stopped the panic of 1907. October 24th, high noon. All eyes were now on acting head, Thomas W. Lamont.

Edward Lamont, Grandson of Thomas W. Lamont: Tom Lamont called a number of the other bankers, like Charles Mitchell of the National City Bank and people from the Bankers Trust and J. Albert Wiggin of the Chase Bank and so forth - there were about a half a dozen of them there - and they were gathered together to really discuss what they could do to stem this tremendous onslaught of selling stocks on the stock exchange that was taking place.

Craig Mitchell, Son of Charles E. Mitchell: About 12:30, there was an announcement that this group of bankers would make available a very substantial sum to ease the credit stringency and support the market. And right after that, Dick Whitney made his famous walk across the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

Narrator: Richard Whitney, vice president of the Exchange, was chosen by the bankers to be their representative. At 1:30 in the afternoon, at the height of the panic, he strolled across the floor and in a loud, clear voice, ordered 10,000 shares of U.S. Steel at a price considerably higher than the last bid. He then went from post to post, shouting buy orders for key stocks.

Horace Silverstone, Former New York Stock Exchange telephone clerk: He stood up on one of the seats at the post and he said, "I give 45 for 50,000 Standard Oil," and everybody started to applaud. "Oh, the crash is over. If Morgan's putting his money in, then maybe the crash is over."

John Kenneth Galbraith, Economist: And sure enough, this seemed to be evidence that the bankers had moved in to end the panic. And they did end it for that day. The market then stabilized and even went up.

Edward Lamont, Grandson of Thomas W. Lamont: The New York Times said that thanks to the formation of this bankers pool, most observers felt that the panic and the great sell-off was over. And most people did feel that way. Tom Lamont felt that way.

John Kenneth Galbraith, Economist: But Monday was not good. Apparently, people had thought about things over the weekend, over Sunday, and decided maybe they might be safer to get out. And then came the real crash, which was on Tuesday, when the market went down and down and down, without seeming limit.

Narrator: October 29th. Morgan's bankers could no longer stem the tide. It was like trying to stop Niagara Falls. Everyone wanted to sell. AT&T down 50 percent. RCA, once $110 a share, couldn't find buyers at $26. Blue Ridge 100 plunged to $3 and still no buyers. On the floor, they had never seen anything like it.

Horace Silverstone, Former New York Stock Exchange telephone clerk: And it was just like a nightmare and I couldn't believe what was going on here. In those days, every buy order was on a black pad and every sell order was on a red pad. And all I saw was members running around with fistful of red orders.

Tom McCormick, Former Stock Sales Clerk: Just chickens with their head cut off, they didn't know which way to run. They were panicking, screaming. Everybody was bumping into everybody else.

Horace Silverstone, Former New York Stock Exchange telephone clerk: Don't remind him. Anyhow, this is what happened and I tell you - and I was supposed to answer everybody yelling at me - I said, "What am I supposed to do?" I mean, nobody knew what the hell to do.

Narrator: William Durant, the bull of the bulls, now tried singlehandedly to support the market. The further it plunged, the more of his millions he poured into it.

Aristo Scrobogna, Secretary to William C. Durant: He became truly convinced that he was omnipotent. He thought that nothing could really unseat him. It was unfortunate. The forces were too great. There was no one man that could have been so powerful to control the market.

Narrator: There were some people, however, whose investment strategies made money. On October 29th, Jesse Livermore's wife, hearing of the crash, ordered the servants to move all the furniture out of their mansion into a small cottage on the estate.

Patricia Livermore, Daughter-in-Law of Jesse Livermore: So when Mr. Livermore got home that night, he walked into a totally vacant house. When she told him that she had effected the move because she was sure that they had lost all their money, he told her that he had made more money that day than he had ever made before.

Narrator: For most others, it was all over. In brokers' offices across the country, the small investors - the tailors, the grocers, the secretaries - stared at the moving ticker in numb silence. Hope of an easy retirement, the new home, their children's education, everything was gone.

Arthur Marx, Son of Groucho Marx: My father was ready to kill himself. In the morning of the crash, he got a call and it was Max Gordon and Max Gordon says, "Groucho?" and my father said, "What?" And Gordon said, "Groucho, the jig is up."

Reuben L. Cain, Former Stock Salesman: There were all sorts of rumors and you'd see people going down the street looking up to see if they could catch somebody jumping out the window. Now, it turned out there weren't as many people who jumped out the window as they reported, but some did and others committed suicide other ways.

Narrator: Five hundred miles from Wall Street in the Atlantic, the luxury liner, the Berengaria, was heading home. From Michael Meehan's brokerage office, word spread through the ship: "The bottom's fallen out of the market." Men came running out of their Turkish baths in towels. Card games ended abruptly. Everyone tried to jam into the tiny office, yelling, "Sell at market!" They had left England wealthy men. They docked in New York without a penny.

John Kenneth Galbraith, Economist: There's nothing unique about this. It is something which happens every 20 or 30 years because that is about the length of the financial memory. It's about the length of time that it requires for a new set of suckers, if you will, a new set of people capable of wonderful self-delusion to come in and imagine that they have a new and wonderful fix on the future.

Narrator: In the 1930s, Charles Mitchell was hounded by Senate committees and the IRS. The crash had left him $12 million in debt.

Rita Mitchell Cushman, Daughter of Charles E. Mitchell: This house was taken over, of course, and things changed. And I began to know what the real world was all about. It was about time. I was 19 years old.

Narrator: Mitchell made a remarkable comeback. He paid off his debts and died in 1955, a highly-respected figure on Wall Street. In 1936, William Durant filed for bankruptcy. His only assets, which he valued at $250, were the clothes on his back. In the late 30s, the founder of General Motors tried his hand at everything from running a bowling alley to selling a cure for dandruff. He died in 1947, still talking about making a comeback.

Herbert Hoover spent much of the early 1930s fishing. He explained in a speech that fishing is a constant reminder of humility and of human frailty, "for all men are equal before fishes."

Patricia Livermore, Daughter-in-Law of Jesse Livermore: The game on Wall Street had changed a great deal for Livermore and the SEC was becoming a powerful factor and the rules were changed. He couldn't operate freely, buy and sell the way he had in the past and he couldn't adapt to the new regulations. So, in a sense, his playing with the market was over and I think a great deal of his interest in life was over at that point. The game was gone.

Narrator: In 1940, the day before Thanksgiving, a photographer snapped this photograph of an old and very tired Jesse Livermore. Several hours later, Livermore would go into a men's washroom and put a bullet through his head.

At the end of 1929, as they celebrated New Year's Eve, all that lay in the future. Nobody knew that the Great Depression was coming - unemployment, bread lines, bank failures - this was unimaginable. But the bubble had burst. Gone was that innocent optimism, the confidence, the illusion of wealth without work. One era had ended. They toasted the coming of the 30s, but somewhere, deep down, they knew the party was over.

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The Crash of 1929 | American Experience | PBS

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The unbounded optimism of the Jazz Age and the shocking consequences when reality finally hit on October 29th, ultimately leading to the Great Depression.

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After the stock market crash of 1929, the American economy spiraled into a depression that would plague the nation for a decade.

The Great Depression was the worst economic downturn in US history. It began in 1929 and did not abate until the end of the 1930s.

The stock market crash of October 1929 signaled the beginning of the Great Depression. By 1933, unemployment was at 25 percent and more than 5,000 banks had gone out of business.

Although President Herbert Hoover attempted to spark growth in the economy through measures like the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, these measures did little to solve the crisis.

Franklin Roosevelt was elected president in November 1932. Inaugurated as president in March 1933, Roosevelt's New Deal offered a new approach to the Great Depression.

The stock market crash of 1929

The value of the US stock market nearly doubled in a frenzy of speculative buying in the eighteen months before the crash began on "Black Thursday," October 24, 1929. On that day, and on " Black Tuesday," October 29, panic set in as millions of shares of stock traded at ever-falling prices.

The October 1929 downturn was only the beginning of the market collapse. By mid-November the stock market had lost a third of its September value, and by 1932-when the market hit bottom-stocks had lost ninety percent of their value. A share of US Steel which had sold for $262 before the crash sold in 1932 for $22.

The stock market crash signaled the beginning of the Great Depression, but it was only one factor among many root causes of the Depression. A weak banking system, further collapse in already-low farm prices, and industrial overproduction each contributed to the economic downturn. The disastrous 1930 Hawley-Smoot Tariff (which raised average tariff rates to nearly 60 percent) caused America's international trading partners to retaliate by raising rates on US-made goods. The result was shrinking international trade and a further decline in global economies.

Hoover's response to the crisis

President Hoover initially met the economic downturn from the perspective of his long-held voluntarist principles-that is, his belief in minimal government interference in the economy, as well as a conviction that direct public relief to individuals would weaken individual character, turn people away from the work-ethic, and lead them to develop a dependency on government handouts. By 1931 Hoover reversed his earlier approach and embraced government intervention in the economy. The 1932 Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) authorized the lending of $2 billion to banks, railroads, and other privately held companies, and in July 1932 the federal government appropriated $300 million for the nation's first relief and public works projects.

For many, however, these actions were too little, too late. Shantytowns of makeshift hovels-disparagingly labeled " Hoovervilles " in disgust with the president's inaction in the face of crisis-grew up across the country in public parks and in vacant lots, as the out-of-work, unable to pay mortgages or rent, were evicted from their homes. Trouser pockets pulled out to signal the lack of money within them were "Hoover flags." Newspapers used for warmth by the homeless were "Hoover blankets."

In November 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president in a landslide, winning 57.4% of the vote to Hoover's 39.7%.

What do you think?

What caused the stock market crash that began in October 1929?

Do you think President Herbert Hoover's response to the economic downturn that began in 1929 was adequate?

What do you think your life would have been like if you had lived during the Great Depression?

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The Great Depression (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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New Deal - Facts & Summary - HISTORY.com

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Find out more about the history of New Deal, including videos, interesting articles, pictures, historical features and more. Get all the facts on HISTORY.com

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The Little White House and FDR's Connections to Georgia!

FDR

FDR came to Warm Springs to soak in the warm waters found there as therapy for his legs, weakened from polio. He had a hand-controlled car there to allow him to drive. While in Warm Springs he developed relationships with the people there. He visited the small town many times during the 1920s and during his four presidencies and his residence, the Little White House, is now a museum. You can visit the house and museum and see his car and other artifacts/memorabilia from Roosevelt's time there. It's well worth your time to visit!

Warm Springs Institute

There is now a rehabilitation center there for people who have mobility issues. They come for therapy and to sit in pools of naturally warm water.

The Warm Springs Rehabilitation Institute

A lasting legacy of FDR is the rehabilitation institute that continues to help patients even today! Here is a video about the institute.

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Design and share beautiful flyers just like this one! Spread the word with an online flyer. They're easy to make and impossible to mess up :) The Little White House and FDR's Connections to Georgia! FDR came to Warm Springs to soak in the warm waters found there as therapy for his legs, weakened from polio.

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The Roaring 20s and the Tumultuous 30s!

The Roaring 20s and Tumultuous 30s

The years following the WWI were prosperous ones, but there were many events that would lead to the second World War. The end of the 20s saw the Wall Street crash that sunk the world's economies into the depths of a depression the likes no one had ever seen and the rise of Nazism in Germany that led to the Holocaust and another World War with roots leading back to the end of WWI. The rise of Benito Mussolini in Italy, Adolf Hitler in Germany as well as Emperor Hirohito in Japan all were the result of nationalism.

Additionally, Albert Einstein's scientific breakthroughs influenced the world in ways even he could not predict. It has been said that Einstein noted that, had he known the end result of his scientific work (nuclear weapons and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of WWII,) he would never have completed his work in the first place.

So get ready for an interesting study of the world in the "between the wars!"

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Design and share beautiful flyers just like this one! Spread the word with an online flyer. They're easy to make and impossible to mess up :) The Roaring 20s and the Tumultuous 30s! The years following the WWI were prosperous ones, but there were many events that would lead to the second World War.

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World War II News Update - Keeping Students Abreast of War News! by Jennifer Egas | This newsletter was created with Smore, an online tool for creating beautiful newsletters for for individual educators, schools and districts

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World War II: Causes and Timeline | HISTORY

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World War II was fought from 1939 to 1945. Learn more about World War II combatants, battles and generals, and what caused World War II.

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World War II: Summary, Combatants & Facts

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World War II was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. Rising to power in an unstable Germany, Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist (Nazi Party) rearmed the nation and signed treaties with Italy and Japan to further his ambitions of world domination. Hitler’s invasion of Poland drove Great Britain and France to declare war on Germany, and World War II had begun. The majority of the world’s countries eventually formed two opposing alliances: the Allies and the Axis.

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Jim Crow Laws

During Reconstruction, Black people took on leadership roles like never before. They held public office and sought legislative changes for equality and the right to vote.

In 1868, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution gave Black people equal protection under the law. In 1870, the 15th Amendment granted Black American men the right to vote. Still, many white Americans, especially those in the South, were unhappy that people they'd once enslaved were now on a more-or-less equal playing field.

To marginalize Black people, keep them separate from white people and erase the progress they'd made during Reconstruction, " Jim Crow " laws were established in the South beginning in the late 19th century. Black people couldn't use the same public facilities as white people, live in many of the same towns or go to the same schools. Interracial marriage was illegal, and most Black people couldn't vote because they were unable to pass voter literacy tests.

Jim Crow laws weren't adopted in northern states; however, Black people still experienced discrimination at their jobs or when they tried to buy a house or get an education. To make matters worse, laws were passed in some states to limit voting rights for Black Americans.

Moreover, southern segregation gained ground in 1896 when the U.S. Supreme Court declared in Plessy v. Ferguson that facilities for Black and white people could be "separate but equal."

World War II and Civil Rights

Prior to World War II, most Black people worked as low-wage farmers, factory workers, domestics or servants. By the early 1940s, war-related work was booming, but most Black Americans weren't given better-paying jobs. They were also discouraged from joining the military.

After thousands of Black people threatened to march on Washington to demand equal employment rights, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 on June 25, 1941. It opened national defense jobs and other government jobs to all Americans regardless of race, creed, color or national origin.

Black men and women served heroically in World War II, despite suffering segregation and discrimination during their deployment. The Tuskegee Airmen broke the racial barrier to become the first Black military aviators in the U.S. Army Air Corps and earned more than 150 Distinguished Flying Crosses. Yet many Black veterans were met with prejudice and scorn upon returning home. This was a stark contrast to why America had entered the war to begin with-to defend freedom and democracy in the world.

As the Cold War began, President Harry Truman initiated a civil rights agenda, and in 1948 issued Executive Order 9981 to end discrimination in the military. These events helped set the stage for grass-roots initiatives to enact racial equality legislation and incite the civil rights movement.

Rosa Parks

On December 1, 1955, a 42-year-old woman named Rosa Parks found a seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus after work. Segregation laws at the time stated Black passengers must sit in designated seats at the back of the bus, and Parks complied.

When a white man got on the bus and couldn't find a seat in the white section at the front of the bus, the bus driver instructed Parks and three other Black passengers to give up their seats. Parks refused and was arrested.

As word of her arrest ignited outrage and support, Parks unwittingly became the "mother of the modern-day civil rights movement." Black community leaders formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) led by Baptist minister Martin Luther King Jr., a role which would place him front and center in the fight for civil rights.

Parks' courage incited the MIA to stage a boycott of the Montgomery bus system. The Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted 381 days. On November 14, 1956, the Supreme Court ruled segregated seating was unconstitutional.

Little Rock Nine

In 1954, the civil rights movement gained momentum when the United States Supreme Court made segregation illegal in public schools in the case of Brown v. Board of Education. In 1957, Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas asked for volunteers from all-Black high schools to attend the formerly segregated school.

On September 4, 1957, nine Black students, known as the Little Rock Nine, arrived at Central High School to begin classes but were instead met by the Arkansas National Guard (on order of Governor Orval Faubus) and a screaming, threatening mob. The Little Rock Nine tried again a couple of weeks later and made it inside, but had to be removed for their safety when violence ensued.

Finally, President Dwight D. Eisenhower intervened and ordered federal troops to escort the Little Rock Nine to and from classes at Central High. Still, the students faced continual harassment and prejudice.

Their efforts, however, brought much-needed attention to the issue of desegregation and fueled protests on both sides of the issue.

Civil Rights Act of 1957

Even though all Americans had gained the right to vote, many southern states made it difficult for Black citizens. They often required prospective voters of color to take literacy tests that were confusing, misleading and nearly impossible to pass.

Wanting to show a commitment to the civil rights movement and minimize racial tensions in the South, the Eisenhower administration pressured Congress to consider new civil rights legislation.

On September 9, 1957, President Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 into law, the first major civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. It allowed federal prosecution of anyone who tried to prevent someone from voting. It also created a commission to investigate voter fraud.

Sit-In at Woolworth's Lunch Counter

Despite making some gains, Black Americans still experienced blatant prejudice in their daily lives. On February 1, 1960, four college students took a stand against segregation in Greensboro, North Carolina when they refused to leave a Woolworth's lunch counter without being served.

Over the next several days, hundreds of people joined their cause in what became known as the Greensboro sit-ins. After some were arrested and charged with trespassing, protesters launched a boycott of all segregated lunch counters until the owners caved and the original four students were finally served at the Woolworth's lunch counter where they'd first stood their ground.

Their efforts spearheaded peaceful sit-ins and demonstrations in dozens of cities and helped launch the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to encourage all students to get involved in the civil rights movement. It also caught the eye of young college graduate Stokely Carmichael, who joined the SNCC during the Freedom Summer of 1964 to register Black voters in Mississippi. In 1966, Carmichael became the chair of the SNCC, giving his famous speech in which he originated the phrase "Black power."

Freedom Riders

On May 4, 1961, 13 " Freedom Riders"-seven Black and six white activists-mounted a Greyhound bus in Washington, D.C., embarking on a bus tour of the American south to protest segregated bus terminals. They were testing the 1960 decision by the Supreme Court in Boynton v. Virginia that declared the segregation of interstate transportation facilities unconstitutional.

Facing violence from both police officers and white protesters, the Freedom Rides drew international attention. On Mother's Day 1961, the bus reached Anniston, Alabama, where a mob mounted the bus and threw a bomb into it. The Freedom Riders escaped the burning bus but were badly beaten. Photos of the bus engulfed in flames were widely circulated, and the group could not find a bus driver to take them further. U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy (brother to President John F. Kennedy) negotiated with Alabama Governor John Patterson to find a suitable driver, and the Freedom Riders resumed their journey under police escort on May 20. But the officers left the group once they reached Montgomery, where a white mob brutally attacked the bus. Attorney General Kennedy responded to the riders-and a call from Martin Luther King Jr.-by sending federal marshals to Montgomery.

On May 24, 1961, a group of Freedom Riders reached Jackson, Mississippi. Though met with hundreds of supporters, the group was arrested for trespassing in a "whites-only" facility and sentenced to 30 days in jail. Attorneys for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP) brought the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court, which reversed the convictions. Hundreds of new Freedom Riders were drawn to the cause, and the rides continued.

In the fall of 1961, under pressure from the Kennedy administration, the Interstate Commerce Commission issued regulations prohibiting segregation in interstate transit terminals

March on Washington

Arguably one of the most famous events of the civil rights movement took place on August 28, 1963: the March on Washington. It was organized and attended by civil rights leaders such as A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King Jr.

More than 200,000 people of all races congregated in Washington, D. C. for the peaceful march with the main purpose of forcing civil rights legislation and establishing job equality for everyone. The highlight of the march was King's speech in which he continually stated, "I have a dream..."

King's " I Have a Dream" speech galvanized the national civil rights movement and became a slogan for equality and freedom.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964-legislation initiated by President John F. Kennedy before his assassination -into law on July 2 of that year.

King and other civil rights activists witnessed the signing. The law guaranteed equal employment for all, limited the use of voter literacy tests and allowed federal authorities to ensure public facilities were integrated.

Bloody Sunday

On March 7, 1965, the civil rights movement in Alabama took an especially violent turn as 600 peaceful demonstrators participated in the Selma to Montgomery march to protest the killing of Black civil rights activist Jimmie Lee Jackson by a white police officer and to encourage legislation to enforce the 15th amendment.

As the protesters neared the Edmund Pettus Bridge, they were blocked by Alabama state and local police sent by Alabama Governor George C. Wallace, a vocal opponent of desegregation. Refusing to stand down, protesters moved forward and were viciously beaten and teargassed by police and dozens of protesters were hospitalized.

The entire incident was televised and became known as " Bloody Sunday." Some activists wanted to retaliate with violence, but King pushed for nonviolent protests and eventually gained federal protection for another march.

Voting Rights Act of 1965

When President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law on August 6, 1965, he took the Civil Rights Act of 1964 several steps further. The new law banned all voter literacy tests and provided federal examiners in certain voting jurisdictions.

It also allowed the attorney general to contest state and local poll taxes. As a result, poll taxes were later declared unconstitutional in Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections in 1966.

Part of the Act was walked back decades later, in 2013, when a Supreme Court decision ruled that Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional, holding that the constraints placed on certain states and federal review of states' voting procedures were outdated.

Civil Rights Leaders Assassinated

The civil rights movement had tragic consequences for two of its leaders in the late 1960s. On February 21, 1965, former Nation of Islam leader and Organization of Afro-American Unity founder Malcolm X was assassinated at a rally.

On April 4, 1968, civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on his hotel room's balcony. Emotionally-charged looting and riots followed, putting even more pressure on the Johnson administration to push through additional civil rights laws.

Fair Housing Act of 1968

The Fair Housing Act became law on April 11, 1968, just days after King's assassination. It prevented housing discrimination based on race, sex, national origin and religion. It was also the last legislation enacted during the civil rights era.

The civil rights movement was an empowering yet precarious time for Black Americans. The efforts of civil rights activists and countless protesters of all races brought about legislation to end segregation, Black voter suppression and discriminatory employment and housing practices.

Sources

A Brief History of Jim Crow. Constitutional Rights Foundation.
Civil Rights Act of 1957. Civil Rights Digital Library.
Document for June 25th: Executive Order 8802: Prohibition of Discrimination in the Defense Industry. National Archives.
Greensboro Lunch Counter Sit-In. African American Odyssey.
Little Rock School Desegregation (1957). The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute Stanford.
Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Global Freedom Struggle. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute Stanford.
Rosa Marie Parks Biography. Rosa and Raymond Parks.
Selma, Alabama, (Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965). BlackPast.org.
The Civil Rights Movement (1919-1960s). National Humanities Center.
The Little Rock Nine. National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior: Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site.
Turning Point: World War II. Virginia Historical Society.

Photo Galleries

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Civil Rights Movement: Timeline, Key Events & Leaders | HISTORY

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The civil rights movement was a struggle for justice and equality for African Americans that took place mainly in the 1950s and 1960s. Among its leaders were Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, the Little Rock Nine, Rosa Parks and many others.

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American civil rights movement, mass protest movement against racial segregation and discrimination in the southern United States that came to national prominence during the mid-1950s. This movement had its roots in the centuries-long efforts of enslaved Africans and their descendants to resist racial oppression and abolish the institution of slavery. Although enslaved people were emancipated as a result of the American Civil War and were then granted basic civil rights through the passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments to the U.S. Constitution, struggles to secure federal protection of these rights continued during the next century. Through nonviolent protest, the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s broke the pattern of public facilities' being segregated by "race" in the South and achieved the most important breakthrough in equal-rights legislation for African Americans since the Reconstruction period (1865-77). Although the passage in 1964 and 1965 of major civil rights legislation was victorious for the movement, by then militant Black activists had begun to see their struggle as a freedom or liberation movement not just seeking civil rights reforms but instead confronting the enduring economic, political, and cultural consequences of past racial oppression.
(Read Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s Britannica essay on "Monuments of Hope.")

Abolitionism to Jim Crow

American history has been marked by persistent and determined efforts to expand the scope and inclusiveness of civil rights. Although equal rights for all were affirmed in the founding documents of the United States, many of the new country's inhabitants were denied essential rights. Enslaved Africans and indentured servants did not have the inalienable right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" that British colonists asserted to justify their Declaration of Independence. Nor were they included among the "People of the United States" who established the Constitution in order to "promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity." Instead, the Constitution protected slavery by allowing the importation of enslaved persons until 1808 and providing for the return of enslaved people who had escaped to other states.

As the United States expanded its boundaries, Native American peoples resisted conquest and absorption. Individual states, which determined most of the rights of American citizens, generally limited voting rights to white property-owning males, and other rights-such as the right to own land or serve on juries-were often denied on the basis of racial or gender distinctions. A small proportion of Black Americans lived outside the slave system, but those so-called "free Blacks" endured racial discrimination and enforced segregation. Although some enslaved persons violently rebelled against their enslavement ( see slave rebellions), African Americans and other subordinated groups mainly used nonviolent means-protests, legal challenges, pleas and petitions addressed to government officials, as well as sustained and massive civil rights movements-to achieve gradual improvements in their status.

During the first half of the 19th century, movements to extend voting rights to non-property-owning white male labourers resulted in the elimination of most property qualifications for voting, but this expansion of suffrage was accompanied by brutal suppression of American Indians and increasing restrictions on free Blacks. Owners of enslaved people in the South reacted to the 1831 Nat Turner slave revolt in Virginia by passing laws to discourage antislavery activism and prevent the teaching of enslaved people to read and write. Despite this repression, a growing number of Black Americans freed themselves from slavery by escaping or negotiating agreements to purchase their freedom through wage labour. By the 1830s, free Black communities in the Northern states had become sufficiently large and organized to hold regular national conventions, where Black leaders gathered to discuss alternative strategies of racial advancement. In 1833 a small minority of whites joined with Black antislavery activists to form the American Anti-Slavery Society under the leadership of William Lloyd Garrison.

Frederick Douglass became the most famous of the formerly enslaved persons who joined the abolition movement. His autobiography-one of many slave narratives-and his stirring orations heightened public awareness of the horrors of slavery. Although Black leaders became increasingly militant in their attacks against slavery and other forms of racial oppression, their efforts to secure equal rights received a major setback in 1857, when the U.S. Supreme Court rejected African American citizenship claims. The Dred Scott decision stated that the country's founders had viewed Blacks as so inferior that they had "no rights which the white man was bound to respect." This ruling-by declaring unconstitutional the Missouri Compromise (1820), through which Congress had limited the expansion of slavery into western territories-ironically strengthened the antislavery movement, because it angered many whites who did not hold enslaved people. The inability of the country's political leaders to resolve that dispute fueled the successful presidential campaign of Abraham Lincoln, the candidate of the antislavery Republican Party. Lincoln's victory in turn prompted the Southern slave states to secede and form the Confederate States of America in 1860-61.

Although Lincoln did not initially seek to abolish slavery, his determination to punish the rebellious states and his increasing reliance on Black soldiers in the Union army prompted him to issue the Emancipation Proclamation (1863) to deprive the Confederacy of its enslaved property. After the American Civil War ended, Republican leaders cemented the Union victory by gaining the ratification of constitutional amendments to abolish slavery ( Thirteenth Amendment) and to protect the legal equality of formerly enslaved persons ( Fourteenth Amendment) and the voting rights of male ex-slaves ( Fifteenth Amendment). Despite those constitutional guarantees of rights, almost a century of civil rights agitation and litigation would be required to bring about consistent federal enforcement of those rights in the former Confederate states. Moreover, after federal military forces were removed from the South at the end of Reconstruction, white leaders in the region enacted new laws to strengthen the " Jim Crow" system of racial segregation and discrimination. In its Plessy v. Ferguson decision (1896), the Supreme Court ruled that " separate but equal" facilities for African Americans did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment, ignoring evidence that the facilities for Blacks were inferior to those intended for whites.

The Southern system of white supremacy was accompanied by the expansion of European and American imperial control over nonwhite people in Africa and Asia as well as in island countries of the Pacific and Caribbean regions. Like African Americans, most nonwhite people throughout the world were colonized or economically exploited and denied basic rights, such as the right to vote. With few exceptions, women of all races everywhere were also denied suffrage rights ( see woman suffrage).

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American civil rights movement | Definition, Protests, Activists, & Facts

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American civil rights movement, mass protest against racial segregation and discrimination in the southern U.S. that came to national prominence during the mid-1950s. Its roots were in the centuries-long efforts of enslaved Africans and their descendants to abolish slavery and resist racial oppression.

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Civil Rights Movement | Black History & Culture | PBS

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Civil Rights Movement | Black History & Culture | PBS

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Be inspired by the events and people that influenced the African American Civil Rights Movement with this special collection from PBS.

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1980s: Conservatism, Cold War and Computers | HISTORY

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The 1980s was an era defined by conservative politics, the rise of computer technology, the AIDS crisis and the end of the Cold War, as well as 1980s fashion and music.

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Photo above: President Ronald Reagan. Courtesy Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, Naval Photographic Center. Right: IBM PC circuitboard for the 5150. Courtesy Wikipedia Commons.

U.S. Timeline - The 1980s

The Reagan Revolution

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1980

January 4, 1980 - President Jimmy Carter announces the embargo on sale of grain and high technology to the Soviet Union due to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

February 13, 1980 - The opening ceremonies of the 1980 Winter Olympics Games are held in Lake Placid, New York. One of the most thrilling moments include the Miracle on Ice when a team of U.S. amateur ice hockey players defeated the vaunted Soviet Union professional all-star team in the semi-final game, then won the gold medal over Finland. U.S. speed skater Eric Heiden also concluded one of the most amazing feats in sports history when he won all five speed skating medals from the sprint at 500 meters to the marathon 10,000 meter event.

April 1, 1980 - The 1980 census shows a population in the United States of 226,542,203, an 11.4% increase since 1970. For the first time, one state had over 20 million people living within its borders, the state of California with 23.7 million. Due to a trend of western migration, Missouri now contained the geographic population center of the United States, one quarter mile west of De Soto in Jefferson County.

April 12, 1980 - The United States Olympic Committee, responding to the request of President Jimmy Carter on March 21, votes to withdraw its athletes from participation in the Moscow Summer Olympic Games due to the continued involvement of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

April 24-25, 1980 - The attempt to rescue the American hostages held captive in the U.S. Embassy in Iran fails with eight Americans killed and five wounded in Operation Eagle Claw when a mid-air collision occurs.

May 18, 1980 - The Mt. St. Helens volcano, in Washington State, erupts, killing fifty-seven people and economic devastation to the area with losses near $3 billion. The blast was estimated to have the power five hundred times greater than the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

October 10, 1980 - President Carter signs legislation establishing Boston African American National Historic Site, which includes the oldest black church in America and other historic sites of the Black Heritage Trail in Boston, Massachusetts.

November 4, 1980 - Ronald Reagan, the former Republican governor of California, beats President Jimmy Carter and independent candidate John B. Anderson, also a Republican, in a landslide victory, ousting the incumbent from office. The victory in the Electoral College, 489 to 49, as well as an 8 million vote margin in the popular vote over Carter, ensured a mandate for the new president.

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1981

January 20, 1981 - The inauguration of Ronald Reagan as the 40th president of the United States occurs in Washington, D.C. It was followed by the release of the fifty-two Americans still held hostage in Tehran. The Iranian hostage crisis, which lasted four hundred and forty-four days, was negotiated for the return of $8 billion in frozen Iranian assets.

March 30, 1981 - President Ronald Reagan withstands an assassination attempt, shot in the chest while walking to his limousine in Washington, D.C.

April 12, 1981 - The first launch of the Space Shuttle from Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center occurs as Columbia begins its STS-1 mission. The Space Shuttle is the first reusable spacecraft to be flown into orbit, and it returned to earth for a traditional touch down landing two days later.

July 29, 1981 - Tax cut legislation proposed by President Ronald Reagan, the largest in history, is passed by both houses of the U.S. Congress. It would reduce taxes by $750 billion over the next five years.

August 12, 1981 - IBM introduces the IBM-PC personal computer, the IBM 5150. It was designed by twelve engineers and designers under Don Estridge of the IBM Entry Systems Division. It sold for $1,565 in 1981.
September 21, 1981 - Sandra Day O'Connor is approved unanimously, 99-0, by the United States Senate to become the first female Supreme Court associate justice in history.

1982

January 8, 1982 - ATT settles its lawsuit with the U.S. Justice Department. The agreement forced the independence of the twenty-two regional Bell System companies in return for expansion into the prohibited areas of data processing and equipment sales.

March 2, 1982 - The Senate passes a bill that virtually eliminated the practice of busing to achieve racial integration.

May 1, 1982 - The Knoxville World's Fair opens on the topic of energy by President Reagan. A special category exposition sanctioned by the Bureau of International Exhibitions, the Knoxville event would draw over eleven million people to the Tennessee valley over the next six months.

November 5, 1982 - The highest unemployment rate since 1940 is recorded at 10.4%. By the end of November, over eleven million people would be unemployed.

November 13, 1982 - The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C., holding the names of the more than 58,000 killed or missing in action during the conflict.

1983

March 23, 1983 - The initial proposal to develop technology to intercept incoming missiles, the Strategic Defense Initiative Program, or Star Wars, is made by President Ronald Reagan.

April 20, 1983 - President Reagan signs legislation meant to rescue the Social Security System from bankruptcy.

June 18, 1983 - Astronaut Sally Ride becomes the first American woman to travel into space.

October 23, 1983 - A terrorist truck bomb kills two hundred and forty-one United States peacekeeping troops in Lebanon at Beirut International Airport. A second bomb destroyed a French barracks two miles away, killing forty there.

October 25, 1983 - The United States invasion of Grenada occurs at the request of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States to depose the Marxist regime.

1984

February 7, 1984 - Navy Captain Bruce McCandless and Army Lt. Colonel Robert Stewart become the first astronauts to fly free of a spacecraft in orbit during a space shuttle flight that began four days earlier.

May 12, 1984 - The Louisiana World Exposition of 1984 opens along the Mississippi River waterfront in New Orleans. The event, the last world's fair held in the United States, was plagued with financial trouble, and drew significantly fewer visitors than predicted over the next six months, 7.3 million, although it was regarded as the catalyst in the recovery of the waterfront and warehouse district to public use.

July 12, 1984 - Democratic candidate for President, Walter Mondale, selects Geraldine Ferraro as his Vice Presidential running mate, the first woman chosen for that position.

July 28, 1984 - The opening ceremony of the Los Angeles Olympic Games is held. The games run by Peter Ueberroth, prove a financial and U.S. success, despite a retaliatory boycott by most allies of the Soviet Union due to the U.S. boycott of the 1980 Moscow games.

November 6, 1984 - President Ronald Reagan wins reelection over Democratic challenger Walter F. Mondale, increasing his Electoral College victory since the 1980 election to a margin of 525 to 13.

1985

July 13, 1985 - A famine relief concert organized by British artist Bob Geldof and held simultaneously in London and Philadelphia is seen in one hundred and fifty-two countries. The seventeen hour concert raised $70 million for relief efforts in Ethiopia and other African nations.

September 11, 1985 - Pete Rose breaks Ty Cobb's record for most career hits in Major League Baseball history. He would be banned from baseball in 1989 for gambling, thus making him ineligible for election into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

November 19, 1985 - The first meeting in six years between the leaders of the Soviet Union and the United States occurs when Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan engage in a five hour summit conference in Geneva, Switzerland.

November 20, 1985 - The first version of the Windows operating system for computers is released.

December 11, 1985 - General Electric Corporation agrees to buy RCA Corporation for $6.28 billion in the largest corporate merger ever outside the oil industry.

1986

January 20, 1986 - Martin Luther King Day is officially observed for the first time as a federal holiday in the United States.

January 28, 1986 - The Challenger Space Shuttle explodes after lift off at Cape Canaveral, Florida, killing seven people, including Christa McAuliffe, a New Hampshire school teacher.

May 25, 1986 - Five million people make a human chain across the United States in the Hands Across America campaign to fight hunger and homelessness.

September 18, 1986 - A tentative agreement on a world-wide ban on medium-range missiles is reached between the Soviet Union and the United States. This agreement would not be expanded to include long-range missiles when President Reagan refused capitulation to the demand from Mikhail Gorbachev to limit development of the Star Wars missile defense shield.

November 3, 1986 - The first reporting of the Iran-Contra affair, diverting money from arm sales to Iran to fund Nicaraguan contra rebels, begins the largest crisis in the Reagan tenure.

1987

August 12, 1987 - Near the end of hearings into the Iran-contra affair, President Reagan admits to a policy that went astray, but denied knowledge of the diversion of funds to the contras.

October 19, 1987 - The stock market crash known as Black Monday occurs on the New York Stock Exchange, recording a record 22.6% drop in one day. Stock markets around the world would mirror the crash with drops of their own.

October 23, 1987 - The President's nominee to the Supreme Court, Robert Bork, is rejected by the U.S. Senate, 58-42, in the largest margin of rejection for the role in history.

December 8, 1987 - The United States and the Soviet Union sign an agreement, the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, to dismantle all 1,752 U.S. and 859 Soviet missiles in the 300-3,400 mile range.

December 31, 1987 - El Malpais National Monument in New Mexico is established by legislation. It preserved a natural volcanic area, a seventeen mile lava tube system, and remains from the Pueblo Indian culture.

1988

February 3, 1988 - The United States House of Representatives rejects the request of President Reagan for $36.25 million to fund the Nicaraguan Contras.

April 12, 1988 - The first patent for a genetically engineered animal is issued to Harvard University researchers Philip Leder and Timothy Stewart.

May 4, 1988 - The deadline for amnesty application by illegal aliens is met by 1.4 million applications. It is estimated that 71% of those who applied had entered the United States from Mexico.

October 31, 1988 - Poverty Point National Monument in Louisiana is established by President Ronald Reagan in order to preserve some of the most extensive earthworks from prehistoric times in North America.
November 8, 1988 - Vice President under Ronald Reagan, George Herbert Walker Bush, claims victory in the presidential election over Democratic challenger Michael S. Dukakis, Governor of Massachusetts. The Electoral College vote tallied 426 for Bush and 111 for Dukakis.

1989

January 6, 1989 - Economic reports on the previous year from the Labor Department indicate a growth rate of 3.8%, the largest in four years and an unemployment rate of 5.3%, a low of fourteen years.

March 24, 1989 - The Exxon Valdez crashes into Bligh Reef in Alaska's Prince William Sound, causing the largest oil spill in American history, eleven million gallons, which extended forty-five miles.

August 9, 1989 - The Savings and Loan Bailout is approved by Congress and signed into law by President George Herbert Walker Bush. The total cost of the bill would approach $400 billion over thirty years to close and merge insolvent Savings and Loans.
August 10, 1989 - Army General Colin Powell is elevated to the position of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, becoming the first African American to be nominated to that post.

November 9, 1989 - The Berlin Wall, after thirty-eight years of restricting traffic between the East and West German sides of the city, begins to crumble when German citizens are allowed to travel freely between East and West Germany for the first time. One day later, the influx of crowds around and onto the wall begin to dismantle it, thus ending its existence.

History Photo Bomb

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U.S. Timeline, 1980-1989, America's Best History

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Photo above: President Ronald Reagan. Courtesy Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, Naval Photographic Center. Right: IBM PC circuitboard for the 5150. Courtesy Wikipedia Commons. The Reagan Revolution Sponsor this page for $275 per year. Your banner or text ad can fill the space above.Click here to Sponsor the page and how to reserve your ad.

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This man WAS the 1980s!

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Ronald Reagan, originally an American actor and politician, became the 40th President of the United States serving from 1981 to 1989. His term saw a restoration of prosperity at home, with the goal of achieving "peace through strength" abroad.

At the end of his two terms in office, Ronald Reagan viewed with satisfaction the achievements of his innovative program known as the Reagan Revolution, which aimed to reinvigorate the American people and reduce their reliance upon Government. He felt he had fulfilled his campaign pledge of 1980 to restore "the great, confident roar of American progress and growth and optimism."

On February 6, 1911, Ronald Wilson Reagan was born to Nelle and John Reagan in Tampico, Illinois. He attended high school in nearby Dixon and then worked his way through Eureka College. There, he studied economics and sociology, played on the football team, and acted in school plays. Upon graduation, he became a radio sports announcer. A screen test in 1937 won him a contract in Hollywood. During the next two decades he appeared in 53 films.

From his first marriage to actress Jane Wyman, he had two children, Maureen and Michael. Maureen passed away in 2001. In 1952 he married Nancy Davis, who was also an actress, and they had two children, Patricia Ann and Ronald Prescott.

As president of the Screen Actors Guild, Reagan became embroiled in disputes over the issue of Communism in the film industry; his political views shifted from liberal to conservative. He toured the country as a television host, becoming a spokesman for conservatism. In 1966 he was elected Governor of California by a margin of a million votes; he was re-elected in 1970.

Ronald Reagan won the Republican Presidential nomination in 1980 and chose as his running mate former Texas Congressman and United Nations Ambassador George Bush. Voters troubled by inflation and by the year-long confinement of Americans in Iran swept the Republican ticket into office. Reagan won 489 electoral votes to 49 for President Jimmy Carter.

On January 20, 1981, Reagan took office. Only 69 days later he was shot by a would-be assassin, but quickly recovered and returned to duty. His grace and wit during the dangerous incident caused his popularity to soar.

Dealing skillfully with Congress, Reagan obtained legislation to stimulate economic growth, curb inflation, increase employment, and strengthen national defense. He embarked upon a course of cutting taxes and Government expenditures, refusing to deviate from it when the strengthening of defense forces led to a large deficit.

A renewal of national self-confidence by 1984 helped Reagan and Bush win a second term with an unprecedented number of electoral votes. Their victory turned away Democratic challengers Walter F. Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro.

In 1986 Reagan obtained an overhaul of the income tax code, which eliminated many deductions and exempted millions of people with low incomes. At the end of his administration, the Nation was enjoying its longest recorded period of peacetime prosperity without recession or depression.

In foreign policy, Reagan sought to achieve "peace through strength." During his two terms he increased defense spending 35 percent, but sought to improve relations with the Soviet Union. In dramatic meetings with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, he negotiated a treaty that would eliminate intermediate-range nuclear missiles. Reagan declared war against international terrorism, sending American bombers against Libya after evidence came out that Libya was involved in an attack on American soldiers in a West Berlin nightclub.

By ordering naval escorts in the Persian Gulf, he maintained the free flow of oil during the Iran-Iraq war. In keeping with the Reagan Doctrine, he gave support to anti-Communist insurgencies in Central America, Asia, and Africa.

Overall, the Reagan years saw a restoration of prosperity, and the goal of peace through strength seemed to be within grasp.

Learn more about Ronald Reagan's spouse, Nancy Davis Reagan.

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Ronald Reagan, originally an American actor and politician, became the 40th President of the United States serving from 1981 to 1989. His term saw a restoration of prosperity at home, with the goal of achieving "peace through strength" abroad.

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Known as "the Gipper!"

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Ronald Reagan's Childhood and Education

Ronald Wilson Reagan was born on February 6, 1911, in Tampico, Illinois, to Edward "Jack" Reagan (1883-1941), a shoe salesman, and Nelle Wilson Reagan (1883-1962). The family, which included older son Neil Reagan (1908-1996), resided in an apartment that lacked indoor plumbing and running water and was located along the small town's main street. Reagan's father nicknamed him Dutch as a baby, saying he resembled "a fat little Dutchman."

Did you know? Among the items on display at Ronald Reagan's presidential library in California is a 6,000-pound graffiti-covered section of the Berlin Wall, given to him by the people of Berlin.

During Reagan's early childhood, his family lived in a series of Illinois towns as his father switched sales jobs, then settled in Dixon, Illinois, in 1920. In 1928, Reagan graduated from Dixon High School, where he was an athlete and student body president and performed in school plays. During summer vacations, he worked as a lifeguard in Dixon.

Reagan went on to attend Eureka College in Illinois, where he played football, ran track, captained the swim team, served as student council president and acted in school productions. After graduating in 1932, he found work as a radio sports announcer in Iowa.

Ronald Reagan's Movies and Marriages

In 1937, while in Southern California to cover the Chicago Cubs' spring training season, Ronald Reagan did a screen test for the Warner Brothers movie studio. The studio signed him to a contract, and that same year he made his film debut in "Love is on the Air," playing a radio news reporter.

Over the next three decades, he appeared in more than 50 movies. Among his best-known roles was that of Notre Dame football star George Gipp in the 1940 biographical film "Knute Rockne All American." In the movie, Reagan's famous line-which he is still remembered for-was "Win one for the Gipper." Another notable role was in 1942 in "Kings Row," in which Reagan portrayed an accident victim who wakes up to discover his legs have been amputated and cries out, "Where's the rest of me?" (Reagan used this line as the title of his 1965 autobiography.)

In 1940, Reagan married actress Jane Wyman, with whom he had daughter Maureen and an adopted son, Michael. The couple divorced in 1948. In 1952, he married actress Nancy Davis. The pair had two children, Patricia and Ronald.

During World War II (1939-1945), Reagan was disqualified from combat duty due to poor eyesight and spent his time in the Army making training films.

From 1947 to 1952, and from 1959 to 1960, he served as president of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), during which time he testified in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee ( HUAC). From 1954 to 1962, he hosted the weekly television drama series "The General Electric Theater." In this role, he toured the United States as a public relations representative for General Electric, giving pro-business talks in which he spoke out against too much government control and wasteful spending, central themes of his future political career.

Ronald Reagan, Governor of California

In his younger years, Ronald Reagan was a member of the Democratic Party and campaigned for Democratic candidates; however, his views grew more conservative over time, and in the early 1960s he officially became a Republican.

In 1964, Reagan stepped into the national political spotlight when he gave a well-received televised speech for Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater (1909-1998), a prominent conservative. Two years later, in his first race for public office, Reagan defeated Democratic incumbent Edmund "Pat" Brown Sr. (1905-1996) by almost 1 million votes to win the governorship of California. Reagan was re-elected to a second term in 1970.

After making unsuccessful bids for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968 and 1976, Reagan received his party's nod in 1980. In that year's general election, he and running mate George H.W. Bush (1924-2018) faced off against President Jimmy Carter (1924-) and Vice President Walter Mondale (1928-2021). Reagan won the election by an electoral margin of 489-49 and captured almost 51 percent of the popular vote. At age 69, he was the oldest person elected to the U.S. presidency.

1981 Inauguration and Assassination Attempt

Ronald Reagan was sworn into office on January 20, 1981. In his inaugural address, Reagan famously said of America's then-troubled economy, "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem."

After the more informal Carter years, Reagan and his wife Nancy ushered in a new era of glamour in the nation's capital, which became known as Hollywood on the Potomac. The first lady wore designer fashions, hosted numerous state dinners and oversaw a major redecoration of the White House.

Just over two months after his inauguration, on March 30, 1981, Reagan survived an assassination attempt by John Hinckley Jr. (1955-), a man with a history of psychiatric problems, outside a hotel in Washington, D.C. The gunman's bullet pierced one of the president's lungs and narrowly missed his heart. Reagan, known for his good-natured humor, later told his wife, "Honey, I forgot to duck." Within several weeks of the shooting, Reagan was back at work.

Ronald Reagan's Domestic Agenda

On the domestic front, President Ronald Reagan implemented policies to reduce the federal government's reach into the daily lives and pocketbooks of Americans, including tax cuts intended to spur growth (known as Reaganomics). He also advocated for increases in military spending, reductions in certain social programs and measures to deregulate business.

By 1983, the nation's economy had started to recover and enter a period of prosperity that would extend through the rest of Reagan's presidency. Critics maintained that his policies led to budget deficits and a more significant national debt; some also held that his economic programs favored the rich.

In 1981, Reagan made history by appointing Sandra Day O'Connor (1930-) as the first woman to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Ronald Reagan and Foreign Affairs

In foreign affairs, Ronald Reagan's first term in office was marked by a massive buildup of U.S. weapons and troops, as well as an escalation of the Cold War (1946-1991) with the Soviet Union, which the president dubbed "the evil empire." Key to his administration's foreign policy initiatives was the Reagan Doctrine, under which America provided aid to anticommunist movements in Africa, Asia and Latin America. In 1983, Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a plan to develop space-based weapons to protect America from attacks by Soviet nuclear missiles.

Also on the foreign affairs front, Reagan sent 800 U.S. Marines to Lebanon as part of an international peacekeeping force after Israel invaded that nation in June 1982. In October 1983, suicide bombers attacked the Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 Americans. That same month, Reagan ordered U.S. forces to lead an invasion of Grenada, an island in the Caribbean, after Marxist rebels overthrew the government. In addition to the problems in Lebanon and Grenada, the Reagan administration had to deal with an ongoing contentious relationship between the United States and Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi (1942-).

During his second term, Reagan forged a diplomatic relationship with the reform-minded Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-), who became leader of the Soviet Union in 1985. In 1987, the Americans and Soviets signed a historic agreement to eliminate intermediate-range nuclear missiles. That same year, Reagan spoke at Germany's Berlin Wall, a symbol of communism, and famously challenged Gorbachev to tear it down. Twenty-nine months later, Gorbachev allowed the people of Berlin to dismantle the wall. After leaving the White House, Reagan returned to Germany in September 1990-just weeks before Germany was officially reunified-and took several symbolic swings with a hammer at a remaining chunk of the wall.

1984 Reelection

In November 1984, Ronald Reagan was reelected in a landslide, defeating Walter Mondale and his running mate Geraldine Ferraro (1935-), the first female vice-presidential candidate from a major U.S. political party. Reagan, who announced it was "morning again in America," carried 49 out of 50 states in the election and received 525 out of 538 electoral votes, the largest number ever won by an American presidential candidate.

Ronald Reagan's Later Years and Death

After leaving the White House in January 1989, Ronald Reagan and his wife returned to California, where they lived in Los Angeles. In 1991, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum opened in Simi Valley, California.

In November 1994, Reagan revealed in a handwritten letter to the American people that he had been recently diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Nearly a decade later, on June 5, 2004, he died at his Los Angeles home at age 93, making him the nation's longest-lived president (in 2006, Gerald Ford surpassed him for this title). Reagan was given a state funeral in Washington, D.C., and later buried on the grounds of his presidential library. Nancy Reagan died of heart failure in 2016 at age 94 and was buried alongside her husband.

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Ronald Reagan: Biography, Facts & Movies

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Ronald Wilson Reagan was born on February 6, 1911, in Tampico, Illinois, to Edward "Jack" Reagan (1883-1941), a shoe salesman, and Nelle Wilson Reagan (1883-1962). The family, which included older son Neil Reagan (1908-1996), resided in an apartment that lacked indoor plumbing and running water and was located along the small town's main street.

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Jimmy Carter served as the 39th President of the United States from 1977 to 1981. He was awarded the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize for work to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.

Jimmy Carter aspired to make Government "competent and compassionate," responsive to the American people and their expectations. His achievements were notable, but in an era of rising energy costs, mounting inflation, and continuing tensions, it was impossible for his administration to meet these high expectations.

Carter, who has rarely used his full name-James Earl Carter, Jr.-was born October 1, 1924, in Plains, Georgia. Peanut farming, talk of politics, and devotion to the Baptist faith were mainstays of his upbringing. Upon graduation in 1946 from the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, Carter married Rosalynn Smith. The Carters have three sons, John William (Jack), James Earl III (Chip), Donnel Jeffrey (Jeff), and a daughter, Amy Lynn.

After seven years' service as a naval officer, Carter returned to Plains. In 1962 he entered state politics, and eight years later he was elected Governor of Georgia. Among the new young southern governors, he attracted attention by emphasizing ecology, efficiency in government, and the removal of racial barriers.

Carter announced his candidacy for President in December 1974 and began a two-year campaign that gradually gained momentum. At the Democratic Convention, he was nominated on the first ballot. He chose Senator Walter F. Mondale of Minnesota as his running mate. Carter campaigned hard against President Gerald R. Ford, debating with him three times. Carter won by 297 electoral votes to 241 for Ford.

Carter worked hard to combat the continuing economic woes of inflation and unemployment. By the end of his administration, he could claim an increase of nearly eight million jobs and a decrease in the budget deficit, measured in percentage of the gross national product. Unfortunately, inflation and interest rates were at near record highs, and efforts to reduce them caused a short recession.

Carter could point to a number of achievements in domestic affairs. He dealt with the energy shortage by establishing a national energy policy and by decontrolling domestic petroleum prices to stimulate production. He prompted Government efficiency through civil service reform and proceeded with deregulation of the trucking and airline industries. He sought to improve the environment. His expansion of the national park system included protection of 103 million acres of Alaskan lands. To increase human and social services, he created the Department of Education, bolstered the Social Security system, and appointed record numbers of women, blacks, and Hispanics to Government jobs.

In foreign affairs, Carter set his own style. His championing of human rights was coldly received by the Soviet Union and some other nations. In the Middle East, through the Camp David agreement of 1978, he helped bring amity between Egypt and Israel. He succeeded in obtaining ratification of the Panama Canal treaties. Building upon the work of predecessors, he established full diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China and completed negotiation of the SALT II nuclear limitation treaty with the Soviet Union.

There were serious setbacks, however. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan caused the suspension of plans for ratification of the SALT II pact. The seizure as hostages of the U. S. embassy staff in Iran dominated the news during the last 14 months of the administration. The consequences of Iran's holding Americans captive, together with continuing inflation at home, contributed to Carter's defeat in 1980. Even then, he continued the difficult negotiations over the hostages. Iran finally released the 52 Americans the same day Carter left office.

For more information about President Carter, please visit The Jimmy Carter Library and The Carter Center.

Learn more about James Carter's spouse, Rosalynn Smith Carter.

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Jimmy Carter served as the 39th President of the United States from 1977 to 1981. He was awarded the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize for work to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.

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When Gerald R. Ford took the oath of office on August 9, 1974 as our 38th President, he declared, "I assume the Presidency under extraordinary circumstances...This is an hour of history that troubles our minds and hurts our hearts."

When Gerald R. Ford took the oath of office on August 9, 1974, he declared, "I assume the Presidency under extraordinary circumstances.... This is an hour of history that troubles our minds and hurts our hearts."

It was indeed an unprecedented time. He had been the first Vice President chosen under the terms of the Twenty-fifth Amendment and, in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, was succeeding the first President ever to resign.

Ford was confronted with almost insuperable tasks. There were the challenges of mastering inflation, reviving a depressed economy, solving chronic energy shortages, and trying to ensure world peace.

The President acted to curb the trend toward Government intervention and spending as a means of solving the problems of American society and the economy. In the long run, he believed, this shift would bring a better life for all Americans.

Ford's reputation for integrity and openness had made him popular during his 25 years in Congress. From 1965 to 1973, he was House Minority Leader. Born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1913, he grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He starred on the University of Michigan football team, then went to Yale, where he served as assistant coach while earning his law degree. During World War II he attained the rank of lieutenant commander in the Navy. After the war he returned to Grand Rapids, where he began the practice of law, and entered Republican politics. A few weeks before his election to Congress in 1948, he married Elizabeth Bloomer. They have four children: Michael, John, Steven, and Susan.

As President, Ford tried to calm earlier controversies by granting former President Nixon a full pardon. His nominee for Vice President, former Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York, was the second person to fill that office by appointment. Gradually, Ford selected a cabinet of his own.

Ford established his policies during his first year in office, despite opposition from a heavily Democratic Congress. His first goal was to curb inflation. Then, when recession became the Nation's most serious domestic problem, he shifted to measures aimed at stimulating the economy. But, still fearing inflation, Ford vetoed a number of non-military appropriations bills that would have further increased the already heavy budgetary deficit. During his first 14 months as President he vetoed 39 measures. His vetoes were usually sustained.

Ford continued as he had in his Congressional days to view himself as "a moderate in domestic affairs, a conservative in fiscal affairs, and a dyed-in-the-wool internationalist in foreign affairs." A major goal was to help business operate more freely by reducing taxes upon it and easing the controls exercised by regulatory agencies. "We...declared our independence 200 years ago, and we are not about to lose it now to paper shufflers and computers," he said.

In foreign affairs Ford acted vigorously to maintain U. S. power and prestige after the collapse of Cambodia and South Viet Nam. Preventing a new war in the Middle East remained a major objective; by providing aid to both Israel and Egypt, the Ford Administration helped persuade the two countries to accept an interim truce agreement. Detente with the Soviet Union continued. President Ford and Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev set new limitations upon nuclear weapons.

President Ford won the Republican nomination for the Presidency in 1976, but lost the election to his Democratic opponent, former Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia.

On Inauguration Day, President Carter began his speech: "For myself and for our Nation, I want to thank my predecessor for all he has done to heal our land." A grateful people concurred.
The Presidential biographies on WhiteHouse.gov are from "The Presidents of the United States of America," by Frank Freidel and Hugh Sidey. Copyright 2006 by the White House Historical Association.
For more information about President Ford, please visit
Gerald R. Ford Library and Museum

Learn more about Gerald R. Ford 's spouse, Elizabeth Bloomer Ford.

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When Gerald R. Ford took the oath of office on August 9, 1974 as our 38th President, he declared, "I assume the Presidency under extraordinary circumstances...This is an hour of history that troubles our minds and hurts our hearts." When Gerald R. Ford took the oath of office on August 9, 1974, he declared, "I ...

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Richard Nixon was elected the 37th President of the United States (1969-1974) after previously serving as a U.S. Representative and a U.S. Senator from California. After successfully ending American fighting in Vietnam and improving international relations with the U.S.S.R. and China, he became the only President to ever resign the office, as a result of the Watergate scandal.

Reconciliation was the first goal set by President Richard M. Nixon. The Nation was painfully divided, with turbulence in the cities and war overseas. During his Presidency, Nixon succeeded in ending American fighting in Viet Nam and improving relations with the U.S.S.R. and China. But the Watergate scandal brought fresh divisions to the country and ultimately led to his resignation.

His election in 1968 had climaxed a career unusual on two counts: his early success and his comeback after being defeated for President in 1960 and for Governor of California in 1962.

Born in California in 1913, Nixon had a brilliant record at Whittier College and Duke University Law School before beginning the practice of law. In 1940, he married Patricia Ryan; they had two daughters, Patricia (Tricia) and Julie. During World War II, Nixon served as a Navy lieutenant commander in the Pacific.

On leaving the service, he was elected to Congress from his California district. In 1950, he won a Senate seat. Two years later, General Eisenhower selected Nixon, age 39, to be his running mate.

As Vice President, Nixon took on major duties in the Eisenhower Administration. Nominated for President by acclamation in 1960, he lost by a narrow margin to John F. Kennedy. In 1968, he again won his party's nomination, and went on to defeat Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey and third-party candidate George C. Wallace.

His accomplishments while in office included revenue sharing, the end of the draft, new anticrime laws, and a broad environmental program. As he had promised, he appointed Justices of conservative philosophy to the Supreme Court. One of the most dramatic events of his first term occurred in 1969, when American astronauts made the first moon landing.

Some of his most acclaimed achievements came in his quest for world stability. During visits in 1972 to Beijing and Moscow, he reduced tensions with China and the U.S.S.R. His summit meetings with Russian leader Leonid I. Brezhnev produced a treaty to limit strategic nuclear weapons. In January 1973, he announced an accord with North Viet Nam to end American involvement in Indochina. In 1974, his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, negotiated disengagement agreements between Israel and its opponents, Egypt and Syria.

In his 1972 bid for office, Nixon defeated Democratic candidate George McGovern by one of the widest margins on record.

Within a few months, his administration was embattled over the so-called "Watergate" scandal, stemming from a break-in at the offices of the Democratic National Committee during the 1972 campaign. The break-in was traced to officials of the Committee to Re-elect the President. A number of administration officials resigned; some were later convicted of offenses connected with efforts to cover up the affair. Nixon denied any personal involvement, but the courts forced him to yield tape recordings which indicated that he had, in fact, tried to divert the investigation.

As a result of unrelated scandals in Maryland, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew resigned in 1973. Nixon nominated, and Congress approved, House Minority Leader Gerald R. Ford as Vice President.

Faced with what seemed almost certain impeachment, Nixon announced on August 8, 1974, that he would resign the next day to begin "that process of healing which is so desperately needed in America."

In his last years, Nixon gained praise as an elder statesman. By the time of his death on April 22, 1994, he had written numerous books on his experiences in public life and on foreign policy.

For more information about President Nixon, please visit The Nixon Presidential Library and Museum

Learn more about Richard M. Nixon's spouse, Patricia Ryan Nixon.

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Richard Nixon was elected the 37th President of the United States (1969-1974) after previously serving as a U.S. Representative and a U.S. Senator from California. After successfully ending American fighting in Vietnam and improving international relations with the U.S.S.R. and China, he became the only President to ever resign the office, as a result of the Watergate scandal.

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In the 1960 campaign, Lyndon B. Johnson was elected Vice President as John F. Kennedy's running mate. On November 22, 1963, when Kennedy was assassinated, Johnson was sworn in as the 36th United States President, with a vision to build "A Great Society" for the American people.

"A Great Society" for the American people and their fellow men elsewhere was the vision of Lyndon B. Johnson. In his first years of office he obtained passage of one of the most extensive legislative programs in the Nation's history. Maintaining collective security, he carried on the rapidly growing struggle to restrain Communist encroachment in Vietnam.

Johnson was born on August 27, 1908, in central Texas, not far from Johnson City, which his family had helped settle. He felt the pinch of rural poverty as he grew up, working his way through Southwest Texas State Teachers College (now known as Texas State University-San Marcos); he learned compassion for the poverty of others when he taught students of Mexican descent.

In 1937 he campaigned successfully for the House of Representatives on a New Deal platform, effectively aided by his wife, the former Claudia "Lady Bird" Taylor, whom he had married in 1934.

During World War II he served briefly in the Navy as a lieutenant commander, winning a Silver Star in the South Pacific. After six terms in the House, Johnson was elected to the Senate in 1948. In 1953, he became the youngest Minority Leader in Senate history, and the following year, when the Democrats won control, Majority Leader. With rare skill he obtained passage of a number of key Eisenhower measures.

In the 1960 campaign, Johnson, as John F. Kennedy's running mate, was elected Vice President. On November 22, 1963, when Kennedy was assassinated, Johnson was sworn in as President.

First he obtained enactment of the measures President Kennedy had been urging at the time of his death-a new civil rights bill and a tax cut. Next he urged the Nation "to build a great society, a place where the meaning of man's life matches the marvels of man's labor." In 1964, Johnson won the Presidency with 61 percent of the vote and had the widest popular margin in American history-more than 15,000,000 votes.

The Great Society program became Johnson's agenda for Congress in January 1965: aid to education, attack on disease, Medicare, urban renewal, beautification, conservation, development of depressed regions, a wide-scale fight against poverty, control and prevention of crime and delinquency, removal of obstacles to the right to vote. Congress, at times augmenting or amending, rapidly enacted Johnson's recommendations. Millions of elderly people found succor through the 1965 Medicare amendment to the Social Security Act.

Under Johnson, the country made spectacular explorations of space in a program he had championed since its start. When three astronauts successfully orbited the moon in December 1968, Johnson congratulated them: "You've taken ... all of us, all over the world, into a new era. . . . "

Nevertheless, two overriding crises had been gaining momentum since 1965. Despite the beginning of new antipoverty and anti-discrimination programs, unrest and rioting in black ghettos troubled the Nation. President Johnson steadily exerted his influence against segregation and on behalf of law and order, but there was no early solution.

The other crisis arose from Viet Nam. Despite Johnson's efforts to end Communist aggression and achieve a settlement, fighting continued. Controversy over the war had become acute by the end of March 1968, when he limited the bombing of North Vietnam in order to initiate negotiations. At the same time, he startled the world by withdrawing as a candidate for re-election so that he might devote his full efforts, unimpeded by politics, to the quest for peace.

When he left office, peace talks were under way; he did not live to see them successful, but died suddenly of a heart attack at his Texas ranch on January 22, 1973.

For more information about President Johnson, please visit Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum

Learn more about Lyndon B. Johnson's spouse, Claudia Taylor (Lady Bird) Johnson.

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In the 1960 campaign, Lyndon B. Johnson was elected Vice President as John F. Kennedy's running mate. On November 22, 1963, when Kennedy was assassinated, Johnson was sworn in as the 36th United States President, with a vision to build "A Great Society" for the American people.

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John F. Kennedy was the 35th President of the United States (1961-1963), the youngest man elected to the office. On November 22, 1963, when he was hardly past his first thousand days in office, JFK was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, becoming also the youngest President to die.

On November 22, 1963, when he was hardly past his first thousand days in office, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was killed by an assassin's bullets as his motorcade wound through Dallas, Texas. Kennedy was the youngest man elected President; he was the youngest to die.

Of Irish descent, he was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, on May 29, 1917. Graduating from Harvard in 1940, he entered the Navy. In 1943, when his PT boat was rammed and sunk by a Japanese destroyer, Kennedy, despite grave injuries, led the survivors through perilous waters to safety.

Back from the war, he became a Democratic Congressman from the Boston area, advancing in 1953 to the Senate. He married Jacqueline Bouvier on September 12, 1953. In 1955, while recuperating from a back operation, he wrote Profiles in Courage, which won the Pulitzer Prize in history.

In 1956 Kennedy almost gained the Democratic nomination for Vice President, and four years later was a first-ballot nominee for President. Millions watched his television debates with the Republican candidate, Richard M. Nixon. Winning by a narrow margin in the popular vote, Kennedy became the first Roman Catholic President.

His Inaugural Address offered the memorable injunction: "Ask not what your country can do for you-ask what you can do for your country." As President, he set out to redeem his campaign pledge to get America moving again. His economic programs launched the country on its longest sustained expansion since World War II; before his death, he laid plans for a massive assault on persisting pockets of privation and poverty.

Responding to ever more urgent demands, he took vigorous action in the cause of equal rights, calling for new civil rights legislation. His vision of America extended to the quality of the national culture and the central role of the arts in a vital society.

He wished America to resume its old mission as the first nation dedicated to the revolution of human rights. With the Alliance for Progress and the Peace Corps, he brought American idealism to the aid of developing nations. But the hard reality of the Communist challenge remained.

Shortly after his inauguration, Kennedy permitted a band of Cuban exiles, already armed and trained, to invade their homeland. The attempt to overthrow the regime of Fidel Castro was a failure. Soon thereafter, the Soviet Union renewed its campaign against West Berlin. Kennedy replied by reinforcing the Berlin garrison and increasing the Nation's military strength, including new efforts in outer space. Confronted by this reaction, Moscow, after the erection of the Berlin Wall, relaxed its pressure in central Europe.

Instead, the Russians now sought to install nuclear missiles in Cuba. When this was discovered by air reconnaissance in October 1962, Kennedy imposed a quarantine on all offensive weapons bound for Cuba. While the world trembled on the brink of nuclear war, the Russians backed down and agreed to take the missiles away. The American response to the Cuban crisis evidently persuaded Moscow of the futility of nuclear blackmail.

Kennedy now contended that both sides had a vital interest in stopping the spread of nuclear weapons and slowing the arms race-a contention which led to the test ban treaty of 1963. The months after the Cuban crisis showed significant progress toward his goal of "a world of law and free choice, banishing the world of war and coercion." His administration thus saw the beginning of new hope for both the equal rights of Americans and the peace of the world.

For more information about President Kennedy, please visit the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum.

Learn more about John F. Kennedy's spouse, Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy.

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John F. Kennedy was the 35th President of the United States (1961-1963), the youngest man elected to the office. On November 22, 1963, when he was hardly past his first thousand days in office, JFK was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, becoming also the youngest President to die.

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Bringing to the Presidency his prestige as commanding general of the victorious forces in Europe during World War II, Dwight D. Eisenhower obtained a truce in Korea and worked incessantly during his two terms (1953-1961) to ease the tensions of the Cold War.

Bringing to the Presidency his prestige as commanding general of the victorious forces in Europe during World War II, Dwight D. Eisenhower obtained a truce in Korea and worked incessantly during his two terms to ease the tensions of the Cold War. He pursued the moderate policies of "Modern Republicanism," pointing out as he left office, "America is today the strongest, most influential, and most productive nation in the world."

Born in Texas in 1890, brought up in Abilene, Kansas, Eisenhower was the third of seven sons. He excelled in sports in high school, and received an appointment to West Point. Stationed in Texas as a second lieutenant, he met Mamie Geneva Doud, whom he married in 1916.

In his early Army career, he excelled in staff assignments, serving under Generals John J. Pershing, Douglas MacArthur, and Walter Krueger. After Pearl Harbor, General George C. Marshall called him to Washington for a war plans assignment. He commanded the Allied Forces landing in North Africa in November 1942; on D-Day, 1944, he was Supreme Commander of the troops invading France.

After the war, he became President of Columbia University, then took leave to assume supreme command over the new NATO forces being assembled in 1951. Republican emissaries to his headquarters near Paris persuaded him to run for President in 1952.

"I like Ike" was an irresistible slogan; Eisenhower won a sweeping victory.

Negotiating from military strength, he tried to reduce the strains of the Cold War. In 1953, the signing of a truce brought an armed peace along the border of South Korea. The death of Stalin the same year caused shifts in relations with Russia.

New Russian leaders consented to a peace treaty neutralizing Austria. Meanwhile, both Russia and the United States had developed hydrogen bombs. With the threat of such destructive force hanging over the world, Eisenhower, with the leaders of the British, French, and Russian governments, met at Geneva in July 1955.

The President proposed that the United States and Russia exchange blueprints of each other's military establishments and "provide within our countries facilities for aerial photography to the other country." The Russians greeted the proposal with silence, but were so cordial throughout the meetings that tensions relaxed.

Suddenly, in September 1955, Eisenhower suffered a heart attack in Denver, Colorado. After seven weeks he left the hospital, and in February 1956 doctors reported his recovery. In November he was elected for his second term.

In domestic policy the President pursued a middle course, continuing most of the New Deal and Fair Deal programs, emphasizing a balanced budget. As desegregation of schools began, he sent troops into Little Rock, Arkansas, to assure compliance with the orders of a Federal court; he also ordered the complete desegregation of the Armed Forces. "There must be no second class citizens in this country," he wrote.

Eisenhower concentrated on maintaining world peace. He watched with pleasure the development of his "atoms for peace" program-the loan of American uranium to "have not" nations for peaceful purposes.

Before he left office in January 1961, for his farm in Gettysburg, he urged the necessity of maintaining an adequate military strength, but cautioned that vast, long-continued military expenditures could breed potential dangers to our way of life. He concluded with a prayer for peace "in the goodness of time." Both themes remained timely and urgent when he died, after a long illness, on March 28, 1969.

For more information about President Eisenhower, please visit Dwight D. Eisenhower Library and Museum

Learn more about Dwight D. Eisenhower's spouse, Mamie Geneva Doud Eisenhower.

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Bringing to the Presidency his prestige as commanding general of the victorious forces in Europe during World War II, Dwight D. Eisenhower obtained a truce in Korea and worked incessantly during his two terms (1953-1961) to ease the tensions of the Cold War.

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During his few weeks as Vice President, Harry Truman scarcely saw President Franklin Roosevelt, and received no briefing on the development of the atomic bomb or the unfolding difficulties with Soviet Russia. Suddenly these and a host of other wartime problems became Truman's to solve when, on April 12, 1945, he became America's 33rd President.

During his few weeks as Vice President, Harry S. Truman scarcely saw President Roosevelt, and received no briefing on the development of the atomic bomb or the unfolding difficulties with Soviet Russia. Suddenly these and a host of other wartime problems became Truman's to solve when, on April 12, 1945, he became President. He told reporters, "I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me."

Truman was born in Lamar, Missouri, in 1884. He grew up in Independence, and for 12 years prospered as a Missouri farmer.

He went to France during World War I as a captain in the Field Artillery. Returning, he married Elizabeth Virginia Wallace, and opened a haberdashery in Kansas City.

Active in the Democratic Party, Truman was elected a judge of the Jackson County Court (an administrative position) in 1922. He became a Senator in 1934. During World War II he headed the Senate war investigating committee, checking into waste and corruption and saving perhaps as much as 15 billion dollars.

As President, Truman made some of the most crucial decisions in history. Soon after V-E Day, the war against Japan had reached its final stage. An urgent plea to Japan to surrender was rejected. Truman, after consultations with his advisers, ordered atomic bombs dropped on cities devoted to war work. Two were Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japanese surrender quickly followed.

In June 1945 Truman witnessed the signing of the charter of the United Nations, hopefully established to preserve peace.

Thus far, he had followed his predecessor's policies, but he soon developed his own. He presented to Congress a 21-point program, proposing the expansion of Social Security, a full-employment program, a permanent Fair Employment Practices Act, and public housing and slum clearance. The program, Truman wrote, "symbolizes for me my assumption of the office of President in my own right." It became known as the Fair Deal.

Dangers and crises marked the foreign scene as Truman campaigned successfully in 1948. In foreign affairs he was already providing his most effective leadership.

In 1947 as the Soviet Union pressured Turkey and, through guerrillas, threatened to take over Greece, he asked Congress to aid the two countries, enunciating the program that bears his name-the Truman Doctrine. The Marshall Plan, named for his Secretary of State, stimulated spectacular economic recovery in war-torn western Europe.

When the Russians blockaded the western sectors of Berlin in 1948, Truman created a massive airlift to supply Berliners until the Russians backed down. Meanwhile, he was negotiating a military alliance to protect Western nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, established in 1949.

In June 1950, when the Communist government of North Korea attacked South Korea, Truman conferred promptly with his military advisers. There was, he wrote, "complete, almost unspoken acceptance on the part of everyone that whatever had to be done to meet this aggression had to be done. There was no suggestion from anyone that either the United Nations or the United States could back away from it."

A long, discouraging struggle ensued as U.N. forces held a line above the old boundary of South Korea. Truman kept the war a limited one, rather than risk a major conflict with China and perhaps Russia.

Deciding not to run again, he retired to Independence; at age 88, he died December 26, 1972, after a stubborn fight for life.

For more information about President Truman, please visit the Harry S. Truman Library & Museum.

Learn more about Harry S. Truman's spouse, Elizabeth Virginia Wallace Truman.

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During his few weeks as Vice President, Harry Truman scarcely saw President Franklin Roosevelt, and received no briefing on the development of the atomic bomb or the unfolding difficulties with Soviet Russia. Suddenly these and a host of other wartime problems became Truman's to solve when, on April 12, 1945, he became America's 33rd President.

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Assuming the Presidency at the depth of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt helped the American people regain faith in themselves. He brought hope as he promised prompt, vigorous action, and asserted in his Inaugural Address, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

Born in 1882 at Hyde Park, New York-now a national historic site-he attended Harvard University and Columbia Law School. On St. Patrick's Day, 1905, he married Eleanor Roosevelt.

Following the example of his fifth cousin, President Theodore Roosevelt, whom he greatly admired, Franklin D. Roosevelt entered public service through politics, but as a Democrat. He won election to the New York Senate in 1910. President Wilson appointed him Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and he was the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 1920.

In the summer of 1921, when he was 39, disaster hit-he was stricken with poliomyelitis. Demonstrating indomitable courage, he fought to regain the use of his legs, particularly through swimming. At the 1924 Democratic Convention he dramatically appeared on crutches to nominate Alfred E. Smith as "the Happy Warrior." In 1928 Roosevelt became Governor of New York.

He was elected President in November 1932, to the first of four terms. By March there were 13,000,000 unemployed, and almost every bank was closed. In his first "hundred days," he proposed, and Congress enacted, a sweeping program to bring recovery to business and agriculture, relief to the unemployed and to those in danger of losing farms and homes, and reform, especially through the establishment of the Tennessee Valley Authority.

By 1935 the Nation had achieved some measure of recovery, but businessmen and bankers were turning more and more against Roosevelt's New Deal program. They feared his experiments, were appalled because he had taken the Nation off the gold standard and allowed deficits in the budget, and disliked the concessions to labor. Roosevelt responded with a new program of reform: Social Security, heavier taxes on the wealthy, new controls over banks and public utilities, and an enormous work relief program for the unemployed.

In 1936 he was re-elected by a top-heavy margin. Feeling he was armed with a popular mandate, he sought legislation to enlarge the Supreme Court, which had been invalidating key New Deal measures. Roosevelt lost the Supreme Court battle, but a revolution in constitutional law took place. Thereafter the Government could legally regulate the economy.

Roosevelt had pledged the United States to the "good neighbor" policy, transforming the Monroe Doctrine from a unilateral American manifesto into arrangements for mutual action against aggressors. He also sought through neutrality legislation to keep the United States out of the war in Europe, yet at the same time to strengthen nations threatened or attacked. When France fell and England came under siege in 1940, he began to send Great Britain all possible aid short of actual military involvement.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Roosevelt directed organization of the Nation's manpower and resources for global war.

Feeling that the future peace of the world would depend upon relations between the United States and Russia, he devoted much thought to the planning of a United Nations, in which, he hoped, international difficulties could be settled.

As the war drew to a close, Roosevelt's health deteriorated, and on April 12, 1945, while at Warm Springs, Georgia, he died of a cerebral hemorrhage.

For more information about President Roosevelt, please visit Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Museum

Learn more about Franklin D. Roosevelt's spouse, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

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Assuming the Presidency at the depth of the Great Depression as our 32nd President (1933-1945), Franklin D. Roosevelt helped the American people regain faith in themselves.

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Before serving as America's 31st President from 1929 to 1933, Herbert Hoover had achieved international success as a mining engineer and worldwide gratitude as "The Great Humanitarian" who fed war-torn Europe during and after World War I.

Son of a Quaker blacksmith, Herbert Clark Hoover brought to the Presidency an unparalleled reputation for public service as an engineer, administrator, and humanitarian.

Born in an Iowa village in 1874, he grew up in Oregon. He enrolled at Stanford University when it opened in 1891, graduating as a mining engineer.

He married his Stanford sweetheart, Lou Henry, and they went to China, where he worked for a private corporation as China's leading engineer. In June 1900 the Boxer Rebellion caught the Hoovers in Tientsin. For almost a month the settlement was under heavy fire. While his wife worked in the hospitals, Hoover directed the building of barricades, and once risked his life rescuing Chinese children.

One week before Hoover celebrated his 40th birthday in London, Germany declared war on France, and the American Consul General asked his help in getting stranded tourists home. In six weeks his committee helped 120,000 Americans return to the United States. Next Hoover turned to a far more difficult task, to feed Belgium, which had been overrun by the German army.

After the United States entered the war, President Wilson appointed Hoover head of the Food Administration. He succeeded in cutting consumption of foods needed overseas and avoided rationing at home, yet kept the Allies fed.

After the Armistice, Hoover, a member of the Supreme Economic Council and head of the American Relief Administration, organized shipments of food for starving millions in central Europe. He extended aid to famine-stricken Soviet Russia in 1921. When a critic inquired if he was not thus helping Bolshevism, Hoover retorted, "Twenty million people are starving. Whatever their politics, they shall be fed!"

After capably serving as Secretary of Commerce under Presidents Harding and Coolidge, Hoover became the Republican Presidential nominee in 1928. He said then: "We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land." His election seemed to ensure prosperity. Yet within months the stock market crashed, and the Nation spiraled downward into depression.

After the crash Hoover announced that while he would keep the Federal budget balanced, he would cut taxes and expand public works spending.

In 1931 repercussions from Europe deepened the crisis, even though the President presented to Congress a program asking for creation of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to aid business, additional help for farmers facing mortgage foreclosures, banking reform, a loan to states for feeding the unemployed, expansion of public works, and drastic governmental economy.

At the same time he reiterated his view that while people must not suffer from hunger and cold, caring for them must be primarily a local and voluntary responsibility.

His opponents in Congress, who he felt were sabotaging his program for their own political gain, unfairly painted him as a callous and cruel President. Hoover became the scapegoat for the Depression and was badly defeated in 1932. In the 1930's he became a powerful critic of the New Deal, warning against tendencies toward statism.

In 1947 President Truman appointed Hoover to a commission, which elected him chairman, to reorganize the Executive Departments. He was appointed chairman of a similar commission by President Eisenhower in 1953. Many economies resulted from both commissions' recommendations. Over the years, Hoover wrote many articles and books, one of which he was working on when he died at 90 in New York City on October 20, 1964.

For more information about President Hoover, please visit Herbert Hoover Library and Museum

Learn more about Herbert Hoover's spouse, Lou Henry Hoover.

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Before serving as America's 31st President from 1929 to 1933, Herbert Hoover had achieved international success as a mining engineer and worldwide gratitude as "The Great Humanitarian" who fed war-torn Europe during and after World War I.

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With the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson became the 17th President of the United States (1865-1869), an old-fashioned southern Jacksonian Democrat of pronounced states' rights views.

With the Assassination of Lincoln, the Presidency fell upon an old-fashioned southern Jacksonian Democrat of pronounced states' rights views. Although an honest and honorable man, Andrew Johnson was one of the most unfortunate of Presidents. Arrayed against him were the Radical Republicans in Congress, brilliantly led and ruthless in their tactics. Johnson was no match for them.

Born in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1808, Johnson grew up in poverty. He was apprenticed to a tailor as a boy, but ran away. He opened a tailor shop in Greeneville, Tennessee, married Eliza McCardle, and participated in debates at the local academy.

Entering politics, he became an adept stump speaker, championing the common man and vilifying the plantation aristocracy. As a Member of the House of Representatives and the Senate in the 1840's and '50's, he advocated a homestead bill to provide a free farm for the poor man.

During the secession crisis, Johnson remained in the Senate even when Tennessee seceded, which made him a hero in the North and a traitor in the eyes of most Southerners. In 1862 President Lincoln appointed him Military Governor of Tennessee, and Johnson used the state as a laboratory for reconstruction. In 1864 the Republicans, contending that their National Union Party was for all loyal men, nominated Johnson, a Southerner and a Democrat, for Vice President.

After Lincoln's death, President Johnson proceeded to reconstruct the former Confederate States while Congress was not in session in 1865. He pardoned all who would take an oath of allegiance, but required leaders and men of wealth to obtain special Presidential pardons.

By the time Congress met in December 1865, most southern states were reconstructed, slavery was being abolished, but "black codes" to regulate the freedmen were beginning to appear.

Radical Republicans in Congress moved vigorously to change Johnson's program. They gained the support of northerners who were dismayed to see Southerners keeping many prewar leaders and imposing many prewar restrictions upon Negroes.

The Radicals' first step was to refuse to seat any Senator or Representative from the old Confederacy. Next they passed measures dealing with the former slaves. Johnson vetoed the legislation. The Radicals mustered enough votes in Congress to pass legislation over his veto-the first time that Congress had overridden a President on an important bill. They passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which established Negroes as American citizens and forbade discrimination against them.

A few months later Congress submitted to the states the Fourteenth Amendment, which specified that no state should "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."

All the former Confederate States except Tennessee refused to ratify the amendment; further, there were two bloody race riots in the South. Speaking in the Middle West, Johnson faced hostile audiences. The Radical Republicans won an overwhelming victory in Congressional elections that fall.

In March 1867, the Radicals effected their own plan of Reconstruction, again placing southern states under military rule. They passed laws placing restrictions upon the President. When Johnson allegedly violated one of these, the Tenure of Office Act, by dismissing Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, the House voted eleven articles of impeachment against him. He was tried by the Senate in the spring of 1868 and acquitted by one vote.

In 1875, Tennessee returned Johnson to the Senate. He died a few months later.

Learn more about Andrew Johnson's spouse, Eliza McCardle Johnson.

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With the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson became the 17th President of the United States (1865-1869), an old-fashioned southern Jacksonian Democrat of pronounced states' rights views.

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In 1865, as commanding general, Ulysses S. Grant led the Union Armies to victory over the Confederacy in the American Civil War. As an American hero, Grant was later elected the 18th President of the United States (1869-1877), working to implement Congressional Reconstruction and to remove the vestiges of slavery.

Late in the administration of Andrew Johnson, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant quarreled with the President and aligned himself with the Radical Republicans. He was, as the symbol of Union victory during the Civil War, their logical candidate for President in 1868.

When he was elected, the American people hoped for an end to turmoil. Grant provided neither vigor nor reform. Looking to Congress for direction, he seemed bewildered. One visitor to the White House noted "a puzzled pathos, as of a man with a problem before him of which he does not understand the terms."

Born in 1822, Grant was the son of an Ohio tanner. He went to West Point rather against his will and graduated in the middle of his class. In the Mexican War he fought under Gen. Zachary Taylor.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Grant was working in his father's leather store in Galena, Illinois. He was appointed by the Governor to command an unruly volunteer regiment. Grant whipped it into shape and by September 1861 he had risen to the rank of brigadier general of volunteers.

He sought to win control of the Mississippi Valley. In February 1862 he took Fort Henry and attacked Fort Donelson. When the Confederate commander asked for terms, Grant replied, "No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted." The Confederates surrendered, and President Lincoln promoted Grant to major general of volunteers.

At Shiloh in April, Grant fought one of the bloodiest battles in the West and came out less well. President Lincoln fended off demands for his removal by saying, "I can't spare this man-he fights."

For his next major objective, Grant maneuvered and fought skillfully to win Vicksburg, the key city on the Mississippi, and thus cut the Confederacy in two. Then he broke the Confederate hold on Chattanooga.

Lincoln appointed him General-in-Chief in March 1864. Grant directed Sherman to drive through the South while he himself, with the Army of the Potomac, pinned down Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.

Finally, on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House, Lee surrendered. Grant wrote out magnanimous terms of surrender that would prevent treason trials.

As President, Grant presided over the Government much as he had run the Army. Indeed he brought part of his Army staff to the White House.

Although a man of scrupulous honesty, Grant as President accepted handsome presents from admirers. Worse, he allowed himself to be seen with two speculators, Jay Gould and James Fisk. When Grant realized their scheme to corner the market in gold, he authorized the Secretary of the Treasury to sell enough gold to wreck their plans, but the speculation had already wrought havoc with business.

During his campaign for re-election in 1872, Grant was attacked by Liberal Republican reformers. He called them "narrow-headed men," their eyes so close together that "they can look out of the same gimlet hole without winking." The General's friends in the Republican Party came to be known proudly as "the Old Guard."

Grant allowed Radical Reconstruction to run its course in the South, bolstering it at times with military force.

After retiring from the Presidency, Grant became a partner in a financial firm, which went bankrupt. About that time he learned that he had cancer of the throat. He started writing his recollections to pay off his debts and provide for his family, racing against death to produce a memoir that ultimately earned nearly $450,000. Soon after completing the last page, in 1885, he died.

Learn more about Ulysses S. Grant's spouse, Julia Dent Grant.

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In 1865, as commanding general, Ulysses S. Grant led the Union Armies to victory over the Confederacy in the American Civil War. As an American hero, Grant was later elected the 18th President of the United States (1869-1877), working to implement Congressional Reconstruction and to remove the vestiges of slavery.

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1877-1881

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As the 19th President of the United States (1877-1881), Rutherford B. Hayes oversaw the end of Reconstruction, began the efforts that led to civil service reform, and attempted to reconcile the divisions left over from the Civil War.

Beneficiary of the most fiercely disputed election in American history, Rutherford B. Hayes brought to the Executive Mansion dignity, honesty, and moderate reform.

To the delight of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, Lucy Webb Hayes carried out her husband's orders to banish wines and liquors from the White House.

Born in Ohio in 1822, Hayes was educated at Kenyon College and Harvard Law School. After five years of law practice in Lower Sandusky, he moved to Cincinnati, where he flourished as a young Whig lawyer.

He fought in the Civil War, was wounded in action, and rose to the rank of brevet major general. While he was still in the Army, Cincinnati Republicans ran him for the House of Representatives. He accepted the nomination, but would not campaign, explaining, "an officer fit for duty who at this crisis would abandon his post to electioneer... ought to be scalped."

Elected by a heavy majority, Hayes entered Congress in December 1865, troubled by the "Rebel influences ... ruling the White House." Between 1867 and 1876 he served three terms as Governor of Ohio.

Safe liberalism, party loyalty, and a good war record made Hayes an acceptable Republican candidate in 1876. He opposed Governor Samuel J. Tilden of New York.

Although a galaxy of famous Republican speakers, and even Mark Twain, stumped for Hayes, he expected the Democrats to win. When the first returns seemed to confirm this, Hayes went to bed, believing he had lost. But in New York, Republican National Chairman Zachariah Chandler, aware of a loophole, wired leaders to stand firm: "Hayes has 185 votes and is elected." The popular vote apparently was 4,300,000 for Tilden to 4,036,000 for Hayes. Hayes's election depended upon contested electoral votes in Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida. If all the disputed electoral votes went to Hayes, he would win; a single one would elect Tilden.

Months of uncertainty followed. In January 1877 Congress established an Electoral Commission to decide the dispute. The commission, made up of eight Republicans and seven Democrats, determined all the contests in favor of Hayes by eight to seven. The final electoral vote: 185 to 184.

Northern Republicans had been promising southern Democrats at least one Cabinet post, Federal patronage, subsidies for internal improvements, and withdrawal of troops from Louisiana and South Carolina.

Hayes insisted that his appointments must be made on merit, not political considerations. For his Cabinet he chose men of high caliber, but outraged many Republicans because one member was an ex-Confederate and another had bolted the party as a Liberal Republican in 1872.

Hayes pledged protection of the rights of Negroes in the South, but at the same time advocated the restoration of "wise, honest, and peaceful local self-government." This meant the withdrawal of troops. Hayes hoped such conciliatory policies would lead to the building of a "new Republican party" in the South, to which white businessmen and conservatives would rally.

Many of the leaders of the new South did indeed favor Republican economic policies and approved of Hayes's financial conservatism, but they faced annihilation at the polls if they were to join the party of Reconstruction. Hayes and his Republican successors were persistent in their efforts but could not win over the "solid South."

Hayes had announced in advance that he would serve only one term, and retired to Spiegel Grove, his home in Fremont, Ohio, in 1881. He died in 1893.

Learn more about Rutherford B. Hayes's spouse, Lucy Ware Webb Hayes.

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As the 19th President of the United States (1877-1881), Rutherford B. Hayes oversaw the end of Reconstruction, began the efforts that led to civil service reform, and attempted to reconcile the divisions left over from the Civil War.

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1881

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James Garfield was elected as the United States' 20th President in 1880, after nine terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. His Presidency was impactful, but cut short after 200 days when he was assassinated.

As the last of the log cabin Presidents, James A. Garfield attacked political corruption and won back for the Presidency a measure of prestige it had lost during the Reconstruction period.

He was born in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, in 1831. Fatherless at two, he later drove canal boat teams, somehow earning enough money for an education. He was graduated from Williams College in Massachusetts in 1856, and he returned to the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute (later Hiram College) in Ohio as a classics professor. Within a year he was made its president.

Garfield was elected to the Ohio Senate in 1859 as a Republican. During the secession crisis, he advocated coercing the seceding states back into the Union.

In 1862, when Union military victories had been few, he successfully led a brigade at Middle Creek, Kentucky, against Confederate troops. At 31, Garfield became a brigadier general, two years later a major general of volunteers.

Meanwhile, in 1862, Ohioans elected him to Congress. President Lincoln persuaded him to resign his commission: It was easier to find major generals than to obtain effective Republicans for Congress. Garfield repeatedly won re-election for 18 years, and became the leading Republican in the House.

At the 1880 Republican Convention, Garfield failed to win the Presidential nomination for his friend John Sherman. Finally, on the 36th ballot, Garfield himself became the "dark horse" nominee.

By a margin of only 10,000 popular votes, Garfield defeated the Democratic nominee, Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock.

As President, Garfield strengthened Federal authority over the New York Customs House, stronghold of Senator Roscoe Conkling, who was leader of the Stalwart Republicans and dispenser of patronage in New York. When Garfield submitted to the Senate a list of appointments including many of Conkling's friends, he named Conkling's arch-rival William H. Robertson to run the Customs House. Conkling contested the nomination, tried to persuade the Senate to block it, and appealed to the Republican caucus to compel its withdrawal.

But Garfield would not submit: "This...will settle the question whether the President is registering clerk of the Senate or the Executive of the United States.... shall the principal port of entry ... be under the control of the administration or under the local control of a factional senator."

Conkling maneuvered to have the Senate confirm Garfield's uncontested nominations and adjourn without acting on Robertson. Garfield countered by withdrawing all nominations except Robertson's; the Senators would have to confirm him or sacrifice all the appointments of Conkling's friends.

In a final desperate move, Conkling and his fellow-Senator from New York resigned, confident that their legislature would vindicate their stand and re-elect them. Instead, the legislature elected two other men; the Senate confirmed Robertson. Garfield's victory was complete.

In foreign affairs, Garfield's Secretary of State invited all American republics to a conference to meet in Washington in 1882. But the conference never took place. On July 2, 1881, in a Washington railroad station, an embittered attorney who had sought a consular post shot the President.

Mortally wounded, Garfield lay in the White House for weeks. Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, tried unsuccessfully to find the bullet with an induction-balance electrical device which he had designed. On September 6, Garfield was taken to the New Jersey seaside. For a few days he seemed to be recuperating, but on September 19, 1881, he died from an infection and internal hemorrhage.

Learn more about James Garfield's spouse, Lucretia Rudolph Garfield.

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James Garfield was elected as the United States' 20th President in 1881, after nine terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. His Presidency was impactful, but cut short after 200 days when he was assassinated.

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1881-1885

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The son of a Baptist preacher who had emigrated from northern Ireland, Chester A. Arthur was America's 21st President (1881-85), succeeding President James Garfield upon his assassination.

Dignified, tall, and handsome, with clean-shaven chin and side-whiskers, Chester A. Arthur "looked like a President."

The son of a Baptist preacher who had emigrated from northern Ireland, Arthur was born in Fairfield, Vermont, in 1829. He was graduated from Union College in 1848, taught school, was admitted to the bar, and practiced law in New York City. Early in the Civil War he served as Quartermaster General of the State of New York.

President Grant in 1871 appointed him Collector of the Port of New York. Arthur effectively marshalled the thousand Customs House employees under his supervision on behalf of Roscoe Conkling's Stalwart Republican machine.

Honorable in his personal life and his public career, Arthur nevertheless was a firm believer in the spoils system when it was coming under vehement attack from reformers. He insisted upon honest administration of the Customs House, but staffed it with more employees than it needed, retaining them for their merit as party workers rather than as Government officials.

In 1878 President Hayes, attempting to reform the Customs House, ousted Arthur. Conkling and his followers tried to win redress by fighting for the renomination of Grant at the 1880 Republican Convention. Failing, they reluctantly accepted the nomination of Arthur for the Vice Presidency.

During his brief tenure as Vice President, Arthur stood firmly beside Conkling in his patronage struggle against President Garfield. But when Arthur succeeded to the Presidency, he was eager to prove himself above machine politics.

Avoiding old political friends, he became a man of fashion in his garb and associates, and often was seen with the elite of Washington, New York, and Newport. To the indignation of the Stalwart Republicans, the onetime Collector of the Port of New York became, as President, a champion of civil service reform. Public pressure, heightened by the assassination of Garfield, forced an unwieldy Congress to heed the President.

In 1883 Congress passed the Pendleton Act, which established a bipartisan Civil Service Commission, forbade levying political assessments against officeholders, and provided for a "classified system" that made certain Government positions obtainable only through competitive written examinations. The system protected employees against removal for political reasons.

Acting independently of party dogma, Arthur also tried to lower tariff rates so the Government would not be embarrassed by annual surpluses of revenue. Congress raised about as many rates as it trimmed, but Arthur signed the Tariff Act of 1883. Aggrieved Westerners and Southerners looked to the Democratic Party for redress, and the tariff began to emerge as a major political issue between the two parties.

The Arthur Administration enacted the first general Federal immigration law. Arthur approved a measure in 1882 excluding paupers, criminals, and lunatics. Congress suspended Chinese immigration for ten years, later making the restriction permanent.

Arthur demonstrated as President that he was above factions within the Republican Party, if indeed not above the party itself. Perhaps in part his reason was the well-kept secret he had known since a year after he succeeded to the Presidency, that he was suffering from a fatal kidney disease. He kept himself in the running for the Presidential nomination in 1884 in order not to appear that he feared defeat, but was not renominated, and died in 1886. Publisher Alexander K. McClure recalled, "No man ever entered the Presidency so profoundly and widely distrusted, and no one ever retired ... more generally respected."
The Presidential biographies on WhiteHouse.gov are from "The Presidents of the United States of America," by Frank Freidel and Hugh Sidey. Copyright 2006 by the White House Historical Association.
Learn more about Chester A. Arthur's spouse, Ellen Lewis Herndon Arthur.

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The son of a Baptist preacher who had emigrated from northern Ireland, Chester A. Arthur was America's 21st President (1881-85), succeeding President James Garfield upon his assassination. Dignified, tall, and handsome, with clean-shaven chin and side-whiskers, Chester A. Arthur "looked like a President."

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1885-1889, 1893-1897

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The first Democrat elected after the Civil War in 1885, our 22nd and 24th President Grover Cleveland was the only President to leave the White House and return for a second term four years later (1885-1889 and 1893-1897).

The First Democrat elected after the Civil War, Grover Cleveland was the only President to leave the White House and return for a second term four years later.

One of nine children of a Presbyterian minister, Cleveland was born in New Jersey in 1837. He was raised in upstate New York. As a lawyer in Buffalo, he became notable for his single-minded concentration upon whatever task faced him.

At 44, he emerged into a political prominence that carried him to the White House in three years. Running as a reformer, he was elected Mayor of Buffalo in 1881, and later, Governor of New York.

Cleveland won the Presidency with the combined support of Democrats and reform Republicans, the "Mugwumps," who disliked the record of his opponent James G. Blaine of Maine.

A bachelor, Cleveland was ill at ease at first with all the comforts of the White House. "I must go to dinner," he wrote a friend, "but I wish it was to eat a pickled herring a Swiss cheese and a chop at Louis' instead of the French stuff I shall find." In June 1886 Cleveland married 21-year-old Frances Folsom; he was the only President married in the White House.

Cleveland vigorously pursued a policy barring special favors to any economic group. Vetoing a bill to appropriate $10,000 to distribute seed grain among drought-stricken farmers in Texas, he wrote: "Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character. . . . "

He also vetoed many private pension bills to Civil War veterans whose claims were fraudulent. When Congress, pressured by the Grand Army of the Republic, passed a bill granting pensions for disabilities not caused by military service, Cleveland vetoed it, too.

He angered the railroads by ordering an investigation of western lands they held by Government grant. He forced them to return 81,000,000 acres. He also signed the Interstate Commerce Act, the first law attempting Federal regulation of the railroads.

In December 1887 he called on Congress to reduce high protective tariffs. Told that he had given Republicans an effective issue for the campaign of 1888, he retorted, "What is the use of being elected or re-elected unless you stand for something?" But Cleveland was defeated in 1888; although he won a larger popular majority than the Republican candidate Benjamin Harrison, he received fewer electoral votes.

Elected again in 1892, Cleveland faced an acute depression. He dealt directly with the Treasury crisis rather than with business failures, farm mortgage foreclosures, and unemployment. He obtained repeal of the mildly inflationary Sherman Silver Purchase Act and, with the aid of Wall Street, maintained the Treasury's gold reserve.

When railroad strikers in Chicago violated an injunction, Cleveland sent Federal troops to enforce it. "If it takes the entire army and navy of the United States to deliver a post card in Chicago," he thundered, "that card will be delivered."

Cleveland's blunt treatment of the railroad strikers stirred the pride of many Americans. So did the vigorous way in which he forced Great Britain to accept arbitration of a disputed boundary in Venezuela. But his policies during the depression were generally unpopular. His party deserted him and nominated William Jennings Bryan in 1896.

After leaving the White House, Cleveland lived in retirement in Princeton, New Jersey. He died in 1908.

Learn more about Grover Cleveland's spouse, Frances Folsom Cleveland.

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The first Democrat elected after the Civil War in 1885, our 22nd and 24th President Grover Cleveland was the only President to leave the White House and return for a second term four years later (1885-1889 and 1893-1897).

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1889-1893

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Benjamin Harrison was the 23rd President of the United States from 1889 to 1893, elected after conducting one of the first "front-porch" campaigns by delivering short speeches to delegations that visited him in Indianapolis.

Nominated for President on the eighth ballot at the 1888 Republican Convention, Benjamin Harrison conducted one of the first "front-porch" campaigns, delivering short speeches to delegations that visited him in Indianapolis. As he was only 5 feet, 6 inches tall, Democrats called him "Little Ben"; Republicans replied that he was big enough to wear the hat of his grandfather, "Old Tippecanoe."

Born in 1833 on a farm by the Ohio River below Cincinnati, Harrison attended Miami University in Ohio and read law in Cincinnati. He moved to Indianapolis, where he practiced law and campaigned for the Republican Party. He married Caroline Lavinia Scott in 1853. After the Civil War-he was Colonel of the 70th Volunteer Infantry-Harrison became a pillar of Indianapolis, enhancing his reputation as a brilliant lawyer.

The Democrats defeated him for Governor of Indiana in 1876 by unfairly stigmatizing him as "Kid Gloves" Harrison. In the 1880's he served in the United States Senate, where he championed Indians. homesteaders, and Civil War veterans.

In the Presidential election, Harrison received 100,000 fewer popular votes than Cleveland, but carried the Electoral College 233 to 168. Although Harrison had made no political bargains, his supporters had given innumerable pledges upon his behalf.

When Boss Matt Quay of Pennsylvania heard that Harrison ascribed his narrow victory to Providence, Quay exclaimed that Harrison would never know "how close a number of men were compelled to approach... the penitentiary to make him President."

Harrison was proud of the vigorous foreign policy which he helped shape. The first Pan American Congress met in Washington in 1889, establishing an information center which later became the Pan American Union. At the end of his administration Harrison submitted to the Senate a treaty to annex Hawaii; to his disappointment, President Cleveland later withdrew it.

Substantial appropriation bills were signed by Harrison for internal improvements, naval expansion, and subsidies for steamship lines. For the first time except in war, Congress appropriated a billion dollars. When critics attacked "the billion-dollar Congress," Speaker Thomas B. Reed replied, "This is a billion-dollar country." President Harrison also signed the Sherman Anti-Trust Act "to protect trade and commerce against unlawful restraints and monopolies," the first Federal act attempting to regulate trusts.

The most perplexing domestic problem Harrison faced was the tariff issue. The high tariff rates in effect had created a surplus of money in the Treasury. Low-tariff advocates argued that the surplus was hurting business. Republican leaders in Congress successfully met the challenge. Representative William McKinley and Senator Nelson W. Aldrich framed a still higher tariff bill; some rates were intentionally prohibitive.

Harrison tried to make the tariff more acceptable by writing in reciprocity provisions. To cope with the Treasury surplus, the tariff was removed from imported raw sugar; sugar growers within the United States were given two cents a pound bounty on their production.

Long before the end of the Harrison Administration, the Treasury surplus had evaporated, and prosperity seemed about to disappear as well. Congressional elections in 1890 went stingingly against the Republicans, and party leaders decided to abandon President Harrison although he had cooperated with Congress on party legislation. Nevertheless, his party renominated him in 1892, but he was defeated by Cleveland.

After he left office, Harrison returned to Indianapolis, and married the widowed Mrs. Mary Dimmick in 1896. A dignified elder statesman, he died in 1901.
The Presidential biographies on WhiteHouse.gov are from "The Presidents of the United States of America," by Frank Freidel and Hugh Sidey. Copyright 2006 by the White House Historical Association.
Learn more about Benjamin Harrison's spouse, Caroline Lavinia Scott Harrison.

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Benjamin Harrison was the 23rd President of the United States from 1889 to 1893, elected after conducting one of the first "front-porch" campaigns by delivering short speeches to delegations that visited him in Indianapolis. Nominated for President on the eighth ballot at the 1888 Republican Convention, Benjamin Harrison conducted one of the first "front-porch" campaigns, delivering short speeches to delegations that visited him in Indianapolis.

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1897-1901

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William McKinley was the 25th President of the United States, serving from March 4, 1897, until his assassination on September 14, 1901, after leading the nation to victory in the Spanish-American War and raising protective tariffs to promote American industry.

At the 1896 Republican Convention, in time of depression, the wealthy Cleveland businessman Marcus Alonzo Hanna ensured the nomination of his friend William McKinley as "the advance agent of prosperity." The Democrats, advocating the "free and unlimited coinage of both silver and gold"-which would have mildly inflated the currency-nominated William Jennings Bryan.

While Hanna used large contributions from eastern Republicans frightened by Bryan's views on silver, McKinley met delegations on his front porch in Canton, Ohio. He won by the largest majority of popular votes since 1872.

Born in Niles, Ohio, in 1843, McKinley briefly attended Allegheny College, and was teaching in a country school when the Civil War broke out. Enlisting as a private in the Union Army, he was mustered out at the end of the war as a brevet major of volunteers. He studied law, opened an office in Canton, Ohio, and married Ida Saxton, daughter of a local banker.

At 34, McKinley won a seat in Congress. His attractive personality, exemplary character, and quick intelligence enabled him to rise rapidly. He was appointed to the powerful Ways and Means Committee. Robert M. La Follette, Sr., who served with him, recalled that he generally "represented the newer view," and "on the great new questions .. was generally on the side of the public and against private interests."

During his 14 years in the House, he became the leading Republican tariff expert, giving his name to the measure enacted in 1890. The next year he was elected Governor of Ohio, serving two terms.

When McKinley became President, the depression of 1893 had almost run its course and with it the extreme agitation over silver. Deferring action on the money question, he called Congress into special session to enact the highest tariff in history.

In the friendly atmosphere of the McKinley Administration, industrial combinations developed at an unprecedented pace. Newspapers caricatured McKinley as a little boy led around by "Nursie" Hanna, the representative of the trusts. However, McKinley was not dominated by Hanna; he condemned the trusts as "dangerous conspiracies against the public good."

Not prosperity, but foreign policy, dominated McKinley's Administration. Reporting the stalemate between Spanish forces and revolutionaries in Cuba, newspapers screamed that a quarter of the population was dead and the rest suffering acutely. Public indignation brought pressure upon the President for war. Unable to restrain Congress or the American people, McKinley delivered his message of neutral intervention in April 1898. Congress thereupon voted three resolutions tantamount to a declaration of war for the liberation and independence of Cuba.

In the 100-day war, the United States destroyed the Spanish fleet outside Santiago harbor in Cuba, seized Manila in the Philippines, and occupied Puerto Rico.

"Uncle Joe" Cannon, later Speaker of the House, once said that McKinley kept his ear so close to the ground that it was full of grasshoppers. When McKinley was undecided what to do about Spanish possessions other than Cuba, he toured the country and detected an imperialist sentiment. Thus the United States annexed the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico.

In 1900, McKinley again campaigned against Bryan. While Bryan inveighed against imperialism, McKinley quietly stood for "the full dinner pail."

His second term, which had begun auspiciously, came to a tragic end in September 1901. He was standing in a receiving line at the Buffalo Pan-American Exposition when a deranged anarchist shot him twice. He died eight days later.

Learn more about William McKinley's spouse, Ida Saxton McKinley.

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William McKinley was the 25th President of the United States, serving from March 4, 1897, until his assassination on September 14, 1901, after leading the nation to victory in the Spanish-American War and raising protective tariffs to promote American industry.

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Got stuck in his bathtub because he was over 300 lbs. (1909-1913)

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William Howard Taft was elected the 27th President of the United States (1909-1913) and later became the tenth Chief Justice of the United States (1921-1930), the only person to have served in both of these offices.

Distinguished jurist, effective administrator, but poor politician, William Howard Taft spent four uncomfortable years in the White House. Large, jovial, conscientious, he was caught in the intense battles between Progressives and conservatives, and got scant credit for the achievements of his administration.

Born in 1857, the son of a distinguished judge, he graduated from Yale, and returned to Cincinnati to study and practice law. He rose in politics through Republican judiciary appointments, through his own competence and availability, and because, as he once wrote facetiously, he always had his "plate the right side up when offices were falling."

But Taft much preferred law to politics. He was appointed a Federal circuit judge at 34. He aspired to be a member of the Supreme Court, but his wife, Helen Herron Taft, held other ambitions for him.

His route to the White House was via administrative posts. President McKinley sent him to the Philippines in 1900 as chief civil administrator. Sympathetic toward the Filipinos, he improved the economy, built roads and schools, and gave the people at least some participation in government.

President Roosevelt made him Secretary of War, and by 1907 had decided that Taft should be his successor. The Republican Convention nominated him the next year.

Taft disliked the campaign-"one of the most uncomfortable four months of my life." But he pledged his loyalty to the Roosevelt program, popular in the West, while his brother Charles reassured eastern Republicans. William Jennings Bryan, running on the Democratic ticket for a third time, complained that he was having to oppose two candidates, a western progressive Taft and an eastern conservative Taft.

Progressives were pleased with Taft's election. "Roosevelt has cut enough hay," they said; "Taft is the man to put it into the barn." Conservatives were delighted to be rid of Roosevelt-the "mad messiah."

Taft recognized that his techniques would differ from those of his predecessor. Unlike Roosevelt, Taft did not believe in the stretching of Presidential powers. He once commented that Roosevelt "ought more often to have admitted the legal way of reaching the same ends."

Taft alienated many liberal Republicans who later formed the Progressive Party, by defending the Payne-Aldrich Act which unexpectedly continued high tariff rates. A trade agreement with Canada, which Taft pushed through Congress, would have pleased eastern advocates of a low tariff, but the Canadians rejected it. He further antagonized Progressives by upholding his Secretary of the Interior, accused of failing to carry out Roosevelt's conservation policies.

In the angry Progressive onslaught against him, little attention was paid to the fact that his administration initiated 80 antitrust suits and that Congress submitted to the states amendments for a Federal income tax and the direct election of Senators. A postal savings system was established, and the Interstate Commerce Commission was directed to set railroad rates.

In 1912, when the Republicans renominated Taft, Roosevelt bolted the party to lead the Progressives, thus guaranteeing the election of Woodrow Wilson.

Taft, free of the Presidency, served as Professor of Law at Yale until President Harding made him Chief Justice of the United States, a position he held until just before his death in 1930. To Taft, the appointment was his greatest honor; he wrote: "I don't remember that I ever was President."

Learn more about William Howard Taft's spouse, Helen Herron Taft.

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William Howard Taft was elected the 27th President of the United States (1909-1913) and later became the tenth Chief Justice of the United States (1921-1930), the only person to have served in both of these offices.

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(1914-1921)

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Woodrow Wilson, a leader of the Progressive Movement, was the 28th President of the United States (1913-1921). After a policy of neutrality at the outbreak of World War I, Wilson led America into war in order to "make the world safe for democracy."

Like Roosevelt before him, Woodrow Wilson regarded himself as the personal representative of the people. "No one but the President," he said, "seems to be expected ... to look out for the general interests of the country." He developed a program of progressive reform and asserted international leadership in building a new world order. In 1917 he proclaimed American entrance into World War I a crusade to make the world "safe for democracy."

Wilson had seen the frightfulness of war. He was born in Virginia in 1856, the son of a Presbyterian minister who during the Civil War was a pastor in Augusta, Georgia, and during Reconstruction a professor in the charred city of Columbia, South Carolina.

After graduation from Princeton (then the College of New Jersey) and the University of Virginia Law School, Wilson earned his doctorate at Johns Hopkins University and entered upon an academic career. In 1885 he married Ellen Louise Axson.

Wilson advanced rapidly as a conservative young professor of political science and became president of Princeton in 1902.

His growing national reputation led some conservative Democrats to consider him Presidential timber. First they persuaded him to run for Governor of New Jersey in 1910. In the campaign he asserted his independence of the conservatives and of the machine that had nominated him, endorsing a progressive platform, which he pursued as governor.

He was nominated for President at the 1912 Democratic Convention and campaigned on a program called the New Freedom, which stressed individualism and states' rights. In the three-way election he received only 42 percent of the popular vote but an overwhelming electoral vote.

Wilson maneuvered through Congress three major pieces of legislation. The first was a lower tariff, the Underwood Act; attached to the measure was a graduated Federal income tax. The passage of the Federal Reserve Act provided the Nation with the more elastic money supply it badly needed. In 1914 antitrust legislation established a Federal Trade Commission to prohibit unfair business practices.

Another burst of legislation followed in 1916. One new law prohibited child labor; another limited railroad workers to an eight-hour day. By virtue of this legislation and the slogan "he kept us out of war," Wilson narrowly won re-election.

But after the election Wilson concluded that America could not remain neutral in the World War. On April 2,1917, he asked Congress for a declaration of war on Germany.

Massive American effort slowly tipped the balance in favor of the Allies. Wilson went before Congress in January 1918, to enunciate American war aims-the Fourteen Points, the last of which would establish "A general association of nations...affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike."

After the Germans signed the Armistice in November 1918, Wilson went to Paris to try to build an enduring peace. He later presented to the Senate the Versailles Treaty, containing the Covenant of the League of Nations, and asked, "Dare we reject it and break the heart of the world?"

But the election of 1918 had shifted the balance in Congress to the Republicans. By seven votes the Versailles Treaty failed in the Senate.

The President, against the warnings of his doctors, had made a national tour to mobilize public sentiment for the treaty. Exhausted, he suffered a stroke and nearly died. Tenderly nursed by his second wife, Edith Bolling Galt, he lived until 1924.

Learn more about President Wilson's first wife, Ellen Axson Wilson, who died during her term.

Learn more about President Wilson's second wife, Edith Bolling Galt Wilson.

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Woodrow Wilson, a leader of the Progressive Movement, was the 28th President of the United States (1913-1921). After a policy of neutrality at the outbreak of World War I, Wilson led America into war in order to "make the world safe for democracy."

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(1921-1925)

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Woodrow Wilson, a leader of the Progressive Movement, was the 28th President of the United States (1913-1921). After a policy of neutrality at the outbreak of World War I, Wilson led America into war in order to "make the world safe for democracy."

Like Roosevelt before him, Woodrow Wilson regarded himself as the personal representative of the people. "No one but the President," he said, "seems to be expected ... to look out for the general interests of the country." He developed a program of progressive reform and asserted international leadership in building a new world order. In 1917 he proclaimed American entrance into World War I a crusade to make the world "safe for democracy."

Wilson had seen the frightfulness of war. He was born in Virginia in 1856, the son of a Presbyterian minister who during the Civil War was a pastor in Augusta, Georgia, and during Reconstruction a professor in the charred city of Columbia, South Carolina.

After graduation from Princeton (then the College of New Jersey) and the University of Virginia Law School, Wilson earned his doctorate at Johns Hopkins University and entered upon an academic career. In 1885 he married Ellen Louise Axson.

Wilson advanced rapidly as a conservative young professor of political science and became president of Princeton in 1902.

His growing national reputation led some conservative Democrats to consider him Presidential timber. First they persuaded him to run for Governor of New Jersey in 1910. In the campaign he asserted his independence of the conservatives and of the machine that had nominated him, endorsing a progressive platform, which he pursued as governor.

He was nominated for President at the 1912 Democratic Convention and campaigned on a program called the New Freedom, which stressed individualism and states' rights. In the three-way election he received only 42 percent of the popular vote but an overwhelming electoral vote.

Wilson maneuvered through Congress three major pieces of legislation. The first was a lower tariff, the Underwood Act; attached to the measure was a graduated Federal income tax. The passage of the Federal Reserve Act provided the Nation with the more elastic money supply it badly needed. In 1914 antitrust legislation established a Federal Trade Commission to prohibit unfair business practices.

Another burst of legislation followed in 1916. One new law prohibited child labor; another limited railroad workers to an eight-hour day. By virtue of this legislation and the slogan "he kept us out of war," Wilson narrowly won re-election.

But after the election Wilson concluded that America could not remain neutral in the World War. On April 2,1917, he asked Congress for a declaration of war on Germany.

Massive American effort slowly tipped the balance in favor of the Allies. Wilson went before Congress in January 1918, to enunciate American war aims-the Fourteen Points, the last of which would establish "A general association of nations...affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike."

After the Germans signed the Armistice in November 1918, Wilson went to Paris to try to build an enduring peace. He later presented to the Senate the Versailles Treaty, containing the Covenant of the League of Nations, and asked, "Dare we reject it and break the heart of the world?"

But the election of 1918 had shifted the balance in Congress to the Republicans. By seven votes the Versailles Treaty failed in the Senate.

The President, against the warnings of his doctors, had made a national tour to mobilize public sentiment for the treaty. Exhausted, he suffered a stroke and nearly died. Tenderly nursed by his second wife, Edith Bolling Galt, he lived until 1924.

Learn more about President Wilson's first wife, Ellen Axson Wilson, who died during her term.

Learn more about President Wilson's second wife, Edith Bolling Galt Wilson.

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Woodrow Wilson, a leader of the Progressive Movement, was the 28th President of the United States (1913-1921). After a policy of neutrality at the outbreak of World War I, Wilson led America into war in order to "make the world safe for democracy."

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(1925-1929)

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As America's 30th President (1923-1929), Calvin Coolidge demonstrated his determination to preserve the old moral and economic precepts of frugality amid the material prosperity which many Americans were enjoying during the 1920s era.

At 2:30 on the morning of August 3, 1923, while visiting in Vermont, Calvin Coolidge received word that he was President. By the light of a kerosene lamp, his father, who was a notary public, administered the oath of office as Coolidge placed his hand on the family Bible.

Coolidge was "distinguished for character more than for heroic achievement," wrote a Democratic admirer, Alfred E. Smith. "His great task was to restore the dignity and prestige of the Presidency when it had reached the lowest ebb in our history ... in a time of extravagance and waste...."

Born in Plymouth, Vermont, on July 4, 1872, Coolidge was the son of a village storekeeper. He was graduated from Amherst College with honors, and entered law and politics in Northampton, Massachusetts. Slowly, methodically, he went up the political ladder from councilman in Northampton to Governor of Massachusetts, as a Republican. En route he became thoroughly conservative.

As President, Coolidge demonstrated his determination to preserve the old moral and economic precepts amid the material prosperity which many Americans were enjoying. He refused to use Federal economic power to check the growing boom or to ameliorate the depressed condition of agriculture and certain industries. His first message to Congress in December 1923 called for isolation in foreign policy, and for tax cuts, economy, and limited aid to farmers.

He rapidly became popular. In 1924, as the beneficiary of what was becoming known as "Coolidge prosperity," he polled more than 54 percent of the popular vote.

In his Inaugural he asserted that the country had achieved "a state of contentment seldom before seen," and pledged himself to maintain the status quo. In subsequent years he twice vetoed farm relief bills, and killed a plan to produce cheap Federal electric power on the Tennessee River.

The political genius of President Coolidge, Walter Lippmann pointed out in 1926, was his talent for effectively doing nothing: "This active inactivity suits the mood and certain of the needs of the country admirably. It suits all the business interests which want to be let alone.... And it suits all those who have become convinced that government in this country has become dangerously complicated and top-heavy...."

Coolidge was both the most negative and remote of Presidents, and the most accessible. He once explained to Bernard Baruch why he often sat silently through interviews: "Well, Baruch, many times I say only 'yes' or 'no' to people. Even that is too much. It winds them up for twenty minutes more."

But no President was kinder in permitting himself to be photographed in Indian war bonnets or cowboy dress, and in greeting a variety of delegations to the White House.

Both his dry Yankee wit and his frugality with words became legendary. His wife, Grace Goodhue Coolidge, recounted that a young woman sitting next to Coolidge at a dinner party confided to him she had bet she could get at least three words of conversation from him. Without looking at her he quietly retorted, "You lose." And in 1928, while vacationing in the Black Hills of South Dakota, he issued the most famous of his laconic statements, "I do not choose to run for President in 1928."

By the time the disaster of the Great Depression hit the country, Coolidge was in retirement. Before his death in January 1933, he confided to an old friend, ". . . I feel I no longer fit in with these times."
The Presidential biographies on WhiteHouse.gov are from "The Presidents of the United States of America," by Frank Freidel and Hugh Sidey. Copyright 2006 by the White House Historical Association.
Learn more about Calvin Coolidge 's spouse, Grace Anna Goodhue Coolidge.

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At 2:30 on the morning of August 3, 1923, while visiting in Vermont, Calvin Coolidge received word that he was President. By the light of a kerosene lamp, his father, who was a notary public, administered the oath of office as Coolidge placed his hand on the family Bible.

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Robber Barons The label robber barons was applied to the ultra-rich industrialists of the Gilded Age in the late 19th century including men like Andrew Carnegie, railroad magnates Cornelius Vanderbilt and Jay Gould a (1)

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William Jennings Bryan and the Cross of Gold Speech

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William Jennings Bryan and the Cross of Gold Speech

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William Jennings Bryan and the Cross of Gold Speech Bryan gave the speech at the 1896 Democratic National Convention and he argued for part in the party platform that called for the free coinage of silver. His speech

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Students Struggle with Thesis Statements... Students struggle with thesis statements, and yet the thesis statement is arguably the most…

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Avoiding Plagiarism - Plagiarism Basics by Jennifer Egas | This newsletter was created with Smore, an online tool for creating beautiful newsletters for individual educators, schools and districts

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I have added some links to help you find useful sites to help you research---this will save you some time and show you examples of sites that you should be using...they are NOT Wikipedia, TikTok, most .com sites, etc.

Preferred sites for research end in .edu, .gov or .org. (There are some credible sites that end in .com, but ask your teacher before using information from those sites.)

Also (I capitalize that because it is essential and important.) cite your sources of information on a slide at the end of a project or on a page at the end of a research paper!

If you fail to do this, it's considered plagiarism.
Other types of practices that are considered plagiarism are: *turning in the same assignment for two different classes even if you wrote it yourself. *copying & pasting a paper or even a short passage and failing to cite it.
(Don't use long quotes even if you cite them. Your teacher doesn't want to read a series of quotes. He/she wants to read information and analysis in your own words!)

Click on the link below titled "Avoiding Plagiarism" to learn more!

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Research: Resources to Help You - Useful Sites! by Jennifer Egas | This newsletter was created with Smore, an online tool for creating beautiful newsletters for individual educators, schools and districts