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Section 1: The Earliest Americans: https://images.csmonitor.com/csm/2014/02/Inuit%20huskies%20022814.jpg?alias=standard_600x400
Section 2: The Earliest North American Sociaties:                              www.glencanyonnha.org/history-ancesteral-puebloans/
Section 3: The Native American Culture Areas:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FIuu8qOdIY
Section 4: The European Rennaissance:                           www.britannica.com/event/Renaissannce

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Section 1                                 Daily Life in the English Colonies

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Section 1                                 Daily Life in the English Colonies

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Here is a video about life in each part of the English colonies.

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Chapter 4, Section 1   Life in the Colonies

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Section 1                                 The Earliest Americans 

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Section 1                                 The Earliest Americans 

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This is from the perspective of a Native American crossing the Berring Land Bridge.

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Section 2                                                 The Earliest North American Sociaties 

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Section 2                                                 The Earliest North American Sociaties 

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Here is an article about the anasazi and how they transformed hunting and gathering to farming.

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We are a cooperating association that supports and funds education, research, interpretation, and visitor services within the public lands on the Colorado Plateau. Working in partnership with Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, Rainbow Bridge National Monument, and Grand Staircase-Escalante Nation

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Section 3                                          The Native American Culture Areas                                      

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Section 3                                          The Native American Culture Areas                                      

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Here is a video explaining what each culture area was like

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Section 2                                     The Great Awakening and the Enlightenment 

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Section 2                                     The Great Awakening and the Enlightenment 

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Here is an article about the Great Awakening and the Enlightenment and how it effected the English colonists.

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The Enlighment and the Great Awakening Influence on the... | Bartleby

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Free Essay: Both the Enlightenment and the Great awakening caused the colonists to alter their views about government, the role of government, as well as...

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Section 3                                  Acts Passed Against Colonists

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Section 3                                  Acts Passed Against Colonists

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Here is an article about the acts passed against the colonists

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The series of acts passed by Parliament during the 1760s and 1770s is what initially sparked the unrest that led to the American Revolution.

The acts regulated trade and commerce in the colonies and were passed to help pay off the debt that the British government had incurred during the French and Indian War.

The colonies resented the acts and felt they were a blatant attempt to make money off the colonies. Since the colonists were unable to vote on the Parliamentary officials who passed the acts, they felt they were being taxed unfairly, hence the colonist's motto: No taxation without representation!

The following is a list of the acts of the American Revolution:

The Sugar Act:

The Sugar Act was passed by Parliament in April of 1764. The act placed a tax on sugar and molasses imported into the colonies.

This affected Boston and New England greatly because the colonists there used sugar and molasses to make rum. The act was also intended to stop trade between the colonies and the Dutch, French and Spanish.

Boston merchants responded to the act by boycotting British luxury imports and vowed to find ways to increase colonial manufacturing to make them less dependent on British goods.

The Currency Act:

The Currency Act consisted of several acts, such as the Currency Act of 1751 and the Currency Act of 1764, that regulated paper money issued by the American colonies. The acts were passed to protect British merchants from being paid in depreciated colonial currency.

The acts forbade the colonies from issuing paper money, which was creating problems due to inflation and a complex system of varying values and types of money from the various North American colonies.

The Currency act created tension in the colonies because it was seen as an attempt by the British government to gain control of the colonies monetary policies.

The Stamp Act:

The Stamp Act was passed in March of 1765. The act was a tax on all paper used for printed materials in the colonies. It required that all materials printed in the colonies be printed on paper embossed with an official revenue stamp. The printed materials in question included everything from newspapers, to magazines to legal documents.

The Stamp Act was the first new tax that the colonists actually took to the streets and held public protests about. A new political group, the Sons of Liberty, formed in Boston as a protest against the act.

The group held public protests around Boston and incited a number of violent riots during which tax collectors where tarred and feathered and many government official's homes were looted and burned.

The Townshend Acts:

The Townshend Acts were passed in 1767. The acts consisted of the Revenue Act of 1767 (which placed a tax on British goods imported into the colonies such as glass, tea, lead, paints and paper), the Commissioners of Customs Act, the Vice Admiralty Act, and the New York Restraining Act.

The acts were highly unpopular and met with resistance from the colonists, especially in Boston. This prompted the British government to send more troops to Boston, in 1768, to help enforce the new taxes.

A new political group, the Daughters of Liberty, formed as a result of the Townshend Acts and organized boycotts against British goods. In 1770, the Townshend acts were repealed except for the tax on tea.

The Tea Act:

The Tea Act was passed in 1773. It allowed for tea to be shipped by British companies duty-free to the colonies, thus allowing them to sell the tea for a discounted price.

The tea act was intended to be a bailout for the British East India Company which was suffering financially when colonists began boycotting British tea. It was also intended to subtly persuade the colonists to comply with the tea tax by offering them the tea at a cheaper price.

The colonists greatly opposed the tea act because it gave British companies a monopoly on the tea trade and it helped promote the tea tax.

The tea act prompted the Boston Tea Party in December of 1773. This was a protest against the tea act during which several hundred colonists boarded merchant ships in Boston harbor and destroyed millions of dollars of British tea by throwing it overboard.

The Coercive Acts:

The Coercive Acts were the British government's response to the Boston Tea Party. The acts were passed in 1774 and were a series of four acts designed to restore order in Massachusetts and punish Boston for its rebellious act.

The Coercive Acts included:

Boston Port Act: The Boston Port Act closed Boston harbor until the damages from the Boston Tea Party were paid for.

Massachusetts Government Act: Massachusetts Government Act restricted town meetings and made it so positions on the Governor's council were appointed by the British government.

Administration of Justice Act: Administration of Justice Act made British officials immune to criminal prosecution in Massachusetts.

Quartering Act: Quartering Act required colonists to house British soldiers in their homes if need be

Quebec Act: Quebec Act gave freedom of worship to Catholics in Canada.

The acts were intended to suppress rebellion in Massachusetts and isolate it from the other colonies. Instead, the other colonies came to Massachusetts' defense and formed the First Continental Congress to discuss forming a united resistance against British rule in the colonies.

Sources:
"The Coming of the American Revolution." Massachusetts Historical Society, www.masshist.org/revolution/index.html
"British Parliament Adopts the Coercive Acts." History.com, A&E Television Networks, LLC, www.history.com/this-day-in-history/british-parliament-adopts-the-coercive-acts

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Acts of the American Revolution - History of Massachusetts Blog

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The series of acts passed by Parliament during the 1760s and 1770s is what initially sparked the unrest that led to the American Revolution. The acts regulated trade and commerce in the colonies and were passed to help pay off the debt that the British government had incurred during the...

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Here is an article about the European Rennaisance.

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What does "Renaissance" mean?

When did the Renaissance happen?

What is Renaissance art?

What does "Renaissance man" mean?

Renaissance, (French: "Rebirth") period in European civilization immediately following the Middle Ages and conventionally held to have been characterized by a surge of interest in Classical scholarship and values. The Renaissance also witnessed the discovery and exploration of new continents, the substitution of the Copernican for the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, the decline of the feudal system and the growth of commerce, and the invention or application of such potentially powerful innovations as paper, printing, the mariner's compass, and gunpowder. To the scholars and thinkers of the day, however, it was primarily a time of the revival of Classical learning and wisdom after a long period of cultural decline and stagnation.

A brief treatment of the Renaissance follows. For full treatment, see history of Europe: The Renaissance.

Origins and rise of humanism

The term Middle Ages was coined by scholars in the 15th century to designate the interval between the downfall of the Classical world of Greece and Rome and its rediscovery at the beginning of their own century, a revival in which they felt they were participating. Indeed, the notion of a long period of cultural darkness had been expressed by Petrarch even earlier. Events at the end of the Middle Ages, particularly beginning in the 12th century, set in motion a series of social, political, and intellectual transformations that culminated in the Renaissance. These included the increasing failure of the Roman Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire to provide a stable and unifying framework for the organization of spiritual and material life, the rise in importance of city-states and national monarchies, the development of national languages, and the breakup of the old feudal structures.

While the spirit of the Renaissance ultimately took many forms, it was expressed earliest by the intellectual movement called humanism. Humanism was initiated by secular men of letters rather than by the scholar-clerics who had dominated medieval intellectual life and had developed the Scholastic philosophy. Humanism began and achieved fruition first in Italy. Its predecessors were men like Dante and Petrarch, and its chief protagonists included Giannozzo Manetti, Leonardo Bruni, Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Lorenzo Valla, and Coluccio Salutati. The fall of Constantinople in 1453 provided humanism with a major boost, for many eastern scholars fled to Italy, bringing with them important books and manuscripts and a tradition of Greek scholarship.

Humanism had several significant features. First, it took human nature in all of its various manifestations and achievements as its subject. Second, it stressed the unity and compatibility of the truth found in all philosophical and theological schools and systems, a doctrine known as syncretism. Third, it emphasized the dignity of man. In place of the medieval ideal of a life of penance as the highest and noblest form of human activity, the humanists looked to the struggle of creation and the attempt to exert mastery over nature. Finally, humanism looked forward to a rebirth of a lost human spirit and wisdom. In the course of striving to recover it, however, the humanists assisted in the consolidation of a new spiritual and intellectual outlook and in the development of a new body of knowledge. The effect of humanism was to help men break free from the mental strictures imposed by religious orthodoxy, to inspire free inquiry and criticism, and to inspire a new confidence in the possibilities of human thought and creations.

From Italy the new humanist spirit and the Renaissance it engendered spread north to all parts of Europe, aided by the invention of printing, which allowed literacy and the availability of Classical texts to grow explosively. Foremost among northern humanists was Desiderius Erasmus, whose Praise of Folly (1509) epitomized the moral essence of humanism in its insistence on heartfelt goodness as opposed to formalistic piety. The intellectual stimulation provided by humanists helped spark the Reformation, from which, however, many humanists, including Erasmus, recoiled. By the end of the 16th century the battle of Reformation and Counter-Reformation had commanded much of Europe's energy and attention, while the intellectual life was poised on the brink of the Enlightenment.

Artistic developments and the emergence of Florence

It was in art that the spirit of the Renaissance achieved its sharpest formulation. Art came to be seen as a branch of knowledge, valuable in its own right and capable of providing man with images of God and his creations as well as with insights into man's position in the universe. In the hands of men such as Leonardo da Vinci it was even a science, a means for exploring nature and a record of discoveries. Art was to be based on the observation of the visible world and practiced according to mathematical principles of balance, harmony, and perspective, which were developed at this time. In the works of painters such as Masaccio, the brothers Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Fra Angelico, Sandro Botticelli, Perugino, Piero della Francesca, Raphael, and Titian; sculptors such as Giovanni Pisano, Donatello, Andrea del Verrocchio, Lorenzo Ghiberti, and Michelangelo; and architects such as Leon Battista Alberti, Filippo Brunelleschi, Andrea Palladio, Michelozzo, and Filarete, the dignity of man found expression in the arts.

In Italy the Renaissance proper was preceded by an important "proto-renaissance" in the late 13th and early 14th centuries, which drew inspiration from Franciscan radicalism. St. Francis of Assisi had rejected the formal Scholasticism of the prevailing Christian theology and gone out among the poor praising the beauties and spiritual value of nature. His example inspired Italian artists and poets to take pleasure in the world around them. The work of the most famous artist of the proto-renaissance period, Giotto (1266/67 or 1276-1337), reveals a new pictorial style that depends on clear, simple structure and great psychological penetration rather than on the flat, linear decorativeness and hierarchical compositions of his predecessors and contemporaries, such as the Florentine painter Cimabue and the Siennese painters Duccio and Simone Martini. The great poet Dante lived at about the same time as Giotto, and his poetry shows a similar concern with inward experience and the subtle shades and variations of human nature. Although his Divine Comedy belongs to the Middle Ages in its plan and ideas, its subjective spirit and power of expression look forward to the Renaissance. Petrarch and Giovanni Boccaccio also belong to this proto-renaissance period, both through their extensive studies of Latin literature and through their writings in the vernacular. Unfortunately, the terrible plague of 1348 and subsequent civil wars submerged both the revival of humanistic studies and the growing interest in individualism and naturalism revealed in the works of Giotto and Dante. The spirit of the Renaissance did not surface again until the 15th century.

In 1401 a competition was held at Florence to award the commission for bronze doors to be placed on the baptistery of San Giovanni. Defeated by the goldsmith and painter Lorenzo Ghiberti, Filippo Brunelleschi and Donatello left for Rome, where they immersed themselves in the study of ancient architecture and sculpture. When they returned to Florence and began to put their knowledge into practice, the rationalized art of the ancient world was reborn. The founder of Renaissance painting was Masaccio (1401-28). The intellectuality of his conceptions, the monumentality of his compositions, and the high degree of naturalism in his works mark Masaccio as a pivotal figure in Renaissance painting. The succeeding generation of artists- Piero della Francesca, the Pollaiuolo brothers, and Andrea del Verrocchio-pressed forward with researches into linear and aerial perspective and anatomy, developing a style of scientific naturalism.

The situation in Florence was uniquely favourable to the arts. The civic pride of Florentines found expression in statues of the patron saints commissioned from Ghiberti and Donatello for niches in the grain-market guildhall known as Or San Michele, and in the largest dome built since antiquity, placed by Brunelleschi on the Florence cathedral. The cost of construction and decoration of palaces, churches, and monasteries was underwritten by wealthy merchant families, chief among whom were the Medici family.

The Medici traded in all of the major cities in Europe, and one of the most famous masterpieces of Northern Renaissance art, The Portinari Altarpiece, by Hugo van der Goes ( c. 1476; Uffizi, Florence), was commissioned by their agent, Tommaso Portinari. Instead of being painted with the customary tempera of the period, the work is painted with translucent oil glazes that produce brilliant jewel-like colour and a glossy surface. Early Northern Renaissance painters were more concerned with the detailed reproduction of objects and their symbolic meaning than with the study of scientific perspective and anatomy even after these achievements became widely known. On the other hand, central Italian painters began to adopt the oil medium soon after The Portinari Altarpiece was brought to Florence in 1476.

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Renaissance | Definition, Meaning, History, Artists, Art, & Facts

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The Renaissance was a period in European civilization that immediately followed the Middle Ages and reached its height in the 15th century. It is conventionally held to have been characterized by a surge of interest in Classical scholarship and values. The Renaissance also witnessed the discovery and exploration of new continents and numerous important inventions.

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Section 1: The Vikings: https://www.landofthebrave.info/images/viking-ship.jpg
Section 2: The Voyages of Christopher Columbus :           www.ushistory.com/pages/h438.html
Section 3: The Spanish Empire in North America:             https://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h438.html
Section 4: The Race for Empires in North America:             https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=78&v=Z3mu47IfTXg

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Section 1                                 The Vikings

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Section 1                                 The Vikings

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Here is a picture of a Viking ship exploring the land they accedentally found.

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Section 2                                 The Voyages of Christopher Columbus 

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Section 2                                 The Voyages of Christopher Columbus 

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Here is an article about the life and exploration of Christopher Columbus

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Christopher Columbus leaving Palos, Spain

Christopher Columbus aboard the "Santa Maria" leaving Palos, Spain on his first voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. The Mariners' Museum 1933.0746.000001

Introduction
We know that In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. But what did he actually discover? Christopher Columbus (also known as (Cristoforo Colombo [Italian]; Cristóbal Colón [Spanish]) was an Italian explorer credited with the "discovery" of the America's. The purpose for his voyages was to find a passage to Asia by sailing west. Never actually accomplishing this mission, his explorations mostly included the Caribbean and parts of Central and South America, all of which were already inhabited by Native groups.

Biography Christopher Columbus was born in Genoa, part of present-day Italy, in 1451. His parents' names were Dominico Colombo and Susanna Fontanarossa. He had three brothers: Bartholomew, Giovanni, and Giacomo; and a sister named Bianchinetta. Christopher became an apprentice in his father's wool weaving business, but he also studied mapmaking and sailing as well. He eventually left his father's business to join the Genoese fleet and sail on the Mediterranean Sea.
Early Life
¹ After one of his ships wrecked off the coast of Portugal, he decided to remain there with his younger brother Bartholomew where he worked as a cartographer (mapmaker) and bookseller. Here, he married Doña Felipa Perestrello e Moniz and had two sons Diego and Fernando.

Christopher Columbus owned a copy of Marco Polo's famous book, and it gave him a love for exploration. In the mid 15th century, Portugal was desperately trying to find a faster trade route to Asia. Exotic goods such as spices, ivory, silk, and gems were popular items of trade. However, Europeans often had to travel through the Middle East to reach Asia. At this time, Muslim nations imposed high taxes on European travels crossing through. ² This made it both difficult and expensive to reach Asia. There were rumors from other sailors that Asia could be reached by sailing west. Hearing this, Christopher Columbus decided to try and make this revolutionary journey himself. First, he needed ships and supplies, which required money that he did not have. He went to King John of Portugal who turned him down. He then went to the rulers of England, and France. Each declined his request for funding. After seven years of trying, he was finally sponsored by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain.

Voyages Columbus' voyage departed in August of 1492 with 87 men sailing on three ships: the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa María. Columbus commanded the Santa María, while the Niña was led by Vicente Yanez Pinzon and the Pinta by Martin Pinzon.
Principal Voyage
³ This was the first of his four trips. He headed west from Spain across the Atlantic Ocean. On October 12 land was sighted. He gave the first island he landed on the name San Salvador, although the native population called it Guanahani. ⁴ Columbus believed that he was in Asia, but was actually in the Caribbean. He even proposed that the island of Cuba was a part of China. Since he thought he was in the Indies, he called the native people "Indians." In several letters he wrote back to Spain, he described the landscape and his encounters with the natives. He continued sailing throughout the Caribbean and named many islands he encountered after his ship, king, and queen: La Isla de Santa María de Concepción, Fernandina, and Isabella.

It is hard to determine specifically which islands Columbus visited on this voyage. His descriptions of the native peoples, geography, and plant life do give us some clues though. One place we do know he stopped was in present-day Haiti. He named the island Hispaniola. Hispaniola today includes both Haiti and the Dominican Republic. In January of 1493, Columbus sailed back to Europe to report what he found. Due to rough seas, he was forced to land in Portugal, an unfortunate event for Columbus. With relations between Spain and Portugal strained during this time, Ferdinand and Isabella suspected that Columbus was taking valuable information or maybe goods to Portugal, the country he had lived in for several years. Those who stood against Columbus would later use this as an argument against him. Eventually, Columbus was allowed to return to Spain bringing with him tobacco, turkey, and some new spices. He also brought with him several natives of the islands, of whom Queen Isabella grew very fond.

Subsequent Voyages
Columbus took three other similar trips to this region. His second voyage in 1493 carried a large fleet with the intention of conquering the native populations and establishing colonies. At one point, the natives attacked and killed the settlers left at Fort Navidad. Over time the colonists enslaved many of the natives, sending some to Europe and using many to mine gold for the Spanish settlers in the Caribbean. The third trip was to explore more of the islands and mainland South America further. Columbus was appointed the governor of Hispaniola, but the colonists, upset with Columbus' leadership appealed to the rulers of Spain, who sent a new governor: Francisco de Bobadilla. Columbus was taken prisoner on board a ship and sent back to Spain.

On his fourth and final journey west in 1502 Columbus's goal was to find the "Strait of Malacca," to try to find India. But a hurricane, then being denied entrance to Hispaniola, and then another storm made this an unfortunate trip. His ship was so badly damaged that he and his crew were stranded on Jamaica for two years until help from Hispaniola finally arrived. In 1504, Columbus and his men were taken back to Spain.

Later Years and Death
Columbus reached Spain in November 1504. He was not in good health. He spent much of the last of his life writing letters to obtain the percentage of wealth overdue to be paid to him, and trying to re-attain his governorship status, but was continually denied both. Columbus died at Valladolid on May 20, 1506, due to illness and old age. Even until death, he still firmly believing that he had traveled to the eastern part of Asia.

Legacy Columbus never made it to Asia, nor did he truly discover America. His "re-discovery," however, inspired a new era of exploration of the American continents by Europeans. Perhaps his greatest contribution was that his voyages opened an exchange of goods between Europe and the Americas both during and long after his journeys.
⁵ Despite modern criticism of his treatment of the native peoples there is no denying that his expeditions changed both Europe and America. Columbus day was made a federal holiday in 1971. It is recognized on the second Monday of October.

1. Fergus Fleming, Off the Map: Tales of Endurance and Exploration (New York: Grove Press, 2004), 30.

2. Fleming, Off the Map, 30

3. William D. Phillips and Carla Rahn Phillips, The Worlds of Christopher Columbus (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 142-143.

4. Phillips and Phillips, The Worlds of Christopher Columbus, 155.

5. Robin S. Doak, Christopher Columbus: Explorer of the New World (Minneapolis: Compass Point Books, 2005), 92.

Bibliography

Doak, Robin. Christopher Columbus: Explorer of the New World. Minneapolis: Compass Point Books, 2005.

Fleming, Fergus. Off the Map: Tales of Endurance and Exploration. New York: Grove Press, 2004.

Phillips, William D., and Carla Rahn Phillips. The Worlds of Christopher Columbus. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Map of Voyages

Click below to view an example of the explorer's voyages. Use the tabs on the left to view either 1 or multiple journeys at a time, and click on the icons to learn more about the stops, sites, and activities along the way.

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Christopher Columbus is credited with the discovery of the Americas in 1492, though Leifr Eiriksson explored the North American continent centuries prior.

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Section 3                                  The Spanish Empire in North America

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Section 3                                  The Spanish Empire in North America

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Here is an article about the Spanish Empire in North America

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The Spanish claim to territories that are today the United States rested upon the 16th century exploits of Ponce de Leon, Hernando De Soto, and Francisco Vázquez de Coronado.

St. Augustine in Florida was established as a Spanish fort in 1565, the first permanent settlement in what would become the United States. The impact of this settlement was slight, however, since it served primarily as a base camp for other exploratory ventures and also as the center of efforts to convert the area's natives to Roman Catholicism. A handful of Spanish settlements was established in outlying areas, but they soon fell prey to Indian attacks or economic insufficiency.

Greater progress was made by Spanish colonizers on the other side of the continent. In 1598, Don Juan Oñante led 500 men from Mexico northward into Pueblo lands in present-day New Mexico. The invaders brought with them a labor system known as the encomienda, which had originally developed in Spain.

Under this scheme, large New World land grants were made by the Crown to favored Spanish individuals. The grantees were responsible for the protection and Christian instruction of inhabitants of the lands, and those natives were required to pay tribute - often in the form of crops and labor - to the grantee.

Understandably, the Pueblo deeply resented the entire system - invasion of their lands, suppression of their religion, payment of tribute, and enforced loyalty to a foreign monarch.

The encomienda was used throughout Spanish America. Its application differed sharply from one area to another, being relatively benign in some regions, but virtually enslaving in others. Reform of the system was sought by a Spanish missionary, Bartolomé de Las Casas.

Oñante, fired by a passion for precious metals, launched a series of explorations eastward into present-day Kansas and Oklahoma, and westward to the Gulf of California. In some instances, he retraced Coronado's steps and was equally unsuccessful in discovering gold and silver.

New settlements were erected at Santa Fe in 1609 and nearby Taos in 1615.

Relationships between the colonists and the Pueblo improved as they cooperated in livestock raising (mostly cattle and sheep), but an undercurrent of resentment remained strong. In 1680, a major revolt broke out under native leader Papé. Hundreds were killed on both sides in the fighting and order was not restored until 1692.

As the 17th century drew to a close, Spanish colonial administrators finally realized that, given their minority status in so many parts of New Spain, policy reform was necessary. In the coming years, the Pueblo were allowed to resume the practice of their religion, own land, and be free from forced labor.

From a material standpoint, the Spanish ventures in the northern portions of their realm were far less successful than those to the south.

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Commanches by T.R. Fehrenbach.
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The Birth of America: From Before Columbus to the Revolution by William R. Polk.
In this provocative account of colonial America, William R. Polk explores the key events, individuals, and themes of this critical period. With vivid ...

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The Spanish claim to territories that are today the United States rested upon the 16th century exploits of Ponce de Leon, Hernando De Soto, and Francisco Vázquez de Coronado. St. Augustine in Florida was established as a Spanish fort in 1565, the first permanent settlement in what would become the United States.

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Section 4                                   The Race for Empires in North America

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Section 4                                   The Race for Empires in North America

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Here is a video explaining the first European colonies in the new world (skip to 1 min. 12 sec. if you want to skipthe Native American part)

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European Colonization of the United States

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Section 1: Daily Life in the English Colonies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrR3Kxd24Hs
Section 2: The Great Awakening and the Enlightenment: https://www.bartleby.com/essay/The-Enlighment-and-the-Great-Awakening-Influence-P3CFLRSTJ
Section 3: Acts Passed Against Colonists: https://www.history.com/.image/ar_16:9%2Cc_fill%2Ccs_srgb%2Cfl_progressive%2Cg_faces:center%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_620/MTU3ODc3NjU2NzQ3ODQ0OTM3/this-day-in-history-12161773---the-boston-tea-party.jpg
Section 4: Colonists' Response to the Acts: http://historyofmassachusetts.org/american-revolution-acts/

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Section 4                                  Colonists' Response to the Acts                              

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Section 4                                  Colonists' Response to the Acts                              

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Here is a picture of how colonists reacted to the tea act.

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Section 1                                     Paul Revere's Ride and the Battles of Lexington and Concord

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Section 1                                     Paul Revere's Ride and the Battles of Lexington and Concord

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Here is an article about Paul Revere's ride and how it helped the Colonists in the Battles of Lexington and Concord.

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Ready to fight at a moment's notice, minutemen began fighting early in the American Revolution. Their efforts at Lexington and Concord inspired many patriots to take up arms against Britain.

Britain's General Gage had a secret plan.

During the wee hours of April 19, 1775, he would send out regiments of British soldiers quartered in Boston. Their destinations were Lexington, where they would capture Colonial leaders Sam Adams and John Hancock, then Concord, where they would seize gunpowder.

But spies and friends of the Americans leaked word of Gage's plan.

Two lanterns hanging from Boston's North Church informed the countryside that the British were going to attack by sea. A series of horseback riders - men such as Paul Revere, William Dawes and Dr. Samuel Prescott - galloped off to warn the countryside that the Regulars (British troops) were coming.

Regulars

It is a myth that Revere and other riders shouted, "The British are coming!" This warning would have confused a good many of the Americans living in the countryside who still considered themselves British. The Regulars were known to be British soldiers.

We set off for Concord, and were overtaken by a young gentleman named Prescot, who belonged to Concord, and was going home. When we had got about half way from Lexington to Concord, the other two stopped at a house to awake the men, I kept along ....

In an instant I saw four of them, who rode up to me with their pistols in their bands, said ''G---d d---n you, stop. If you go an inch further, you are a dead man.'' Immediately Mr. Prescot came up. We attempted to get through them, but they kept before us, and swore if we did not turn in to that pasture, they would blow our brains out, (they had placed themselves opposite to a pair of bars, and had taken the bars down). They forced us in. When we had got in, Mr. Prescot said "Put on!" He took to the left, I to the right ...

Just as I reached it, out started six officers, seized my bridle, put their pistols to my breast, ordered me to dismount, which I did.

- Paul Revere, "Account of Midnight Ride to Lexington" (1775)

Lexington and the Minutemen

The first battle of the war, Lexington marked the beginning of the American Revolution. Although Lexington and Concord were considered British military victories, they gave a moral boost to the American colonists.

Word spread from town to town, and militias prepared to confront the British and help their neighbors in Lexington and Concord.

These Colonial militias had originally been organized to defend settlers from civil unrest and attacks by French or Native Americans. Selected members of the militia were called minutemen because they could be ready to fight in a minute's time.

Sure enough, when the advance guard of nearly 240 British soldiers arrived in Lexington, they found about 70 minutemen formed on the Lexington Green awaiting them. Both sides eyed each other warily, not knowing what to expect. Suddenly, a bullet buzzed through the morning air.

It was "the shot heard round the world."

Concord

Thomas Gage was appointed commander in chief of all British forces in North America in 1763.

The numerically superior British killed seven Americans on Lexington Green and marched off to Concord with new regiments who had joined them. But American militias arriving at Concord thwarted the British advance.

As the British retreated toward Boston, new waves of Colonial militia intercepted them. Shooting from behind fences and trees, the militias inflicted over 125 casualties, including several officers. The ferocity of the encounter surprised both sides.

Lt. Col. Smith's Report to Gen. Gage

In obedience to your Excellency's commands, I marched on the evening of the 18th inst. with the corps of grenadiers and light infantry for Concord, to execute your Excellency's orders with respect to destroying all ammunition, artillery, tents, &c., collected there, which was effected, having knocked off the trunnions of three pieces of iron ordnance, some new gun carriages, a great number of carriage wheels burnt, a considerable quantity of flour, some gunpowder and musket balls, with other small articles thrown into the river. Notwithstanding we marched with the utmost expedition and secrecy, we found the country had intelligence or strong suspicion of our coming, and fired many signal guns, and rung the alarm bells repeatedly; and were informed, when at Concord, that some cannon had been taken out of the town that day, that others, with some stores, had been carried three days before ....

I think it proper to observe, that when I had got some miles on the march from Boston, I detached six light infantry companies to march with all expedition to seize the two bridges on different roads beyond Concord. On these companies' arrival at Lexington, I understand, from the report of Major Pitcairn, who was with them, and from many officers, that they found on a green close to the road a body of the country people drawn up in military order, with arms and accoutrements, and, as appeared after, loaded; and that they had posted some men in a dwelling and Meeting-house. Our troops advanced towards them, without any intention of injuring them, further than to inquire the reason of their being thus assembled, and, if not satisfactory, to have secured their arms; but they in confusion went off, principally to the left, only one of them fired before he went off, and three or four more jumped over a wall and fired from behind it among the soldiers; on which the troops returned it, and killed several of them. They likewise fired on the soldiers from the Meeting and dwelling-house. We had one man wounded, and Major Pitcairn's horse shot in two places. Rather earlier than this, on the road, a country man from behind a wall had snapped his piece at Lieutenants Adair and Sutherland, but it flashed and did not go off. After this we saw some in the woods, but marched on to Concord without anything further happening. While at Concord we saw vast numbers assembling in many parts; at one of the bridges they marched down, with a very considerable body, on the light infantry posted there. On their coming pretty near, one of our men fired on them, which they returned; on which an action ensued, and some few were killed and wounded. In this affair, it appears that after the bridge was quitted, they scalped and otherwise ill-treated one or two of the men who were either killed or severely wounded, being seen by a party that marched by soon after. At Concord we found very few inhabitants in the town; those we met with both Major Pitcairn and myself took all possible pains to convince that we meant them no injury, and that if they opened their doors when required to search for military stores, not the slightest mischief would be done. We had opportunities of convincing them of our good intentions, but they were sulky; and one of them even struck Major Pitcairn. On our leaving Concord to return to Boston, they began to fire on us from behind the walls, ditches, trees, etc., which, as we marched, increased to a very great degree, and continued without the intermission of five minutes altogether, for, I believe, upwards of eighteen miles; so that I can't think but it must have been a preconcerted scheme in them, to attack the King's troops the first favourable opportunity that offered, otherwise, I think they could not, in so short a time as from our marching out, have raised such a numerous body, and for so great a space of ground. Notwithstanding the enemy's numbers, they did not make one gallant effort during so long an action, though our men were so very much fatigued, but kept under cover.

- Lieutenant Colonel Smith, 10th Regiment of Foot, letter to General Gage (April 22, 1775)

The first bloodshed at Lexington and Concord, marked the crossing of a threshold, and the momentum from these events pushed both sides farther apart. Following the battles, neither the British nor the Americans knew what to expect next.

Indignation against the British ran high in the Colonies - for they had shed American blood on American soil. Radicals such as Sam Adams took advantage of the bloodshed to increase tensions through propaganda and rumor-spreading. The Americans surrounded the town of Boston, and the rebel army started gaining many new recruits.

During the battles of Lexington and Concord, 73 British soldiers had been killed and 174 wounded; 26 were missing. Lord Percy, who led the British back into Boston after the defeat suffered at Concord, wrote back to London, "Whoever looks upon them [the Rebels] as an irregular mob will be much mistaken." Three British major generals - William Howe, Henry Clinton, and "Gentleman Johnny" Burgoyne - were brought to Boston to lend their expertise and experience to the situation.

Benedict Arnold and Ethan Allen Join the Cause

Shortly after the battle, an express rider carried the news to New Haven, Connecticut, where a local militia commander and wealthy shopkeeper named Benedict Arnold demanded the keys to a local powder house.

After arming himself and paying money from his own pocket to outfit a group of militia from Massachusetts, Arnold and his men set off for upstate New York. He was searching for artillery that was badly needed for the Colonial effort and reckoned that he could commandeer some cannon by capturing Fort Ticonderoga, a rotting relic from the French and Indian War.

Up in the Hampshire Grants, part of modern-day Vermont, Ethan Allen who led a group called the Green Mountain Boys, also had the idea to capture Fort Ticonderoga. The two reluctantly worked together and surprised the poorly manned British fort before dawn on May 10, 1775.

The fort's commander had been asleep and surrendered in his pajamas!

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Section 2                                     The Declaration of Independence

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Section 2                                     The Declaration of Independence

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Here is a picture of what it might have been like durring the signing of the Declaration of Independence

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Section 3                                      The Battle of Saratoga 

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Section 3                                      The Battle of Saratoga 

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Here is an article explaining what went down in the Battle of Saratoga.

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Battles of Saratoga, in the American Revolution, closely related engagements in the autumn of 1777. The Battles of Saratoga are often considered together as a turning point of the war in favour of the Americans.

The British campaign of 1777

The failure of the American invasion of Canada in 1775-76 had left a large surplus of British troops along the St. Lawrence River. In 1777 these troops were to move south for an attack on Albany, New York. Gen. John Burgoyne, coming down from Canada via Lake Champlain and Lake George, was to meet at Albany a much smaller British force under Col. Barry St. Leger, who was to advance from Oswego along the Mohawk Valley. Coming up the Hudson from the south, Gen. Sir William Howe's army was to serve as the third prong of this complex offensive campaign. With Albany and the Hudson Valley in British hands, the patriot hotbed of New England would be effectively severed from the mid-Atlantic colonies.

American Revolution Events

Burgoyne, with some 9,000 men, including seven regiments of British regulars and 3,000 Germans, reached Fort Ticonderoga (July 1), which was evacuated by its weak garrison (July 5). He then marched his army through the woods and swamps to Fort Edward on the upper Hudson. The fort was evacuated by the American commander, Gen. Philip Schuyler, on July 31. Schuyler retreated across the Hudson to Stillwater, 20 miles (32 km) north of Albany; on August 19, Schuyler was relieved of command and replaced by Gen. Horatio Gates.

Burgoyne's laborious march involved the construction of 40 bridges and required a long halt at Fort Edward. A German detachment was sent to Bennington, Vermont, to seize horses and supplies, but on August 16 it was surrounded and almost completely annihilated by a force under Gen. John Stark and Col. Seth Warner. Burgoyne now became uneasy. He had left nearly 1,000 men to garrison Ticonderoga, and St. Leger was held up before Fort Schuyler (unbeknownst to Burgoyne, St. Leger had retreated on August 22). Most troubling of all, Howe had notified Burgoyne of his intention to abandon the New York campaign entirely and invade Pennsylvania. Nevertheless, Burgoyne considered himself bound by his orders to press on to Albany. Having collected 30 days' rations, he crossed the Hudson on September 13 and camped near Saratoga, New York. Gates, one of the more experienced and trusted officers in the colonial ranks, was encamped 4 miles (about 6 km) away, on Bemis Heights, with 12,000 men. Gates, unlike Burgoyne, was receiving daily reinforcements.

Battle of Freeman's Farm

On September 19 Burgoyne moved south and engaged the Continental forces at the Battle of Freeman's Farm, also called the First Battle of Saratoga. Early in the battle, many British officers were killed in the open fields by Col. Daniel Morgan 's sharpshooters, who were concealed in the thick woods. As the disheartened British advance guard began to break, the main British force arrived, followed soon after by German reinforcements that struck the American troops forcefully. The Continentals stood fast, however, and heavy fighting lasted for several hours, but at dusk they withdrew. Despite losing the field, the Americans had suffered just 90 killed and 240 wounded, compared with 440 killed and nearly 700 wounded for the British.

On September 21 Burgoyne received notice from Gen. Sir Henry Clinton, who had been left in command of British forces at New York, that Clinton was about to launch an attack up the Hudson Valley. Burgoyne sent a dispatch to Clinton, asking for orders, on September 27. The answer was never received. In the meantime, Howe had captured the colonial capital of Philadelphia, but this victory proved almost meaningless in the larger context of the war. On October 3 Clinton headed north with a force of some 4,000 men and quickly captured two forts on the west bank of the Hudson, but he never had any intention of pressing on to Albany. Burgoyne was now awaiting reinforcements from Clinton that would never come. Gates took this time to strengthen his positions as more American units arrived.

Second Battle of Saratoga

Burgoyne's army had dwindled to perhaps 5,000 combat-ready troops, and he estimated that he had two weeks of supplies left. On October 7 he decided that he could wait no longer and launched an attack without the reinforcements. This engagement was called the Battle of Bemis Heights, also known as the Second Battle of Freeman's Farm or the Second Battle of Saratoga. Burgoyne first sent in a reconnaissance force, using 1,500 troops in three columns, while leaving the main body of his troops closer to the heights. Brig. Gen. Simon Fraser, tasked with probing the American left, was met by a body of Continental infantry, including Morgan 's riflemen. They opened fire on the exposed British, fatally wounding Fraser as he attempted to cover a British withdrawal.

Just as the American attack began to falter, Brig. Gen. Benedict Arnold appeared on horseback with a fresh brigade behind him. This drove the British troops back to their redoubts at Freeman's Farm. The Germans in their redoubt stubbornly resisted American assaults, but they were finally overwhelmed. On October 8 Burgoyne began to retreat, but Gates, who now had 20,000 men, surrounded him at Saratoga. On October 17 Burgoyne surrendered his troops under the Convention of Saratoga, which provided for the return of his men to Great Britain on condition that they would not serve again in North America during the war.

Aftermath

The American victory in the Battles of Saratoga helped persuade the French to recognize American independence and to openly provide military assistance. It also increased Gates's popularity-so much so that he was being considered to replace George Washington as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army. That notion was squelched, however, and Washington retained his position until he received the British surrender in 1781.
Kate Lohnes The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

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Battles of Saratoga | Facts, Casualties, & Significance

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Battles of Saratoga, in the American Revolution, closely related engagements in autumn 1777. The American victories led the French to recognize the colonies' independence and to provide them with military assistance. This marked the turning point of the war, virtually ensuring ultimate victory for the colonies.

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Section 4                                      The Battle of Yorktown and the Treaty of Paris 

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Section 4                                      The Battle of Yorktown and the Treaty of Paris 

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Here is a video about the Battle of Yorktown and about the Treaty of Paris.

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Section 1: Paul Revere's Ride and the Battles of Lexington and Concord: http://www.ushistory.org/us/11c.asp
Section 2: The Declaration of Independence: https://psmag.com/.image/t_share/MTQ2NTk2MjQ0NjY1NDc2OTgz/95f23-1q7hza2gf5cwt-hmwmkohrg.jpg
Section 3: The Battle of Saratoga: https://www.britannica.com/event/Battles-of-Saratoga
Section 4: The Battle of Yorktown and the Treaty of Paris: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLw_185LZ1M

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Section 1                                          The Articles of Confederation

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Section 1                                          The Articles of Confederation

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Here is a picture of the Articles of Confederation.

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Section 1: The Articles of Confederation: https://www.awesomestories.com/images/user/1222783066.4.jpg        Section 2: The Great Compromise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAlv93kuVwY
Section 3: Federalism: https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-federalism-3321880
Section 4: Separation of Powers: http://www.ncsl.org/research/about-state-legislatures/separation-of-powers.aspx
Section 5: The Constitution (Preamble and Articles): http://constitutionus.com
Section 6: The Bill of Rights: https://study.com/academy/lesson/the-bill-of-rights-the-constitutions-first-10-amendments.html

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Section 2                                       The Great Compromise 

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Section 2                                       The Great Compromise 

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Here is a video explaining how the Great Comprimise was made.

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Section 3                                      Federalism 

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Section 3                                      Federalism 

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Here is an article explaining what federalism is and how it works in our country.

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Federalism is the process by which two or more governments share powers over the same geographic area. It is the method used by most democracies in the world.

While some countries give more power to the overall central government, others grant more power to the individual states or provinces.

Distribution of Power in the US Government

In the United States, the Constitution grants certain powers to both the U.S. government and the state governments.

The Founding Fathers wanted more power for the individual states and less for the federal government, a practice that endured until World War II. That "layer cake" method of dual federalism was replaced when state and national governments entered a more cooperative "marble cake" approach called cooperative federalism.

Since then, a new federalism initiated by presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan has returned some powers back to states through federal grants.

The 10th Amendment Explained

The powers granted to the state and federal governments are in the Constitution's 10th Amendment, which states,

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Those simple 28 words establish three categories of powers which represent the essence of American federalism:

Expressed or "Enumerated" Powers: Powers granted to the U.S. Congress mainly under Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution.

Reserved Powers: Powers not granted to the federal government in the Constitution and thus reserved to the states.

Concurrent Powers: Powers shared by the federal government and the states.

For example, Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution grants the U.S. Congress certain exclusive powers such as coining money, regulating interstate trade and commerce, declaring war, raising an army and navy and to establish laws of immigration.

Under the 10th Amendment, powers not specifically listed in the Constitution, such as requiring drivers licenses and collecting property taxes, are among the many powers "reserved" to the states.

State vs. Federal Power

The line between the powers of the U.S. government and those of the states is usually clear. Sometimes, it is not. Whenever a state government's exercise of power might be in conflict with the Constitution, there is a battle of "states' rights" which must often be settled by the U.S. Supreme Court.

When there is a conflict between a state and a similar federal law, the federal law and powers supersede state laws and powers.

Brown v. Board of Education

Probably the greatest battle over states' rights-segregation-took place during the 1960s civil rights struggle.

In 1954, the Supreme Court in its landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision ruled that separate school facilities based on race are inherently unequal and thus in violation of the 14th Amendment which states, in part:

"No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

However, several states, predominantly in the South, chose to ignore the Supreme Court's decision and continued the practice of racial segregation in schools and other public facilities.

Plessy v. Ferguson

The states based their stance on the 1896 Supreme Court ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson. In this historic case, the Supreme Court, with only one dissenting vote, ruled that racial segregation was not in violation of the 14th Amendment if the separate facilities were "substantially equal."

In June of 1963, Alabama Gov. George Wallace stood in front of the doors of the University of Alabama preventing Black students from entering and challenging the federal government to intervene.

Later the same day, Wallace gave in to demands by Assistant Attorney Gen. Nicholas Katzenbach and the Alabama National Guard allowing Black students Vivian Malone and Jimmy Hood to register.

During the rest of 1963, federal courts ordered the integration of Black students into public schools throughout the South. In spite of the court orders, and with only 2% of Southern Black children attending formerly all-white schools, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 authorizing the U.S. Justice Department to initiate school desegregation suits was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson.

Reno v. Condon

A less momentous, but perhaps more illustrative case of a constitutional battle of "states' rights" went before the Supreme Court in November 1999, when Attorney General of the United States Janet Reno took on Attorney General of South Carolina Charlie Condon:

The Founding Fathers can certainly be forgiven for forgetting to mention motor vehicles in the Constitution, but by doing so, they granted the power to require and issue driver's licenses to the states under the 10th Amendment.

State departments of motor vehicles (DMV) typically require applicants for driver's licenses to provide personal information including name, address, telephone number, vehicle description, Social Security number, medical information, and a photograph.

After learning that many state DMVs were selling this information to individuals and businesses, the U.S. Congress enacted the Driver's Privacy Protection Act of 1994 (DPPA), establishing a regulatory system restricting the states' ability to disclose a driver's personal information without the driver's consent.

In conflict with the DPPA, South Carolina laws allowed the State's DMV to sell this personal information. Condon filed a suit on behalf of his state claiming that the DPPA violated the 10th and 11th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

How This Ruling Supported State Rights

The district court ruled in favor of South Carolina, declaring the DPPA incompatible with the principles of federalism inherent in the Constitution's division of power between the states and the federal government.

The district court's action essentially blocked the U.S. government's power to enforce the DPPA in South Carolina. This ruling was further upheld by the Fourth District Court of Appeals.

Ruling Appealed and Federal Power Exercised

Reno appealed the decisions to the U.S. Supreme Court.

On Jan. 12, 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court, in the case of Reno v. Condon, ruled that the DPPA did not violate the Constitution due to the U.S. Congress' power to regulate interstate commerce granted to it by Article I, Section 8, clause 3 of the Constitution.

According to the Supreme Court,

"The motor vehicle information which the States have historically sold is used by insurers, manufacturers, direct marketers, and others engaged in interstate commerce to contact drivers with customized solicitations. The information is also used in the stream of interstate commerce by various public and private entities for matters related to interstate motoring. Because drivers' personal, identifying information is, in this context, an article of commerce, its sale or release into the interstate stream of business is sufficient to support congressional regulation."

So, the Supreme Court upheld the Driver's Privacy Protection Act of 1994, and the States cannot sell personal drivers' license information without permission. That's likely appreciated by the individual taxpayer.

On the other hand, the revenue from those lost sales must be made up in taxes, which the taxpayer isn't likely to appreciate. But that's all part of how federalism works.

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U.S. Government System of Federalism and How it Works

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Federalism is the process by which two or more governments share powers over the same geographic area. It is the method used by most democracies in the world. While some countries give more power to the overall central government, others grant more power to the individual states or provinces.

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Section 4                                      Separation of Powers 

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Section 4                                      Separation of Powers 

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Here is an article about what each branch of government does.

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Section 5                                      The Constitution (Preamble and Articles)

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Section 5                                      The Constitution (Preamble and Articles)

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Here is an article containing the preamble and the seven articles of the Constitution.

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Constitution of the United States - We the People

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A highly accessible, easy to use online version of the U. S. Constitution with the full text including the Bill of Rights and the rest of the Amendments includes both sequential and subject indexes.

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Section 6                                        The Bill of Rights

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Section 6                                        The Bill of Rights

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Here is a video explaining what the first ten amendments are

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The Bill of Rights

The Bill of Rights is very important. Every American, whether able to recite them or not, enjoys the protections laid out by the founders. There were originally 12 amendments, but it was the right-assuring list of ten that made it into the Constitution. There is no need to memorize each one, but I suggest you familiarize yourself with each. The following is simply a list of a summary of the first ten amendments. Knowing what each guarantees is important!

Amendment I

This guarantees the freedom of religion, speech, press, and peaceable assembly.

Amendment II

This guarantees the right to bear arms . This doesn't mean tickets to the gun show. Well, not that gun show, anyway. The meaning of the second amendment today is one of the most debated issues in the country. Some say that it only gives the right to bear arms to maintain a militia. Today, that would be handled by the military and police forces. Others say it means that, for hunting and defense, all Americans are given the right to own whatever guns they want. It is best if you read the exact text and make an informed decision for yourself:

Amendment II: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Amendment III

This guarantees no quartering of soldiers, without the consent of the home owner. The third amendment is hard for us to understand today because of the rights we all enjoy. No one has ever made an American in the 21st century put up a soldier for the night, but housing the military was something colonials had to do before and during the revolution. This amendment guarantees you will not have to feed and house soldiers against your will. Imagine if we didn't have the third amendment. A group of soldiers could just show up at midnight and demand to get your kids' beds for the night!

Amendment IV

This amendment guarantees the freedom from unreasonable searches and seizure. The fourth amendment is pretty direct. If the police or another government agency wants to search you, your possessions, or your property, or take your stuff, they need a warrant. Now, if an officer has obvious reason, they can search an individual. But if they want to go through your home or stuff, generally speaking, the fourth amendment means authorities will have to go to a judge and convince them they have good reason and that the search is reasonable.

Amendment V

The right to due process of law, freedom from self-incrimination, double Jeopardy. This means you can't be tried twice for the same crime. The fifth amendment is sometimes misinterpreted by people. Double jeopardy is simple, and due process makes sense. But sometimes you'll hear someone say, 'I plead the fifth' when they don't want to answer a question. This only applies if the answer implicates you in a crime. If you saw your friend steal a candy bar, by law you have to answer a question about that. Otherwise you could get in trouble for obstruction of justice or conspiracy or something. If you stole the candy bar with your friend, you can refuse to answer the question because it could incriminate you.

Amendment VI

The rights of those accused of a crime, such as the right to a speedy and public trial and the right to have an attorney. If you like cop shows, or have some experience with being arrested, you are familiar with some of these rights. The sixth amendment says they can't make you sit in jail for ten years awaiting trial. As you should know from those cop shows, you can and should always ask for an attorney. Under the sixth amendment you aren't guaranteed a good lawyer, but at least they should know the law better than most.

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the bill of rights: the constitution's first 10 amendments - video & lesson transcript | study.com

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The Bill of Rights: The Constitution's First 10 Amendments - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

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The Bill of Rights is very important. Every American, whether able to recite them or not, enjoys the protections laid out by the founders. There were originally 12 amendments, but it was the right-assuring list of ten that made it into the Constitution.

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Section 1                                The Rise of Political Parties

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Section 1                                The Rise of Political Parties

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Here is an article about the first political parties in America

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The Federalist and the Republican Party | American Experience | PBS

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Learn more about the Federalist Party and the Republican Party.

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Section 2                                       The Louisiana Purchase

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Section 2                                       The Louisiana Purchase

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Here is a video about the Louisiana Purchase.

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Section 3                                         The Corps of Discovery

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Section 3                                         The Corps of Discovery

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Here is a video showing what the corps of Discovery was like.

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Section 4                                         The War of 1812

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Section 4                                         The War of 1812

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Here is an article about the War of 1812 and why it still matters.

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Major causes of the war

The tensions that caused the War of 1812 arose from the French revolutionary (1792-99) and Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815). During this nearly constant conflict between France and Britain, American interests were injured by each of the two countries' endeavours to block the United States from trading with the other.

American shipping initially prospered from trade with the French and Spanish empires, although the British countered the U.S. claim that "free ships make free goods" with the belated enforcement of the so-called Rule of 1756 (trade not permitted in peacetime would not be allowed in wartime). The Royal Navy did enforce the act from 1793 to 1794, especially in the Caribbean Sea, before the signing of the Jay Treaty (November 19, 1794). Under the primary terms of the treaty, American maritime commerce was given trading privileges in England and the British East Indies, Britain agreed to evacuate forts still held in the Northwest Territory by June 1, 1796, and the Mississippi River was declared freely open to both countries. Although the treaty was ratified by both countries, it was highly unpopular in the United States and was one of the rallying points used by the pro-French Republicans, led by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, in wresting power from the pro-British Federalists, led by George Washington and John Adams.

After Jefferson became president in 1801, relations with Britain slowly deteriorated, and systematic enforcement of the Rule of 1756 resumed after 1805. Compounding this troubling development, the decisive British naval victory at the Battle of Trafalgar (October 21, 1805) and efforts by the British to blockade French ports prompted the French emperor, Napoleon, to cut off Britain from European and American trade. The Berlin Decree (November 21, 1806) established Napoleon's Continental System, which impinged on U.S. neutral rights by designating ships that visited British ports as enemy vessels. The British responded with Orders in Council (November 11, 1807) that required neutral ships to obtain licenses at English ports before trading with France or French colonies. In turn, France announced the Milan Decree (December 17, 1807), which strengthened the Berlin Decree by authorizing the capture of any neutral vessel that had submitted to search by the British. Consequently, American ships that obeyed Britain faced capture by the French in European ports, and if they complied with Napoleon's Continental System, they could fall prey to the Royal Navy.

The Royal Navy's use of impressment to keep its ships fully crewed also provoked Americans. The British accosted American merchant ships to seize alleged Royal Navy deserters, carrying off thousands of U.S. citizens into the British navy. In 1807 the frigate H.M.S. Leopard fired on the U.S. Navy frigate Chesapeake and seized four sailors, three of them U.S. citizens. London eventually apologized for this incident, but it came close to causing war at the time. Jefferson, however, chose to exert economic pressure against Britain and France by pushing Congress in December 1807 to pass the Embargo Act, which forbade all export shipping from U.S. ports and most imports from Britain.

The Embargo Act hurt Americans more than the British or French, however, causing many Americans to defy it. Just before Jefferson left office in 1809, Congress replaced the Embargo Act with the Non-Intercourse Act, which exclusively forbade trade with Great Britain and France. This measure also proved ineffective, and it was replaced by Macon's Bill No. 2 (May 1, 1810) that resumed trade with all nations but stipulated that if either Britain or France dropped commercial restrictions, the United States would revive nonintercourse against the other. In August, Napoleon insinuated that he would exempt American shipping from the Berlin and Milan decrees. Although the British demonstrated that French restrictions continued, U.S. Pres. James Madison reinstated nonintercourse against Britain in November 1810, thereby moving one step closer to war.

Britain's refusal to yield on neutral rights derived from more than the emergency of the European war. British manufacturing and shipping interests demanded that the Royal Navy promote and sustain British trade against Yankee competitors. The policy born of that attitude convinced many Americans that they were being consigned to a de facto colonial status. Britons, on the other hand, denounced American actions that effectively made the United States a participant in Napoleon's Continental System.

Events on the U.S. northwestern frontier fostered additional friction. Indian fears over American encroachment coincidentally became conspicuous as Anglo-American tensions grew. Shawnee brothers Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa ( The Prophet) attracted followers arising from this discontent and attempted to form an Indian confederation to counteract American expansion. Although Maj. Gen. Isaac Brock, the British commander of Upper Canada (modern Ontario), had orders to avoid worsening American frontier problems, American settlers blamed British intrigue for heightened tensions with Indians in the Northwest Territory. As war loomed, Brock sought to augment his meagre regular and Canadian militia forces with Indian allies, which was enough to confirm the worst fears of American settlers. Brock's efforts were aided in the fall of 1811, when Indiana territorial governor William Henry Harrison fought the Battle of Tippecanoe and destroyed the Indian settlement at Prophet's Town (near modern Battle Ground, Indiana). Harrison's foray convinced most Indians in the Northwest Territory that their only hope of stemming further encroachments by American settlers lay with the British. American settlers, in turn, believed that Britain's removal from Canada would end their Indian problems. Meanwhile, Canadians suspected that American expansionists were using Indian unrest as an excuse for a war of conquest.

Under increasing pressure, Madison summoned the U.S. Congress into session in November 1811. Pro-war western and southern Republicans ( War Hawks) assumed a vocal role, especially after Kentucky War Hawk Henry Clay was elected speaker of the House of Representatives. Madison sent a war message to the U.S. Congress on June 1, 1812, and signed the declaration of war on June 18, 1812. The vote seriously divided the House (79-49) and was gravely close in the Senate (19-13). Because seafaring New Englanders opposed the war, while westerners and southerners supported it, Federalists accused war advocates of expansionism under the ruse of protecting American maritime rights. Expansionism, however, was not as much a motive as was the desire to defend American honour. The United States attacked Canada because it was British, but no widespread aspiration existed to incorporate the region. The prospect of taking East and West Florida from Spain encouraged southern support for the war, but southerners, like westerners, were sensitive about the United States's reputation in the world. Furthermore, British commercial restrictions hurt American farmers by barring their produce from Europe. Regions seemingly removed from maritime concerns held a material interest in protecting neutral shipping. "Free trade and sailors' rights" was not an empty phrase for those Americans.

The onset of war both surprised and chagrined the British government, especially because it was preoccupied with the fight against France. In addition, political changes in Britain had already moved the government to assume a conciliatory posture toward the United States. Prime Minister Spencer Perceval's assassination on May 11, 1812, brought to power a more moderate Tory government under Lord Liverpool. British West Indies planters had been complaining for years about the interdiction of U.S. trade, and their growing influence, along with a deepening recession in Great Britain, convinced the Liverpool ministry that the Orders in Council were averse to British interests. On June 16, two days before the United States declared war, the Orders were suspended.

Some have viewed the timing of this concession as a lost opportunity for peace because slow transatlantic communication meant a month's delay in delivering the news to Washington. Yet, because Britain's impressment policy remained in place and frontier Indian wars continued, in all likelihood the repeal of the Orders alone would not have prevented war.

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War of 1812 | History, Summary, Causes, Effects, Timeline, Facts, & Significance

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War of 1812, conflict fought between the United States and Great Britain over British violations of U.S. maritime rights. It ended with the exchange of ratifications of the Treaty of Ghent. Learn more about the causes, effects, and significance of the War of 1812 in this article.

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Section 5                                The Monroe Doctrine

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Section 5                                The Monroe Doctrine

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Here is an article about the Monroe Doctrine.

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Why was the Monroe Doctrine important?

What were the basic tenets of the Monroe Doctrine?

What motives were behind the Monroe Doctrine?

Who worked on the Monroe Doctrine?

How did the Monroe Doctrine change over time?

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

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

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

The origin and framing of the Monroe Doctrine

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

American History and Politics Quiz

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

Adams noted in his diary,

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

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Monroe Doctrine | History, Summary, & Significance

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

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Section 6                                     Nationalism vs. Sectionalism 

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Section 6                                     Nationalism vs. Sectionalism 

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Here is a picture showing what nationalism and sectionalism are.

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Section 1                                             Jacksonian Democracy

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Section 1                                             Jacksonian Democracy

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Here is an article about the Jacksonian Democracy

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Jacksonian Democracy | United States history

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Other articles where Jacksonian Democracy is discussed: United States: Jacksonian democracy: Nevertheless, American politics became increasingly democratic during the 1820s and '30s. Local and state offices that had earlier been appointive became elective. Suffrage was expanded as property and other restrictions on voting were reduced or abandoned in most states....

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Section 2                                             Native American Removal

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Section 2                                             Native American Removal

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Here is a video about the Indian Removal Act.

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President Jackson and the Indian Removal Bill | Season 21 Episode 7 | American Experience

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President Andrew Jackson supported moving Native Americans west of the Mississippi.

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Section 3                                           Trails West

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Section 3                                           Trails West

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Here is an article about the Oregon, Mormon, and Santa Fe Trails.

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Oregon Trail

The Oregon Trail was a 2,000 mile wheeled wagon route and trail that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon. The beginnings of the Oregon Trail were laid by fur trappers and traders and were only passable on foot or horseback. When the first migrant wagon train was organized, a wagon trail was cleared. This made the trips faster and safer almost every year.

Mormon Trail

The Mormon Trail is the 1,300 mile route that members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints traveled from in the years of 1846 to 1868. Today the Mormon Trail is a part of the United States national trails systems, as the Mormon Pioneer National Historic Trail. The Mormon Trail extends form Nauvoo, Illinois to Salt Lake City, Utah.

Santa Fe Trail

The Santa Fe Trail was a 19th-century transportation route that connected Franklin, Missouri with Santa Fe, New Mexico. At first, it was an international trade route between the United States and Mexico. It also served as the 1846 U.S. invasion route of New Mexico during the Mexican-American war. After the U.S. acquisition of the Southwest, the trail helped open the region to U.S. economic development and settlement, playing a big role in the expansion of the U.S. into the lands it had acquired.

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The Oregon Trail was a 2,000 mile wheeled wagon route and trail that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon. The beginnings of the Oregon Trail were laid by fur trappers and traders and were only passable on foot or horseback. When the first migrant wagon train was organized, a wagon trail was cleared.

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Section 4                                           Texas Becomes a Nation

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Section 4                                           Texas Becomes a Nation

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Here is an article about The Republic of Texas and the Texas Revolution.

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By 1835, Antonio López de Santa Anna had established himself as a dictator in Mexico. Among Anglo-American colonists and Tejanos alike, the call for Texas independence grew louder. On March 2, 1836, a delegation at Washington-on-the-Brazos adopted the Texas Declaration of Independence, and thus was born the Republic of Texas.

Santa Anna had brought his army to Texas to put down the rebellion, and events followed in quick succession. At the time the Declaration was issued, many Texans were fleeing their homes eastward ahead of Santa Anna's army, in what became known as the Runaway Scrape. The Alamo fell to Santa Anna on March 6, and over 300 unarmed Texan prisoners were massacred at Goliad on March 27. Sam Houston's revolutionary army was also retreating eastward as Santa Anna drove for the coast to capture Texas seaports. On April 21, the Texan army took a stand in the bayou country near present-day Houston at a site called San Jacinto. They attacked Santa Anna's army while it was sleeping, and, in a battle lasting only 18 minutes, routed the Mexican army and captured Santa Anna.

Many Texans favored immediate annexation by the United States. However, the proposals went nowhere, because of the risk of continued war with Mexico and Texas' shaky financial status. Even after San Jacinto, Mexico refused to recognize Texas's independence and continued to raid the Texas border. The new government had neither money nor credit, and no governmental structures were in place. Rebuffed by the United States, Texans went about the business of slowly forming a stable government and nation. Despite many difficulties and continued fighting both with Mexico and with Indian tribes, the Texas frontier continued to attract thousands of settlers each year.

In 1841, Santa Anna again became president of Mexico and renewed hostilities with Texas. By this time, sympathy for the Texan cause had grown in the United States, and in 1845, annexation was at last approved. Hostilities with Mexico and the Indians reached a settlement, and Texas was admitted as a state on December 29, 1845. The Republic of Texas, after nine years, eleven months, and seventeen days, was no more.

Subject categories and links in this Republic of Texas online exhibit:

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By 1835, Antonio López de Santa Anna had established himself as a dictator in Mexico. Among Anglo-American colonists and Tejanos alike, the call for Texas independence grew louder. On March 2, 1836, a delegation at Washington-on-the-Brazos adopted the Texas Declaration of Independence, and thus was born the Republic of Texas.

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Section 5                                           Manifest Destiny                                    

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Section 5                                           Manifest Destiny                                    

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Here is a picture of the famous painting

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Section 6                                            Mexican- American War

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Section 6                                            Mexican- American War

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Here is a video about the Mexican- American War.

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What Was the Mexican-American War? | History

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Section 1: The Rise of Political Parties: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/duel-federalist-and-republican-party/
Section 2: The Louisiana Purchase: https://www.britannica.com/event/War-of-1812
Section 3: The Corps of Discovery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrdo7i9LOXM
Section 4: The War of 1812: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hy2qkTTt4RE
Section 5: The Monroe Doctrine: https://www.britannica.com/event/Monroe-Doctrine
Section 6: Nationalism vs. Sectionalism: https://image.slidesharecdn.com/americanromanticism-130404223137-phpapp02/95/american-romanticism-10-638.jpg?cb=1365114779

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Section 1: Jacksonian Democracy: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Jacksonian-Democracy
Section 2: Native American Removal: https://www.pbs.org/video/american-experience-president-jackson-and-indian-removal-bill/
Section 3: Trails West: https://unitedstateswestwardexpansion.weebly.com/trails-west.html
Section 4: Texas Becomes a Nation: https://www.tsl.texas.gov/treasures/republic/index.html
Section 5: Manifest Destiny:                https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRvLv56Nyj9NWpu9v9PMf2hj353z1wZQ6hNRlYQaybFhQb7no6mcA
Section 6: Mexican- American War: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8U9vbZwFZL4

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Section 1                                             The Industrial Revolution

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Section 1                                             The Industrial Revolution

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Here is an article about the Industrial Revolution.

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Fossil Fuels, Steam Power, and the Rise of Manufacturing

Abundant fossil fuels, and the innovative machines they powered, launched an era of accelerated change that continues to transform human society.

The Transformation of the World

Try to imagine what your life would be like without any machines working for you. Make a list of the machines in your household and on your person; you may arrive at a surprising number.

Now imagine earlier generations during their childhood years. How did they move from place to place? How did they communicate? What foods did they eat?

At one time, humans, fueled by the animals and plants they ate and the wood they burned, or aided by their domesticated animals, provided most of the energy in use. Windmills and waterwheels captured some extra energy, but there was little in reserve. All life operated within the fairly immediate flow of energy from the Sun to Earth.

Everything changed during the Industrial Revolution, which began around 1750. People found an extra source of energy with an incredible capacity for work. That source was fossil fuels — coal, oil, and natural gas, though coal led the way — formed underground from the remains of plants and animals from much earlier geologic times. When these fuels were burned, they released energy, originally from the Sun, that had been stored for hundreds of millions of years.

Coal was formed when huge trees from the Carboniferous period (345– 280 million years ago) fell and were covered with water, so that oxygen and bacteria could not decay them. Instead, the pressure of the weight of materials above them compressed them into dark, carbonic, ignitable rock.

Most of the Earth’s oil and gas formed over a hundred million years ago from tiny animal skeletons and plant matter that fell to the bottom of seas or were buried in sediment. This organic matter was compacted by the weight of water and soil. Coal, oil, and gas, despite their relative abundance, are not evenly distributed on Earth; some places have much more than others, due to geographic factors and the diverse ecosystems that existed long ago.

Early Steam Engines

The story of the Industrial Revolution begins on the small island of Great Britain. By the early 18th century, people there had used up most of their trees for building houses and ships and for cooking and heating. In their search for something else to burn, they turned to the hunks of black stone (coal) that they found near the surface of the earth. Soon they were digging deeper to mine it. Their coal mines filled with water that needed to be removed; horses pulling up bucketfuls proved slow going.

To the rescue came James Watt (1736–1819), a Scottish instrument-maker who in 1776 designed an engine in which burning coal produced steam, which drove a piston assisted by a partial vacuum. (There had been earlier steam engines in Britain, and also in China and in Turkey, where one was used to turn the spit that roasts a lamb over a fire.) Its first application was to more quickly and efficiently pump water out of coal mines, to better allow for extraction of the natural resource, but Watt’s engine worked well enough to be put to other uses; he became a wealthy man. After his patent ran out in 1800, others improved upon his engine. By 1900 engines burned 10 times more efficiently than they had a hundred years before.

At the outset of the 19th century, British colonies in North America were producing lots of cotton, using machines to spin the cotton thread on spindles and to weave it into cloth on looms. When they attached a steam engine to these machines, they could easily outproduce India, up until then the world’s leading producer of cotton cloth. One steam engine could power many spindles and looms. This meant that people had to leave their homes and work together in factories.

Early in the 19th century the British also invented steam locomotives and steamships, which revolutionized travel. In 1851 they held the first world’s fair, at which they exhibited telegraphs, sewing machines, revolvers, reaping machines, and steam hammers to demonstrate they that were the world’s leading manufacturer of machinery. By this time the characteristics of industrial society — smoke rising from factories, bigger cities and denser populations, railroads — could be seen in many places in Britain.

Why Britain?

Britain wasn’t the only place that had deposits of coal. So why didn’t the Industrial Revolution begin in China, or somewhere else that boasted this natural resource? Did it start in isolation in Britain, or were there global forces at work that shaped it? Was it geography or cultural institutions that mattered most? Historians have vigorously debated these questions, amassing as much evidence as possible for their answers.

Possible reasons why industrialization began in Britain include:

Shortage of wood and the abundance of convenient coal deposits

Commercial-minded aristocracy; limited monarchy

System of free enterprise; limited government involvement

Government support for commercial projects, for a strong navy to protect ships

Cheap cotton produced by slaves in North America

High literacy rates

Rule of law; protection of assets

Valuable immigrants (Dutch, Jews, Huguenots [French Protestants])

Possible reasons why industrialization did not begin in China include:

Location of China’s coal, which was in the north, while economic activity was centered in the south

Rapid growth of population in China, giving less incentive for machines and more for labor-intensive methods

Confucian ideals that valued stability and frowned upon experimentation and change

Lack of Chinese government support for maritime explorations, thinking its empire seemed large enough to provide everything needed

China’s focus on defending self from nomadic attacks from the north and west

Global forces influencing the development of industrialization in Britain include:

Britain’s location on the Atlantic Ocean

British colonies in North America, which provided land, labor, and markets

Silver from the Americas, used in trade with China

Social and ideological conditions in Britain, and new thoughts about the economy, that encouraged an entrepreneurial spirit

By the way, if you’re wondering what oil and natural gas were doing while coal was powering the Industrial Revolution, they had been discovered long before and were in use, but mostly as fuels for lamps and other light sources. It wasn’t until the mid-20th century that oil caught up — and surpassed — coal in use.

The Spread of the Industrial Revolution

Britain tried to keep secret how its machines were made, but people went there to learn about them and took the techniques back home. Sometimes they smuggled the machines out in rowboats to neighboring countries. The first countries after Britain to develop factories and railroads were Belgium, Switzerland, France, and the states that became Germany. Building a national railroad system proved an essential part of industrialization. Belgium began its railroads in 1834, France in 1842, Switzerland in 1847, and Germany in the 1850s.

Industrialization began in the United States when Samuel Slater emigrated from Britain to Rhode Island in 1789 and set up the first textile factory on U.S soil. He did this from memory, having left Britain without notes or plans that could have been confiscated by British authorities. Francis Cabot Lowell, of Massachusetts, visited Britain from 1810 to 1812 and returned to set up the first power loom and the first factory combining mechanical spinning and weaving in the States. Railroad construction in America boomed from the 1830s to 1870s. The American Civil War (1861–65) was the first truly industrial war — the increasingly urbanized and factory-based North fighting against the agriculture-focused South — and industrialization grew explosively afterward. By 1900 the United States had overtaken Britain in manufacturing, producing 24 percent of the world’s output.

After 1870 both Russia and Japan were forced by losing wars to abolish their feudal systems and to compete in the industrializing world. In Japan, the monarchy proved flexible enough to survive through early industrialization. In Russia, a profoundly rural country, the czar and the nobility undertook industrialization while trying to retain their dominance. Factory workers often worked 13-hour days without any legal rights. Discontent erupted repeatedly, and eventually a revolution brought the Communist party to power in 1917.

Industrialized nations used their strong armies and navies to colonize many parts of the world that were not industrialized, gaining access to the raw materials needed for their factories, a practice known as imperialism. In 1800 Europeans occupied or controlled about 34 percent of the land surface of the world; by 1914 this had risen to 84 percent.

Britain led the 19th-century takeovers and ended the century with the largest noncontiguous empire the world has ever known. (“The sun never sets on the British Empire,” as the British liked to say.) Britain exerted great influence in China and the Ottoman Empire without taking over direct rule, while in India, Southeast Asia, and 60 percent of Africa, it assumed all governmental functions.

In the last decade of the 19th century most European nations grabbed for a piece of Africa, and by 1900 the only independent country left on the continent was Ethiopia. After World War II (1939–1945) Europe’s colonies demanded their independence, which didn’t always happen immediately or without conflict but eventually took root. Now, in the early 21st century, Brazil, China, and India are becoming economic powerhouses, while many European countries are enduring troubled economic times.

Consequences of the Industrial Revolution

The statistics that reflect the effects of industrialization are staggering. In 1700, before the widespread use of fossil fuels, the world had a population of 670 million people. By 2011 the world’s population had reached 6.7 billion, a 10-fold increase in a mere 300 years. In the 20th century alone, the world’s economy grew 14-fold, the per capita income grew almost fourfold, and the use of energy expanded at least 13-fold. This kind of growth has never before occurred in human history.

Many people around the world today enjoy the benefits of industrialization. With so much more energy flowing through human systems than ever before, many of us must do much less hard physical labor than earlier generations did. People today are able to feed more babies and bring them to adulthood. Many people vote and participate in modern states, which provide education, social security, and health benefits. Large numbers of people enjoy levels of wealth, health, education, travel, and life expectancy unimagined before industrialization.

The benefits of industrialization, however, have come at great cost. For one thing, the rate of change (acceleration) is now so rapid that individuals and social systems struggle to keep up. And strong arguments can be made about depersonalization in the age of mass production.

The increased complexity of the industrial system has also brought increased fragility. Industrialization depends on the interaction of many diverse components, any one of which could fail. We know that many of the essential components of the industrial system, and the natural resources it depends on, are being compromised — the soil, the oceans, the atmosphere, the underground water levels, plants, and animals are all at risk. Will growth continue unchecked, or are we approaching the end of an unsustainable industrial era? Whatever the future holds, we’ll be debating — and dealing with — the consequences of modernization for years to come.

For Further Discussion

The innovations of the Industrial Revolution transformed textile production. Can you think of innovations today in some other industry that are transforming that industry and changing the way humans live? Share your answer in the Questions Area below. Then, respond to someone else’s answer, commenting on the characteristics of that transformation that either make it similar to or different from what happened in the Industrial Revolution.

Sources

Allen, Robert C. The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Marks, Robert B. The Origins of the Modern World: A Global and Ecological Narrative. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002.

Strayer, Robert W. Ways of the World: A Brief Global History. Vol. II: Since 1500, Ch. 18: “Revolutions of Industrialization, 1750–1914.” Boston and New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009.

Uglow, Jenny. The Lunar Men: Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002.

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The Industrial Revolution (article) | Khan Academy

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Section 2                                           Interchangeable Parts

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Section 2                                           Interchangeable Parts

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Here is an article about interchangeable parts.

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Before the Industrial Revolution, there was no standardization for producing machine parts. This made maintaining machines very difficult, as each was unique and any replacements...

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Section 3                                          The Rise of Organized Labor                           

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Section 3                                          The Rise of Organized Labor                           

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This article will tell you more about organized labor.

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Workable Peace is an innovative high school humanities curriculum and professional development project for secondary school classrooms. Using new teaching materials and strategies, Workable Peace integrates the study of intergroup conflict and the development of critical thinking, problem-solving, and perspective-taking skills into social studies and humanities content. It gives teachers academically rigorous tools for teaching the major themes and key events of history in ways that enliven the imagination, awaken moral reasoning, and impart social and civic skills that students can use throughout their lives.

The Rise of Organized Labor in the United States teaches about the birth of the labor movement in the United States. Students explore the perspectives and aftermath of the Homestead Strike of 1892 and its impacts on the labor movement. The Pullman Strike Role Play is set in 1894, at the beginning of the strike by Pullman workers and the American Railway Union over the issues of wages and rents, just as the nation was sinking into an economic depression.

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Workable Peace: The Rise of Organized Labor in the United States: The Pullman Strike

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Workable Peace is an innovative high school humanities curriculum and professional development project for secondary school classrooms. Using new teaching materials and strategies, Workable Peace integrates the study of intergroup conflict and the development of critical thinking, problem-solving, and perspective-taking skills into social studies and humanities content.

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Section 4                                         The Transportation Revolution                          

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Section 4                                         The Transportation Revolution                          

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Here is a video about the transportation revolution.

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Section 5                                     Eli Whitney’s Cotton Gin    

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Section 5                                     Eli Whitney’s Cotton Gin    

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Here is a video about the significance of the cotton gin.

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0:00 / 3:36•Watch full video

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Eli Whitney - Inventor of the Cotton Gin | Mini Bio | BIO

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Section 6                                     The Life of a Slave     

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Section 6                                     The Life of a Slave     

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Here is a photo of what a slave life may have looked like.

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Section 1: The Industrial Revolution: https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/big-history-project/acceleration/bhp-acceleration/a/the-industrial-revolution
Section 2: Interchangeable Parts: https://nvaughn.weebly.com/interchangeable-parts.html
Section 3: The Rise of Organized Labor: https://www.cbi.org/book/workable-peace-the-rise-of-organized-labor-in-the-united-states/
Section 4: The Transportation Revolution:                          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5FDMIDcyn0
Section 5: Eli Whitney’s Cotton Gin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLb9QGWK8TA
Section 6: The Life of a Slave:              https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT54My8HYEHM5gtMlz2u3mQgVZpRYreKz8yK2ISt4NOdo2lTTrY

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Section 1                                                Immigration to the United States in the 1800s

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Section 1                                                Immigration to the United States in the 1800s

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Here is a video over immagration in the US in the late 1800's.

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Immigration

Here are some crazy statistics. By the early 1900s, it's estimated that New York City had more Italians in it than any other city but Rome. It also had more Polish people than any other city but Warsaw. Talk about a melting pot! To take a closer look at this, let's explore immigration to the U.S. during the late 1800s.

For starters, an immigrant is one who settles in a foreign country. Most of us have ancestors who, at some point or another, immigrated to the U.S. Whether speaking of the North, South, East, or West, the U.S. is a nation of immigrants.

Prior to the late 1880s, many of the immigrants who came to the U.S. were of Western or Northern European descent. Speaking more specifically, they tended to be English, German, or Norwegian. With their fair skin and their Protestant beliefs, they assimilated very nicely into the white Anglo-Saxon Protestantism that pervaded the country. To state it simply and sadly, they didn't threaten the status quo. However, this all changed as the end of the century brought what history calls the new immigrants.

New Immigrants

Keeping things simple, the new immigrants of the late 1800s came from Southern and Eastern Europe. They landed on the American shore from places like Italy, Poland, Greece, and Russia. Unfortunately, these new immigrants didn't always receive the warmest of welcomes. In fact, they often faced discrimination.

For starters, the new immigrants were perceived as different. Rather than being light-eyed and fair-skinned, many were of darker complexion. Sounding sadly familiar, this bothered some already settled Americans. Also, many of the immigrants were Roman Catholic, not Protestant. After all, many came from Italy! Adding to this, many of those coming from Russia were Jews fleeing religious persecution. Rather than open arms, these groups met discrimination in the U.S. Despite this not-so-warm welcome, the year 1886 alone saw over 300,000 immigrants land on American soil.

Birds of Passage

Some of the immigrants who came in the late 1800s were known as birds of passage. They were usually men who came alone and did not settle in one place. Rather than permanently settling in the U.S., their goal was to return home.

To explain their stories, during the 1800s, commercial farming gobbled up much of the land in Southern and Eastern Europe. Driven by profit, large, wealthy landowners tossed thousands upon thousands of poor farmers from their land.

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immigration patterns in the late 1800s - video & lesson transcript | study.com

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Immigration Patterns in the Late 1800s - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

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Here are some crazy statistics. By the early 1900s, it's estimated that New York City had more Italians in it than any other city but Rome. It also had more Polish people than any other city but Warsaw. Talk about a melting pot! To take a closer look at this, let's explore immigration to the U.S.

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Section 2                                            Second Great Awakening

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Section 2                                            Second Great Awakening

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Here is an article about the Second Great Awakening.

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Charles Finney and the Burned-Over District

The "Burned-Over District" in central and western New York was so named due to the rampant religious revivals of the nineteenth century.

Learning Objectives

Identify the key religious movements that emerged out of the western New York frontier

Key Takeaways

Key Points

The "Burned-Over District" of upstate New York was a region that proved especially susceptible to the religious revivals of the early and mid-nineteenth century.

The term was coined in 1876 by Charles Grandison Finney, who argued that the area had been so heavily evangelized as to have no "fuel" (unconverted population) left over to "burn" (convert). This region provided not only thousands of mainline Protestant converts, but also a number of new religions, utopian experiments, and social radicals.

American religious leaders such as Joseph Smith, Jr., William Miller, and the Fox sisters all came from the district; the Shakers were established in the area as well.

Key Terms

spiritualism: A philosophic doctrine opposing materialism that claims transcendency of the divine being, the altogether spiritual character of reality, and the value of inwardness of consciousness.

shaker: One of a Christian Protestant religious sect who do not marry, popularly so called because of the movements of the members in dancing, which forms a part of their worship.

The "Burned-Over District" refers to the religious scene in early nineteenth-century western and central New York, where religious revivals and Pentecostal movements of the Second Great Awakening took place. The term was coined in 1876 by Charles Grandison Finney, who argued that the area had been so heavily evangelized as to have no "fuel" (unconverted population) left over to "burn" (convert).

Charles Finney

Charles Grandison Finney (August 29, 1792-August 16, 1875) was a leader in the Second Great Awakening and has been called "The Father of Modern Revivalism." Finney was an innovative revivalist, an opponent of Old School Presbyterian theology, an advocate of Christian Perfectionism, a pioneer in social reforms in favor of women and African Americans, a religious writer, and president at Oberlin College.

Born in 1792 in western New York, Finney studied to be a lawyer until 1821, when he experienced a religious conversion and thereafter devoted himself to revivals. He led revival meetings in New York and Pennsylvania, but his greatest success occurred after he accepted a ministry in Rochester, New York, in 1830. At the time, Rochester was a boomtown because the Erie Canal had brought a lively shipping business.

The new middle class-an outgrowth of the Industrial Revolution-embraced Finney's message. It fit perfectly with their understanding of themselves as people shaping their own destiny. Workers also latched onto the message that they, too, could control their salvation, spiritually and perhaps financially. Intense flames of religious fervor swept the area of western New York during this time, in large part due to Finney's work.

Religious Movements in Western New York

Western New York still had a frontier quality at the time, making professional and established clergy scarce. This contributed to the piety of the area and many of the self-taught qualities found in folk religion. Besides producing many mainline Protestant converts, especially in nonconformist sects, the area spawned a number of innovative religious movements, all founded by laypeople during the early nineteenth century.

Joseph Smith, Jr., founded the Latter Day Saint movement, which later gave rise to Mormonism. The Fox sisters conducted some of the first table-rapping seances and helped inspire Spiritualism. The first communal Shaker farm was established in this area of New York during this period. William Miller and his followers, called Millerites, believed that the Second Coming would occur on October 22, 1844. Miller is credited with beginning the religious movement now known as "Adventism," and several major religious denominations are his direct spiritual heirs, such as Seventh-day Adventists and Advent Christians.

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The "Burned-Over District" in central and western New York was so named due to the rampant religious revivals of the nineteenth century. Identify the key religious movements that emerged out of the western New York frontier Key Points The "Burned-Over District" of upstate New York was a region that proved especially susceptible to the religious revivals of the early and mid-nineteenth century.

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Section 3                                          Abolitionist Movement Prior to the Civil War

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Section 3                                          Abolitionist Movement Prior to the Civil War

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Here is an article about the movement to abolish slavery before the civil war.

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Abolitionists were a key part of the Civil War era, though it is hard to say that they caused the war itself. Radical abolitionists certainly intensified sectional feelings in the antebellum era. Arguing that American society had become incapable of dealing with the "slave power," which dominated politics in the economy, post-1830 abolitionists called for more confrontational tactics and strategies to curb bondage in American culture. The speeches of abolitionist Theodore Dwight Weld, the husband of influential female abolitionist Angelina Grimké, are one notable example of the use of this language.

Not only did abolitionists produce more militant attacks on slavery in the years leading to the Civil War, but they often vilified slaveholders themselves as the embodiment of evil. Abolitionists did not form these opinions in a vacuum. Rather, black and white reformers used tales of oppression and violence from enslaved people themselves to argue that bondage violated both scripture and the American creed of equality and justice for all. Abolitionists also cited examples of international emancipation when criticizing American slaveholders. After Great Britain and France issued emancipation edicts in the 1830s and 1840s ending bondage in their colonial possessions, American abolitionists howled that the United States was now the world's largest slaveholding power. It was true: by 1860, there were nearly 4 million slaves in the United States - more than the next two slaveholding powers (Spanish Cuba and Brazil) combined. "What to the slave is the fourth of July?" asked former slave and noted abolitionist Frederick Douglass in a famous speech in Rochester on July 5, 1852. "A mockery," he said.

As abolitionists called for more radical attacks on bondage, and began forming political parties that would limit slavery's expansion in the West, slaveholders and their northern allies vehemently responded. In Congress between 1836 and 1844, a gag rule prevented the discussion of abolitionist petitions. In many northern cities during the 1830s and 40s, anti-abolitionists, fearful that southern emancipation would lead to black migration above the Mason-Dixon line and more fierce competition for free-market jobs, spawned riots that targeted free blacks and abolitionists alike. In 1837 in Alton, Illinois, abolitionist printer Owen Lovejoy was killed by one such mob; the next year in Philadelphia, hundreds of anti-abolitionists gathered outside of Pennsylvania Hall, a gleaming new building dedicated to the abolitionist struggle, to ridicule antislavery men and women. After only four days of operation, the building was torched and never rebuilt.

By the 1850s, sectional violence centered around fugitive slave recoveries. The passage of a stronger fugitive slave law in 1850, which southern masters deemed vital to the security of bondage, prompted a wave of anger throughout the North. With many white citizens radicalized by the law, abolitionists found new friends. Indeed, one might say that the rise of the Republican Party had much to do with residual northern anger over southern political power in the 1850s. When some southerners threatened to leave the Union in the wake of Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860, more than a few northerners expressed exasperation. Ironically, abolitionists tried to keep a low profile during the secessionist winter of 1860-61. Realizing that southern secessionists appeared to be the new radicals who would destroy the American union, even William Lloyd Garrison argued that abolitionists should let American political events proceed without much further commentary from antislavery figures. This 1862 article from the New York Times illustrates the precarious position of abolitionism in the early years of the war. When 11 states left the Union to form the Confederate States of America, abolitionists asserted that the old union had died at the hands of the slave power. The only remedy for American society was emancipation. As Frederick Douglass put it in May of 1861, the best way to end Civil War was by killing slavery once and for all.

If abolitionists did not cause the Civil War, they shaped its meaning.

Life in the North and South, 1847-1861: Before Brother Fought Brother - A complex series of events led to the Civil War. The lessons in this unit are designed to help students develop a foundation on which to understand the basic disagreements between North and South through the investigation of primary source documents.

The Growing Crisis of Sectionalism in Antebellum America: A House Dividing - What characterized the debates over American slavery and the power of the federal government for the first half of the 19th century? How did regional economies and political events produce a widening split between free and slaveholding states in antebellum America? In this unit, students will trace the development of sectionalism in the United States as it was driven by the growing dependence upon, and defense of, black slavery in the southern states.

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The Abolition Seminar. An educational tool for teachers, students, and all who fight for freedom. Menu. Skip to content. About; Learning Modules. The Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World · African Americans and Abolitionism · The Transformation of American Abolitionism · Civil War and Emancipation · Modern Slavery and ...

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Section 4                                         Women’s Rights Movement in the 1800s

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Section 4                                         Women’s Rights Movement in the 1800s

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Here is a photo of some Women's Rights activists of the 1800's.

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Section 5                                        Compromise of 1850

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Section 5                                        Compromise of 1850

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Here is an article over the compromise of 1850.

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The Compromise of 1850 acted as a temporary truce on the issue of slavery, primarily addressing the status of newly acquired territory after the Mexican-American War.

Under the Compromise, California was admitted to the Union as a free state; the slave trade was outlawed in Washington, D.C., a strict new Fugitive Slave Act compelled citizens of free states to assist in capturing enslaved people; and the new territories of Utah and New Mexico would permit white residents to decide whether to allow slavery.

Ultimately, the Compromise did not resolve the issue of slavery's expansion; instead, the fiery rhetoric surrounding the Compromise further polarized the North and the South.

The Mexican Cession begs the slavery question

At the end of the Mexican-American War, the United States gained a large piece of western land known as the Mexican Cession.

The issue of whether to permit slavery in the territories organized in this new land consumed Congress at the end of the 1840s. During the war, Congressman David Wilmot introduced the Wilmot Proviso, a proposal to ban slavery in any new territory acquired from Mexico. The measure passed in the House of Representatives but failed in the Senate.

Congress was also seeking resolutions for several other controversial matters. Antislavery advocates wanted to end the slave trade in the District of Columbia, while proslavery advocates aimed to strengthen fugitive slave laws. But the most pressing problem was California: the many emigrants who had flocked to the territory upon the discovery of gold in the late 1840s had forced the question of its statehood and status as a slave or free state.

The presidential election of 1848 determined which of these issues would be tackled first. Southern Mexican-American war military hero Zachary Taylor was elected president in 1848, much to the satisfaction of southern slaveholders. Although Taylor himself owned more than one hundred slaves, he prioritized national unity over sectional interests. He called on Congress to admit California as a free state.

The Great Compromiser vs. The Great Nullifier

The debate in Congress heated up quickly. Kentucky senator Henry Clay, also known as the " Great Compromiser," offered a series of resolutions, most of which aimed to limit slavery's expansion. Clay answered Taylor's request, calling for California to enter the Union as a free state, but he coupled this antislavery provision with a more robust federal fugitive slave law in hopes of sectional compromise.

Clay's resolution angered the deathly ill John C. Calhoun, also known as the " Great Nullifier" due to his role in the Nullification crisis. Calhoun, too sick to speak, had his friend deliver a speech condemning Clay's proposal as endangering Southern rights and prosperity. Calhoun reinforced the need for a stronger fugitive slave law and condemned what he saw as northern aggression, warning that the South would leave the Union sooner than submit to limitations on slavery.

Soon thereafter, Massachusetts senator Daniel Webster countered Calhoun in his famous "Seventh of March" speech. Webster called for national unity, famously declaring that he spoke "not as a Massachusetts man, not as a Northern man, but as an American." While Webster denounced slavery, he regarded disunion as much worse.

Then, Whig senator William H. Seward declared that slavery was incompatible with the assertion in the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal," and proclaimed that slavery would be extinguished in the country. Seward's speech, in which he invoked the idea of a "higher moral law" than the Constitution and displayed contradictions within the Constitutional text itself, brought abolitionist rhetoric from the margins to the mainstream.

The speeches made in Congress were published in the nation's newspapers. The American public followed with great interest, anxious to learn how the issues of the day, especially the potential advance of slavery, would be resolved.

However, President Taylor and Henry Clay's inability to cooperate stalled the government's resolutions on slavery. Taylor then became suddenly ill and died within five days. Vice President Millard Fillmore succeeded him as president and worked with Congress to flesh out the "final" terms of the compromise.

Provisions of the Compromise of 1850

The package of bills included four major provisions:

A new, stricter Fugitive Slave Law: Congress passed a strict fugitive slave law, which required officials in all states and territories to assist with the return of enslaved people who had escaped to freedom or pay a substantial fine. Ordinary citizens were also required to assist in recapturing escapees or face fines or imprisonment. There were no safeguards to prevent opportunists from claiming that any person of African descent, including free black citizens of the North, was an escapee.

Admission of California as a free state: To balance the Fugitive Slave Act's concession to the South, Congress admitted California as a free state.

Popular sovereignty in New Mexico and Utah territories: Congress avoided a direct decision on the question of slavery in the new Territory of New Mexico and the Territory of Utah, employing the principle of popular sovereignty. This allowed white residents of the territories to decide for themselves whether to allow slavery.

A ban on slave trading in Washington, DC: Antislavery advocates welcomed Congress's ban on the slave trade in Washington, DC, although slavery itself continued to be legal in the capital.

Most Americans breathed a sigh of relief over the deal brokered in 1850, choosing to believe it had saved the Union. However, the compromise stood as a temporary truce in an otherwise white-hot sectional conflict. Popular sovereignty paved the way for unprecedented violence in the West over the question of slavery.

What do you think?

Who do you think got the better deal in the Compromise of 1850, the North or the South? Why?

How did the Compromise of 1850 amplify the threat of disunion?

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The Compromise of 1850 (article) | Khan Academy

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The Compromise of 1850 acted as a temporary truce on the issue of slavery, primarily addressing the status of newly acquired territory after the Mexican-American War.

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Section 6                                        Kansas/Nebraska Act

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Section 6                                        Kansas/Nebraska Act

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This article is about the Kansas/Nebraska Act.

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Facts, information and articles about the Kansas-Nebraska Act, an event of Westward Expansion from the Wild West

Kansas-Nebraska Act summary: The US Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act on May 30, 1854 and thereby the territories of Kansas and Nebraska were legally created. The controversial part of the Kansas-Nebraska Act was allowing settlers in those territories to decide for themselves whether they would permit slavery in their respective territories by taking a vote on the question. The Kansas-Nebraska Act was used to repeal the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which was used to prohibit slavery north of 36°30´ latitude. As the North of the US was against slavery and held the Missouri Compromise to be a valid and long-term agreement, this caused quite a tension. The South was inclined to support slavery and so the Act met with nothing but a hearty approval there.

Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois was a man behind the Act. His original intention was to prepare conditions for opening many thousands of farms in the two territories and for building a Transcontinental Railroad through the Midwest. The problem was letting the voters decide whether the slavery would be permitted or not, just because they happened to be there at the time of voting. Those who opposed slavery feared that it would be easy for rich slave owners from the South to buy the best land in Kansas and influence the voting outcome as well.

The crowds of potential voters flooded into Kansas and the result was a bloody conflict between the opponents and supporters of slavery. One new political party emerged from the controversy: the new Republican Party soon assumed a dominant position on the North and in 1860, their member, Abraham Lincoln, was elected president.

Articles Featuring Kansas-Nebraska Act From History Net Magazines

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Kansas-Nebraska Act summary: The US Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act on May 30, 1854 and thereby the territories of Kansas and Nebraska were legally created. The controversial part of the Kansas-Nebraska Act was allowing settlers in those territories to decide for themselves whether they would permit slavery in their respective territories by taking a vote on the question.

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Section 7                                         Lincoln/Douglas Debates

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Section 7                                         Lincoln/Douglas Debates

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Here is a photo on the Lincoln-Douglas Debate.

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Section 8                                             Election of 1860

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Section 8                                             Election of 1860

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Here is a video over Lincoln and the election of 1860.

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Section 1: Immigration to the United States in the 1800s: https://study.com/academy/lesson/immigration-patterns-in-the-late-1800s.html
Section 2: Second Great Awakening: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-ushistory/chapter/the-second-great-awakening/
Section 3: Abolitionist Movement Prior to the Civil War: https://www.abolitionseminar.org/did-abolitionists-cause-the-civil-war/
Section 4: Women’s Rights Movement in the 1800s:                    https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR4egh3sK1ctzoJ6xmPhrJQg8wjNOHaEvKzna1_YgkQMSAB0B9crA
Section 5: Compromise of 1850: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/civil-war-era/sectional-tension-1850s/a/compromise-of-1850
Section 6: Kansas/Nebraska Act: https://www.historynet.com/kansas-nebraska-act
Section 7: Lincoln/Douglas Debates:                    https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQOrSO7333uCJXCsJtVYg1gTWMtq5R1vBOlVGzQJ7Sr4Slq-Rai3A
Section 8: Election of 1860: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OZWfylLtJk

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Section 1                                        The Fall of Ft. Sumter

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Section 1                                        The Fall of Ft. Sumter

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Here is a video about the fall of Fort Sumter and the start of the Civil War.

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Section 2                                           The Emancipation Proclamation

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Section 2                                           The Emancipation Proclamation

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Here is an article about Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.

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click image for close-up

Click here for the text of this historical document.

As early as 1849, Abraham Lincoln believed that slaves should be emancipated, advocating a program in which they would be freed gradually. Early in his presidency, still convinced that gradual emacipation was the best course, he tried to win over legistators. To gain support, he proposed that slaveowners be compensated for giving up their "property." Support was not forthcoming.

In September of 1862, after the Union's victory at Antietam, Lincoln issued a preliminary decree stating that, unless the rebellious states returned to the Union by January 1, freedom would be granted to slaves within those states. The decree also left room for a plan of compensated emancipation. No Confederate states took the offer, and on January 1 Lincoln presented the Emancipation Proclamation. The proclamation declared, "all persons held as slaves within any States, or designated part of the State, the people whereof shall be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free."

The Emancipation Proclamation did not free all slaves in the United States. Rather, it declared free only those slaves living in states not under Union control. William Seward, Lincoln's secretary of state, commented, "We show our symapthy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free." Lincoln was fully aware of the irony, but he did not want to antagonize the slave states loyal to the Union by setting their slaves free.

The proclamation allowed black soldiers to fight for the Union -- soldiers that were desperately needed. It also tied the issue of slavery directly to the war.

Image Credit: Boston Athenaeum

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click image for close-up Click here for the text of this historical document. As early as 1849, Abraham Lincoln believed that slaves should be emancipated, advocating a program in which they would be freed gradually. Early in his presidency, still convinced that gradual emacipation was the best course, he tried to win over legistators.

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Section 3                                             Clara Barton and the American Red Cross

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Section 3                                             Clara Barton and the American Red Cross

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Here is an article about Clara Barton and the foundation of the American Red Cross.

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Clara Barton Learns About the International Red Cross

Clara embarked on an extensive nationwide lecture tour following the Civil War, captivating audiences with tales of her battlefield experiences. While resting in Europe under her doctor's orders after the exhaustive tour, Clara was contacted by officials from the International Red Cross. Word of her wartime nursing and relief work had reached them, and they approached her to learn why her homeland was hesitant, even resistant, to adopt the Treaty of Geneva and establish a similar order in the United States. Clara told the officials that neither she nor her countrymen were aware of the organization. Clara quickly became involved; for her first effort for the International Red Cross she established a workroom in Strasbourg during the Franco-Prussian War to give residents of the besieged city some useful employment.

After learning firsthand how the group functioned, Clara realized the Red Cross could provide essential civilian disaster relief as well as wartime aid. She returned home in 1873 and worked ardently to convince her fellow Americans of the organization's merits. After eight long years, Clara accomplished her greatest feat, founding the American National Red Cross in 1881.

Note:

Test your knowledge: How did Clara Barton's experiences during the Civil War convince her that America needed a Red Cross society? At what age did Clara first learn about the International Red Cross? How old was she when she founded the American Red Cross?
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Early American Red Cross Disaster Relief Services: 1889 Johnstown Flood

Clara Barton spent a decade organizing the American National Red Cross, which was officially incorporated in 1882. Under her leadership the Red Cross assisted with relief efforts following natural and manmade disasters, including forest fires, earthquakes, and epidemics. Clara galvanized the American people to assist their countrymen in times of hardship and loss.

Johnstown, Pennsylvania was a community of 30,000 built on a floodplain below a man-made lake. The dam that created the lake was poorly maintained and every spring it was feared the dam would give way. When the dam finally broke on May 31,1889 after a night of heavy rains, a staggering wall of twenty million tons of water rushed toward the town and consumed everything in its path. Over 2,000 people died and hundreds were missing. The American Red Cross immediately leaped into action, issuing a national emergency call for aid.

Clara and a staff of fifty doctors and nurses arrived in Johnstown days after the disaster and stayed on-site for six months, setting up hospital tents and helping survivors to get back on their feet. Donations of food, clothing, and building materials poured in from around the nation, including a large stock of lumber from Iowa. With no place to house the citizens or tons of supplies, Clara and her assistant, Dr. Julian Hubbell, designed a structure that could be built rapidly without stopping to saw the donated lumber. In four days they erected a large warehouse for the donated materials. Their building design proved so successful that a half-dozen "Red Cross hotels" to shelter the homeless were built from the same plan. Once the hotels were no longer needed, Clara had the buildings disassembled and the materials shipped to her home in Washington, DC for storage.

Note:

What purpose does the American Red Cross serve today? What kinds of services do they provide?
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The Clara Barton National Historic Site

Clara never put anything to waste. When construction began in 1891 on a Red Cross supplies warehouse near our nation's capital, she thought of using the surplus lumber from relief work at Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Having once served as a hotel for homeless victims of the epic flood, the large warehouse at Glen Echo, Maryland served as the first permanent headquarters of the national Red Cross organization as well as a residence for Clara.

Clara spent the last 15 years of her life in her Glen Echo home. After resigning from the presidency of the American Red Cross in 1904, Clara remained at her unique five-story home with various friends and supporters. The following year she founded the National First Aid Society, to support community aid programs.

Note:

Today the National Park Service administers the five-story structure on Oxford Drive in Glen Echo, Maryland as the Clara Barton National Historic Site, open to visitors every day of the year except December 25 -- her birthday.
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Clara embarked on an extensive nationwide lecture tour following the Civil War, captivating audiences with tales of her battlefield experiences. While resting in Europe under her doctor's orders after the exhaustive tour, Clara was contacted by officials from the International Red Cross.

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Section 4                                         The Battle of Gettysburg

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Section 4                                         The Battle of Gettysburg

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Here is a photo of the Battle of Gettysburg.

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Section 5                                         The Battle of Vicksburg 

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Section 5                                         The Battle of Vicksburg 

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Here is a video about the importance of the Battle of Vicksburg.

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Here's Why the Battle of Vicksburg Was So Important

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Section 6                                          Southern Surrender at Appomattox Courthouse 

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Section 6                                          Southern Surrender at Appomattox Courthouse 

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This article will tell you more about the surrender at the Appomattox Courthouse.

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Painting by Tom Lovell of General Lee and Grant seated at separate tables during the "writing" portion of the meeting. This painting was commissioned by National Geographic for their April 1965, "centennial" edition.
Tom Lovell

Lee arrived at the McLean house about one o'clock and took a seat in the parlor. A half hour later, the sound of horses on the stage road signaled the approach of General Grant. Entering the house, Grant greeted Lee in the center of the room. The generals presented a contrasting appearance;Lee in a new uniform and Grant in his mud-spattered field uniform. Grant, who remembered meeting Lee once during the Mexican War, asked the Confederate general if he recalled their meeting. Lee replied that he did, and the two conversed in a very cordial manner, for approximately 25 minutes. The subject had not yet gotten around to surrender until finally, Lee, feeling the anguish of defeat, brought Grant's attention to it. Grant, who later confessed to being embarrassed at having to ask for the surrender from Lee, said simply that the terms would be just as he had outlined them in a previous letter.

The terms would parole officers and enlisted men but required that all Confederate military equipment be relinquished. The discussion between the generals then drifted into the prospects for peace, but Lee, once again taking the lead, asked Grant to put his terms in writing. When Grant finished, he handed the terms to his former adversary, and Lee -- first donning spectacles used for reading-- quietly looked them over. When he finished reading, the bespectacled Lee looked up at Grant and remarked "This will have a very happy effect on my army." Lee asked if the terms allowed his men to keep their horses, for in the Confederate army men owned their mounts. Lee explained that his men would need these animals to farm once they returned to civilian life. Grant responded that he would not change the terms as written (which had no provisions allowing private soldiers to keep their mounts) but would order his officers to allow any Confederate claiming a horse or a mule to keep it. General Lee agreed that this concession would go a long way toward promoting healing. Grant's generosity extended further. When Lee mentioned that his men had been without rations for several days, the Union commander arranged for 25, 000 rations to be sent to the hungry Confederates. After formal copies of the surrender terms, and Lee's acceptance, had been drafted and exchanged, the meeting ended.

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The Surrender Meeting - Appomattox Court House National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service)

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Lee arrived at the McLean house about one o'clock and took a seat in the parlor. A half hour later, the sound of horses on the stage road signaled the approach of General Grant. Entering the house, Grant greeted Lee in the center of the room.

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Section 1: The Fall of Ft. Sumter:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjcpvAsZTgE
Section 2: The Emancipation Proclamation:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h1549.html
Section 3: Clara Barton and the American Red Cross:
http://www.clarabartonbirthplace.org/the-american-red-cross/
Section 4: The Battle of Gettysburg:
https://www.history.com/.image/ar_16:9%2Cc_fill%2Ccs_srgb%2Cfl_progressive%2Cg_faces:center%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_768/MTY1MTcxMDk1MzI0ODYyMDI1/battle-of-gettysburg-gettyimages-3090040-copy.jpg
Section 5: The Battle of Vicksburg:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sE1bYVwH1jM
Section 6: Southern Surrender at Appomattox Courthouse:
https://www.nps.gov/apco/learn/historyculture/the-surrender-meeting.htm

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Section 1                                          The 13th Amendment

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Section 1                                          The 13th Amendment

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Here is an article over the importance of the 13th Amendment.

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Thirteenth Amendment, amendment (1865) to the Constitution of the United States that formally abolished slavery. Although the words slavery and slave are never mentioned in the Constitution, the Thirteenth Amendment abrogated those sections of the Constitution which had tacitly codified the "peculiar institution": Article I, Section 2, regarding apportionment of representation in the House of Representatives, which had been "determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons provided for the appointment," with "all other persons" meaning slaves; Article I, Section 9, which had established 1807 as the end date for the importation of slaves, referred to in this case as "such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit"; and Article IV, Section 2, which mandated the return to their owners of fugitive slaves, here defined as persons "held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another."

The Emancipation Proclamation, declared and promulgated by Pres. Abraham Lincoln in 1863 during the American Civil War, freed only those slaves held in the Confederate States of America. In depriving the South of its greatest economic resource-abundant free human labour-Lincoln's proclamation was intended primarily as an instrument of military strategy. Only when emancipation was universally proposed through the Thirteenth Amendment did it become national policy. Moreover, the legality of abolition by presidential edict was questionable.

The full text of the amendment is:

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

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

The amendment was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, but did not pass in the House until January 31, 1865. The joint resolution of both bodies that submitted the amendment to the states for approval was signed by Lincoln on February 1, 1865. However, he did not live to see its ratification. Assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, he died on April 15, 1865, and the amendment was not ratified by the required number of states until December 6, 1865.

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Thirteenth Amendment | Definition, Significance, & Facts

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Thirteenth Amendment, amendment (1865) to the Constitution of the United States that formally abolished slavery. Although the words 'slavery' and 'slave' are never mentioned in the Constitution, the Thirteenth Amendment abrogated those sections of the Constitution which had tacitly codified the 'peculiar institution.'

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Section 2                                        The 14th Amendment

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Section 2                                        The 14th Amendment

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Here is an article over the 14th Amendment.

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14th Amendment: Simplified Summary, Text & Impact

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The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1868, granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States—including former slaves—and guaranteed all citizens “equal protection of the laws.”

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Section 3                                          The 15th Amendment

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Section 3                                          The 15th Amendment

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Here is an article over the 15th Amendment.

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Fifteenth Amendment, amendment (1870) to the Constitution of the United States that guaranteed that the right to vote could not be denied based on "race, color, or previous condition of servitude." The amendment complemented and followed in the wake of the passage of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth amendments, which abolished slavery and guaranteed citizenship, respectively, to African Americans. The passage of the Fifteenth Amendment and its subsequent ratification (February 3, 1870) effectively enfranchised African American men while denying the right to vote to women of all colours. Women would not receive that right until the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.

The full text of the Fifteenth Amendment is:

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

The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

After the Civil War, during the period known as Reconstruction (1865-77), the amendment was successful in encouraging African Americans to vote. Many African Americans were even elected to public office during the 1880s in the states that formerly had constituted the Confederate States of America. By the 1890s, however, efforts by several states to enact such measures as poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses-in addition to widespread threats and violence-had completely reversed those trends. By the beginning of the 20th century, nearly all African Americans in the states of the former Confederacy were again disenfranchised.

Poll taxes in federal elections were abolished by the Twenty-fourth Amendment (1964), and in 1966 the Supreme Court extended that ban to state and local elections. The Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965 abolished prerequisites to registration and voting and also allowed for federal "preclearance" of changes in election laws in certain ("covered") jurisdictions, including nine mostly Southern states. In Shelby County v. Holder (2013), however, the Supreme Court struck down the section of the VRA that had been used to identify covered jurisdictions, effectively making the preclearance requirement unenforceable.

Chelsey Parrott-Sheffer The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

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Fifteenth Amendment | Definition, Significance, & Facts

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Fifteenth Amendment, amendment (1870) to the U.S. Constitution that guaranteed that the right to vote could not be denied based on 'race, color, or previous condition of servitude.' Its ratification effectively enfranchised African American men while denying the right to vote to women of all colors.

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Section 4                                          The Election of 1876

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Section 4                                          The Election of 1876

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Here is a photo showing the outcome of the election of 1876.

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Section 5                                      Plessy v. Ferguson

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Section 5                                      Plessy v. Ferguson

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Here is a video about the dispute between Plessy and Ferguson.

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A mere thirty-five years after slavery ended, a sophisticated and strategic group of African Americans challenged the Jim Crow Separate Car Act in the state of Louisiana by placing a fair-skinned Creole black man named Homer Plessy on the "whites only" railcar. This video presents how the landmark Supreme Court case Plessy v.

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Section 1: The 13th Amendment:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Thirteenth-Amendment
Section 2: The 14th Amendment:
https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/fourteenth-amendment
Section 3: The 15th Amendment:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Fifteenth-Amendment
Section 4: The Election of 1876:
https://cdn.britannica.com/19/73719-050-B5FE11EA/election-Results-American-Votes-Candidate-Sources-vote-1876.jpg
Section 5: Plessy v. Ferguson:
https://kcpt.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/bf09.socst.us.const.plessy/plessy-v-ferguson/

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Section 1                                         The  Transcontinental Railroad

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Section 1                                         The  Transcontinental Railroad

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Here is a video about the transcontinental railroad.

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Section 2                                      Massacre at Wounded Knee

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Section 2                                      Massacre at Wounded Knee

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Here is a picture of what the Massacre at Wounded Knee may have looked like.

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Section 3                                         Dawes General Allotment Act of 1887

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Section 3                                         Dawes General Allotment Act of 1887

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Here is an article about the Dawes General Allotment Act of 1887.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Section 4                                            The Homestead and Morrill Acts

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Section 4                                            The Homestead and Morrill Acts

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Here is an article about the Homestead and Morrill Acts.

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

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Section 1                                         The Bessemer Process 

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Section 1                                         The Bessemer Process 

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Here is a video about the Bessemer Process.

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Manufacture of Steel by Bessemer Process

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Section 2                                    Growth of Invention - late 1800s 

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Section 2                                    Growth of Invention - late 1800s 

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Here is an article about the inventions of the 19th century.

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Civil War was a historic event of such magnitude that it forever changed the way Americans thought about their history and divided the cultural understanding of the nation into two distinct periods: everything that came before the war, and everything that happened afterward. The Second Industrial Revolution (1865 to 1900) was another such watershed era that redefined not only the American way of life but life around the world. Inventions that relied on newly harnessed means of putting electricity, steel, and petroleum to use spurred the growth of railways and steamships, and transformed everything from farming to manufacturing. The 19th century was the age of machine tools-tools that made tools and machines that made parts for other machines, including interchangeable parts. The 19th century brought us the assembly line, speeding up the factory production of goods. It also gave birth to the notion of a professional scientist. In fact, the word "scientist" was first used in 1833 by William Whewell. Inventions including the telegraph, typewriter, and the telephone led to faster and wider means of communication. The following list (by no means exhaustive) chronicles some of the most important innovations that took shape in the 19th Century.

The first 10 years the 19th century may not have been the most fertile for new technology but the impending Second Industrial Revolution would follow soon enough. Here are some of that decade's most important innovations:

1800-French silk weaver J.M. Jacquard invents the Jacquard loom.

​1800-Count Alessandro Volta invents the battery.

1804-Friedrich Winzer (Frederick Albert Winsor) patented coal-gas.

1804-English mining engineer Richard Trevithick develops a steam-powered locomotive but is unable to produce a viable prototype.

1809-Humphry Davy invents the arc lamp, the first electric light.

1810-German Frederick Koenig invents an improved printing press.

19th-Century Roots, 21st-Century Technology

Everyday things consumers took for granted by the 20th century-the light bulb, telephones, typewriters, sewing machines, and phonographs-were all products of the 19th century. Even as we embrace the 21st-century technology that has rendered some of these marvels obsolete, while we might not know the names of the 19th-century inventors who created the precursors to computers, smartphones, and streaming media, more than a century after their inventions first saw the light of day their ideas live on, continuing to inspire current and future generations of inventors, scientists, and innovators.

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The lightbulb, the telephone, and the sewing machine were all invented during the Second Industrial Revolution helped to define 19th-century America.

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Section 3                                       The Rise of Big Business

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Section 3                                       The Rise of Big Business

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Here is an article about the rise of big business.

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Printable Version Between 1869 and 1910, the value of American manufacturing rose from $3 billion to $13 billion. The steel industry produced just 68,000 tons in 1870, but 4.2 million tons in 1890. The central vehicle of this surge in economic productivity was the modern corporation.

In recent years, Americans have often been told that we have entered a "new economy." The older industrial economy, it is said, is giving way to a new global economy based on computers, the Internet, telecommunications, and entertainment. This is not the first new economy in American history. Following the Civil War, a new economy emerged in the United States resting on steam-powered manufacturing, the railroad, the electric motor, the internal combustion engine, and the practical application of chemistry. Unlike the pre-Civil War economy, this new one was dependent on raw materials from around the world and it sold goods in global markets.

The transformations that took place in American business following the Civil War involved far more than a change in industrial techniques or productivity. Business organization expanded in size and scale. There was an unparalleled increase in factory production and mechanization. By the beginning of the 20th century, the major sectors of the nation's economy--banking, manufacturing, meat packing, oil refining, railroads, and steel--were dominated by a small number of giant corporations.

The rise of big business was accompanied by the emergence of a new class of millionaires. At the beginning of the Civil War, there were only 400 millionaires in the United States. By 1892, the number had risen to 4,047.

The emergence of the modern corporation was accompanied by many positive developments. Through mechanization, standardization, and economies of scale, economic productivity soared. Between 1890 and 1929, the average urban worker put in one less day of work a week and brought home three times as much in pay. The proportion of families confined to the drudgery of farm life declined by half. Families enjoyed comforts and conveniences that were unimaginable before 1890. By 1929, nine out of ten Americans had electricity and indoor plumbing; four-fifths had automobiles; two-thirds had radios; and nearly half refrigerators and phonographs. At the same time, infant mortality fell by two-thirds, and life expectancy increased by 20 years. In 1888, Charles E. Perkins, the president of the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad asked:

Have not the great merchants, great manufacturers, great inventors, done more for the world than preachers and philanthropists? Can there be any doubt that cheapening the cost of necessaries and conveniences of life is the most powerful agent of civilization and progress?

Yet the rise of big business also produced many anxieties. Corporations were accused of abusing workers, corrupting the political process, and producing shoddy, unsafe products. Many feared that corporate power allowed companies to fix prices and influence government decision-making.

Copyright 2019 Digital History

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Printable Version Between 1869 and 1910, the value of American manufacturing rose from $3 billion to $13 billion. The steel industry produced just 68,000 tons in 1870, but 4.2 million tons in 1890. The central vehicle of this surge in economic productivity was the modern corporation.

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Section 4                                      The Antitrust Movement

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Section 4                                      The Antitrust Movement

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Here is an article about America's Antitrust Movement.

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Centre for International Governance Innovation

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Prominent Republicans and Democrats alike have taken notice that there may be more to be gained politically by adopting a critical stance on big tech.

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Section 5                                       The Labor Movement

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Section 5                                       The Labor Movement

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Here is a picture of the Labor Movement.

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Section 1                                         Rise of Immigration - late 1800s

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Section 1                                         Rise of Immigration - late 1800s

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Here is a picture of Ellis Island and the rise of immigration.

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Section 2                                                 The Growth of Cities

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Section 2                                                 The Growth of Cities

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Here is a video about the growth of cities.

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Urbanisation and the growth of global cities

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Section 3                                         Tenement Life - Causes and Effects

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Section 3                                         Tenement Life - Causes and Effects

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Here is an article about the tenement life.

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TENEMENTS. The New York City Tenement House Act of 1867 defined a tenement as any rented or leased dwelling that housed more than three independent families. Tenements were first built to house the waves of immigrants that arrived in the United States during the 1840s and 1850s, and they represented the primary form of urban working-class housing until the New Deal.

A typical tenement building was from five to six stories high, with four apartments on each floor. To maximize the number of renters, builders wasted little space. Early tenements might occupy as much as 90 percent of their lots, leaving little room behind the building for privies and water pumps and little ventilation, light, or privacy inside the tenement. With a large extended family and regular boarders to help pay the rent, which could otherwise eat up over half of a family's income, a tenement apartment might house as many as from ten to twelve people at a time. These tenement residents often also worked in the building in such occupations as cigar rolling and garment making.

From the beginning, reformers attacked tenement conditions. In New York City, early attempts at reform included fire-prevention measures, the creation of a Department of Survey and Inspection of Buildings in 1862, and the founding of the Metropolitan Board of Health in 1866. Meanwhile, city tenements were getting increasingly

crowded: by 1864, approximately 480,400 of New York City's more than 700,000 residents lived in some 15,300 tenement buildings.

New York State passed a Tenement House Law on 14 May 1867, the nation's first comprehensive housing reform law. It established the first standards for minimum room size, ventilation, and sanitation. It required fire escapes and at least one toilet or privy (usually outside) for every twenty inhabitants. However, enforcement was lax.

An 1879 amendment to the 1867 legislation required more open space on a building lot and stipulated that all tenement rooms open onto a street, rear yard, or air shaft. The measure was designed to increase ventilation and fight diseases, such as tuberculosis, that ravaged tenement neighborhoods. To meet the standards of the 1879 law, builders designed the "dumbbell tenement" with narrow airshafts on each side to create a dumbbell-like shape from above. Despite slightly better fireproofing and ventilation, reformers attacked these buildings as only a limited improvement on existing conditions.

In 1890, Jacob Riis's How the Other Half Lives rallied middle-class reformers to the cause of improving tenement life. His photos and essays drew attention to the health and housing problems of tenement neighborhoods.

The most significant New York State law to improve deteriorating tenement conditions was the Tenement Act of 1901, promoted by a design competition and exhibition held by the Charity Organization Society in 1900. By that time, the city's Lower East Side was home to the most densely populated buildings on earth. The neighborhood's Tenth Ward had a population of 69,944, approximately 665 people per acre.

The 1901 legislation, opposed by the real estate industry on the grounds that it would discourage new construction, improved tenement buildings. The law mandated better lighting and fireproofing. Most important, it required that privies be replaced with indoor toilet facilities connected to the city sewers, with one toilet for every two apartments.

Beginning in the New Deal era, reformers' strategies changed. Drawing on a tradition of "model tenements" and new government interest in housing construction, reformers designed public housing projects. Their plans emphasized open space, much as an earlier generation had passed laws to provide more light and fresh air for urban working-class families. The imposed standards, however, often created new problems. Building closures and slum clearance displaced many working-class families, while new high-rise public housing often fell victim to segregation and neglect. Although reformers continued to attack working-class living conditions, social pressures sustained many of the problems of poverty and overcrowding.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bauman, John F., Roger Biles, and Kristin M. Szylvian. From Tenements to the Taylor Homes: In Search of an Urban Housing Policy in Twentieth-Century America. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000.

Day, Jared N. Urban Castles: Tenement Housing and Landlord Activism in New York City, 1890-1943. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.

Ford, James. Slums and Housing, with Special Reference to New York City: History, Conditions, Policy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1936.

Hall, Peter. Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century. New York: Blackwell, 1988.

Lower East Side Tenement Museum. Home page at http://www.tenement.org.

Plunz, Richard. A History of Housing in New York City. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990.

Riis, Jacob. How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York. New York: Scribners, 1890.

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TENEMENTSTENEMENTS. The New York [1] City Tenement House Act of 1867 defined a tenement as any rented or leased dwelling that housed more than three independent families.

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Section 4                                                   The Growth of Mass Communication - late 1800s

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Section 4                                                   The Growth of Mass Communication - late 1800s

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Here is an article about the growth of Mass Communication in the late 1800s.

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Section 1: The Transcontinental Railroad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvQyBcbHJkg
Section 2: Massacre at Wounded Knee: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcSazpohNMkEmdXOMPx_C7JadaeOX4hjiarHEO2OTFwCI9v_4tik
Section 3: Dawes General Allotment Act of 1887:  http://www.nativepartnership.org/site/PageServer?pagename=airc_hist_allotmentact
Section 4: The Homestead and Morrill Acts: https://into-the-westah1.weebly.com/homestead-act-and-morrill-land.html

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Section 1: The Bessemer Process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kSp5K70cYc
Section 2: Growth of Invention - late 1800s: https://www.thoughtco.com/inventions-nineteenth-century-4144740
Section 3: The Rise of Big Business: http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=2&psid=3165
Section 4: The Antitrust Movement: https://www.cigionline.org/articles/americas-antitrust-movement
Section 5: The Labor Movement: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcRL-rCg_WtZxjWbC9OUHPIFFceIOCcJ5smnVt1ITZIDkdZpvR3j

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Section 1: Rise of Immigration - late 1800s: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcQlLkVPe0xQ3wMqtJ_3pkPAiJLUxjBu1oaiRfI-TVmOeVG_k845
Section 2: The Growth of Cities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpBbnL3pMRA
Section 3: Tenement Life - Causes and Effects: https://www.encyclopedia.com/literature-and-arts/art-and-architecture/architecture/tenements
Section 4: The Growth of Mass Communication - late 1800s: https://informationwanted.wordpress.com/2014/07/22/print-media-mass-communication-in-19th-century-america/

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Section 1: Rise of Political Machines: https://www.britannica.com/topic/political-machine
Section 2: Progressive Reform: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0Q4zPR4G7M
Section 3: Rise of Labor Organizations: https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/labor
Section 4: Women's Suffrage and the Temperance Movement: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/imagesq=tbn%3AANd9GcT1k0bWUh9oLcjAqcP6PJKi-_9JKtcMbesA09tGwxg1y2yfWqED
Section 5:  Election of 1912: https://www.britannica.com/video/81667/election-1912
Section 6: Isolationism vs. Imperialism: https://www.lewrockwell.com/2006/11/jeff-taylor/imperialism-and-isolationism-contrasting-approaches-to-foreign-policy/

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Section 1: Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEGVcSpfM9k
Section 2: New Technology of WWI: https://www.loc.gov/collections/world-war-i-rotogravures/articles-and-essays/military-technology-in-world-war-i/
Section 3: President Wilson's 14 Points: https://www.britannica.com/event/Fourteen-Points
Section 4: Treaty of Versailles: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcSrDO-MNIG_yjhLeJwMiBEinIb3n5LRRF3ElFEOd0gzWc9oBDlC

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Section 1                                           Rise of Political Machines (Late 1800s) 

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Section 1                                           Rise of Political Machines (Late 1800s) 

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Here is an article about the rise of political machines in the late 1800s.

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political machine, in U.S. politics, a party organization, headed by a single boss or small autocratic group, that commands enough votes to maintain political and administrative control of a city, county, or state.

The rapid growth of American cities in the 19th century, a result of both immigration and migration from rural areas, created huge problems for city governments, which were often poorly structured and unable to provide services. In those conditions, political machines-such as Tammany Hall, run by boss William Magear Tweed (1823-73) in New York City -were able to build a loyal voter following, especially among immigrant groups, by performing such favours as providing jobs or housing.

Political machines are characterized by a disciplined and hierarchical organization, reaching down to neighbourhood and block organizers, that enables the machine to respond to the problems of individual neighbourhoods, or even families, in exchange for loyalty at the polls. The term refers to their ability to elect candidates or enact measures with mechanical efficiency and predictability.

Although the primary goal of a political machine is keeping itself in power rather than providing good government, machines have been responsible for restructuring city governments to centralize authority, improving facilities and services, helping to assimilate immigrant groups, and encouraging the growth of business and industry. Supporters of political machines say that they "work" and that consolidating power in the hands of a boss, like Mayor Richard J. Daley (1902-76) of Chicago, guarantees city governments the power and authority that they need to cope with urban problems effectively. However, because political machines in such cities as Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Kansas City have also been responsible for many abuses of power, the term carries a pejorative sense.

Organizers who "deliver" the votes are often rewarded with patronage jobs. However, patronage can result in poorer service to the citizens because appointees may be neither qualified for their jobs nor interested in performing them. Control of both elective and appointed posts also gives a machine control of government salaries and revenues, which can be used to enrich the party at the public's expense. For example, the machine may accept donations or kickbacks from businesses in return for such favours as tax or zoning concessions or the award of lucrative public-works contracts. In some cities, machine business dealings have included accepting money from organized-crime syndicates in exchange for protection from legal interference.

In cities whose neighbourhoods are divided along ethnic or racial lines, machine patronage may aggravate hostilities by awarding most jobs and services to those people of the same background as the city's power elite. In practice, this made machine politics the last defense of white neighbourhoods against growing black populations, while black politicians who anticipated power viewed their constituents as merely the latest in a series of ethnic or racial groups that had benefited from the machine.

Since the 19th-century heyday of machine politics, civil service reforms limiting the number of patronage jobs, the institution of direct primaries rather than party nomination of candidates, the municipal operation of public utilities, and judicial review by state and federal courts have all reduced the power of political machines. The steady exodus of city residents to the suburbs since World War II and a more mobile population with fewer ties to particular neighbourhoods have also weakened the social base that once made political machines synonymous with city government.

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Political machine | Definition, History, & Facts

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political machine, in U.S. politics, a party organization, headed by a single boss or small autocratic group, that commands enough votes to maintain political and administrative control of a city, county, or state.

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Section 2                                                Progressive Reform (Late 1800s)

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Section 2                                                Progressive Reform (Late 1800s)

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Here is a video about the Progressive Reforms in the late 1800s.

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The Progressive Era: Crash Course US History #27

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Section 3                                       Rise of Labor Organizations (Early 1900s)

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Section 3                                       Rise of Labor Organizations (Early 1900s)

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Here is an article about the rise of labor organizations.

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Origins of The Labor Movement

The origins of the labor movement lay in the formative years of the American nation, when a free wage-labor market emerged in the artisan trades late in the colonial period. The earliest recorded strike occurred in 1768 when New York journeymen tailors protested a wage reduction. The formation of the Federal Society of Journeymen Cordwainers (shoemakers) in Philadelphia in 1794 marks the beginning of sustained trade union organization among American workers.
WATCH: The Labor Movement
From that time on, local craft unions proliferated in the cities, publishing lists of "prices" for their work, defending their trades against diluted and cheap labor and, increasingly, demanding a shorter workday in the face of the Industrial Revolution. Thus a job-conscious orientation was quick to emerge, and in its wake there followed the key structural elements characterizing American trade unionism. First, with the formation in 1827 of the Mechanics' Union of Trade Associations in Philadelphia, central labor bodies began uniting craft unions within a single city, and then, with the creation of the International Typographical Union in 1852, national unions began bringing together local unions of the same trade from across the United States and Canada (hence the frequent union designation "international"). Although the factory system was springing up during these years, industrial workers played little part in the early trade union development. In the 19th century, trade unionism was mainly a movement of skilled workers.

Did you know? In 2009, 12 percent of American workers belonged to unions.

Early Labor Unions

The early labor movement was, however, inspired by more than the immediate job interest of its craft members. It harbored a conception of the just society, deriving from the Ricardian labor theory of value and from the republican ideals of the American Revolution, which fostered social equality, celebrated honest labor, and relied on an independent, virtuous citizenship. The transforming economic changes of industrial capitalism ran counter to labor's vision. The result, as early labor leaders saw it, was to raise up "two distinct classes, the rich and the poor." Beginning with the workingmen's parties of the 1830s, the advocates of equal rights mounted a series of reform efforts that spanned the nineteenth century. Most notable were the National Labor Union, launched in 1866, and the Knights of Labor, which reached its zenith in the mid-1880s.

On their face, these reform movements might have seemed at odds with trade unionism, aiming as they did at the cooperative commonwealth rather than a higher wage, appealing broadly to all "producers" rather than strictly to wageworkers, and eschewing the trade union reliance on the strike and boycott. But contemporaries saw no contradiction: trade unionism tended to the workers' immediate needs, labor reform to their higher hopes. The two were held to be strands of a single movement, rooted in a common working-class constituency and to some degree sharing a common leadership. But equally important, they were strands that had to be kept operationally separate and functionally distinct.
PHOTOS: These Appalling Images Exposed Child Labor in America
American Federation of Labor

During the 1880s, that division fatally eroded. Despite its labor reform rhetoric, the Knights of Labor attracted large numbers of workers hoping to improve their immediate conditions. As the Knights carried on strikes and organized along industrial lines, the threatened national trade unions demanded that the group confine itself to its professed labor reform purposes. When it refused, they joined in December 1886 to form the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The new federation marked a break with the past, for it denied to labor reform any further role in the struggles of American workers. In part, the assertion of trade union supremacy stemmed from an undeniable reality. As industrialism matured, labor reform lost its meaning-hence the confusion and ultimate failure of the Knights of Labor. Marxism taught Samuel Gompers and his fellow socialists that trade unionism was the indispensable instrument for preparing the working class for revolution. The founders of theAFL translated this notion into the principle of "pure and simple" unionism: only by self-organization along occupational lines and by a concentration on job-conscious goals would the worker be "furnished with the weapons which shall secure his industrial emancipation."

That class formulation necessarily defined trade unionism as the movement of the entire working class. The AFL asserted as a formal policy that it represented all workers, irrespective of skill, race, religion, nationality or gender. But the national unions that had created the AFL in fact comprised only the skilled trades. Almost at once, therefore, the trade union movement encountered a dilemma: How to square ideological aspirations against contrary institutional realities?

Discrimination in The Labor Movement

As sweeping technological change began to undermine the craft system of production, some national unions did move toward an industrial structure, most notably in coal mining and the garment trades. But most craft unions either refused or, as in iron and steel and in meat-packing, failed to organize the less skilled. And since skill lines tended to conform to racial, ethnic and gender divisions, the trade union movement took on a racist and sexist coloration as well. For a short period, the AFL resisted that tendency. But in 1895, unable to launch an interracial machinists' union of its own, the Federation reversed an earlier principled decision and chartered the whites-only International Association of Machinists. Formally or informally, the color bar thereafter spread throughout the trade union movement. In 1902, blacks made up scarcely 3 percent of total membership, most of them segregated in Jim Crow locals. In the case of women and eastern European immigrants, a similar devolution occurred-welcomed as equals in theory, excluded or segregated in practice. (Only the fate of Asian workers was unproblematic; their rights had never been asserted by the AFLin the first place.)

Samuel Gompers

Gompers justified the subordination of principle to organizational reality on the constitutional grounds of "trade autonomy," by which each national union was assured the right to regulate its own internal affairs. But the organizational dynamism of the labor movement was in fact located in the national unions. Only as they experienced inner change might the labor movement expand beyond the narrow limits-roughly 10 percent of the labor force-at which it stabilized before World War I.

In the political realm, the founding doctrine of pure-and-simple unionism meant an arm's-length relationship to the state and the least possible entanglement in partisan politics. A total separation had, of course, never been seriously contemplated; some objectives, such as immigration restriction, could be achieved only through state action, and the predecessor to the AFL, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (1881), had in fact been created to serve as labor's lobbying arm in Washington. Partly because of the lure of progressive labor legislation, even more in response to increasingly damaging court attacks on the trade unions, political activity quickened after 1900. With the enunciation of Labor's Bill of Grievances (1906), the AFL laid down a challenge to the major parties. Henceforth it would campaign for its friends and seek the defeat of its enemies.

This nonpartisan entry into electoral politics, paradoxically, undercut the left-wing advocates of an independent working-class politics. That question had been repeatedly debated within theAFL, first in 1890 over Socialist Labor party representation, then in 1893-1894 over an alliance with the Populist Party and after 1901 over affiliation with the Socialist party of America. Although Gompers prevailed each time, he never found it easy. Now, as labor's leverage with the major parties began to pay off, Gompers had an effective answer to his critics on the left: the labor movement could not afford to waste its political capital on socialist parties or independent politics. When that nonpartisan strategy failed, as it did in the reaction following World War I, an independent political strategy took hold, first through the robust campaigning of the Conference for Progressive Political Action in 1922, and in 1924 through labor's endorsement of Robert La Follette on the Progressive ticket. By then, however, the Republican administration was moderating its hard line, evident especially in Herbert Hoover's efforts to resolve the simmering crises in mining and on the railroads. In response, the trade unions abandoned the Progressive party, retreated to nonpartisanship, and, as their power waned, lapsed into inactivity.

The Labor Movement and The Great Depression
WATCH: Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal
It took the Great Depression to knock the labor movement off dead center. The discontent of industrial workers, combined with New Deal collective bargaining legislation, at last brought the great mass production industries within striking distance. When the craft unions stymied the ALF's organizing efforts, John L. Lewis of the United Mine Workers and his followers broke away in 1935 and formed the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO), which crucially aided the emerging unions in auto, rubber, steel and other basic industries. In 1938 the CIO was formally established as the Congress of Industrial Organizations. By the end of World War II, more than 12 million workers belonged to unions and collective bargaining had taken hold throughout the industrial economy.

In politics, its enhanced power led the union movement not to a new departure but to a variant on the policy of nonpartisanship. As far back as the Progressive Era, organized labor had been drifting toward the Democratic party, partly because of the latter's greater programmatic appeal, perhaps even more because of its ethno-cultural basis of support within an increasingly "new" immigrant working class. With the coming of Roosevelt's New Deal, this incipient alliance solidified, and from 1936 onward the Democratic Party could count on-and came to rely on-the campaigning resources of the labor movement.

Collective Bargaining

That this alliance partook of the nonpartisan logic of Gompers's authorship-too much was at stake for organized labor to waste its political capital on third parties-became clear in the unsettled period of the early cold war. Not only did theCIO oppose the Progressive party of 1948, but it expelled the left-wing unions that broke ranks and supported Henry Wallace for the presidency that year.

The formation of the AFL-CIOin 1955 visibly testified to the powerful continuities persisting through the age of industrial unionism. Above all, the central purpose remained what it had always been-to advance the economic and job interests of the union membership. Collective bargaining performed impressively after World War II, more than tripling weekly earnings in manufacturing between 1945 and 1970, gaining for union workers an unprecedented measure of security against old age, illness and unemployment, and, through contractual protections, greatly strengthening their right to fair treatment at the workplace. But if the benefits were greater and if they went to more people, the basic job-conscious thrust remained intact. Organized labor was still a sectional movement, covering at most only a third of America's wage earners and inaccessible to those cut off in the low-wage secondary labor market.

Women and Minorities in the Labor Movement

Nothing better captures the uneasy amalgam of old and new in the postwar labor movement than the treatment of minorities and women who flocked in, initially from the mass production industries, but after 1960 from the public and service sectors as well. Labor's historic commitment to racial and gender equality was thereby much strengthened, but not to the point of challenging the status quo within the labor movement itself. Thus the leadership structure remained largely closed to minorities-as did the skilled jobs that were historically the preserve of white male workers-notoriously so in the construction trades but in the industrial unions as well. Yet the AFL-CIOplayed a crucial role in the battle for civil rights legislation in 1964-1965. That this legislation might be directed against discriminatory trade union practices was anticipated (and quietly welcomed) by the more progressive labor leaders. But more significant was the meaning they found in championing this kind of reform: the chance to act on the broad ideals of the labor movement. And, so motivated, they deployed labor's power with great effect in the achievement of John F. Kennedy's and Lyndon B. Johnson 's domestic programs during the 1960s.

Decline in Unions

This was ultimately economic, not political power, however, and as organized labor's grip on the industrial sector began to weaken, so did its political capability. From the early 1970s onward, new competitive forces swept through the heavily unionized industries, set off by deregulation in communications and transportation, by industrial restructuring and by an unprecedented onslaught of foreign goods. As oligopolistic and regulated market structures broke down, nonunion competition spurted, concession bargaining became widespread and plant closings decimated union memberships. The once-celebrated National Labor Relations Act increasingly hamstrung the labor movement; an all-out reform campaign to get the law amended failed in 1978. And with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, there came to power an anti-union administration the likes of which had not been seen since the Harding era.

Between 1975 and 1985, union membership fell by 5 million. In manufacturing, the unionized portion of the labor force dropped below 25 percent, while mining and construction, once labor's flagship industries, were decimated. Only in the public sector did the unions hold their own. By the end of the 1980s, less than 17 percent of American workers were organized, half the proportion of the early 1950s.

The labor movement has never been swift to change. But if the new high-tech and service sectors seemed beyond its reach in 1989, so did the mass production industries in 1929. There is a silver lining: Compared to the old AFL, organized labor is today much more diverse and broadly based: In 2018, of the 14.7 million wage and salary workers who were part of a union (compared to 17.7 million in 1983), 25 percent are women and 28 percent are Black.

Sources

TED: The Economics Daily. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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The origins of the labor movement lay in the formative years of the American nation, when a free wage-labor market emerged in the artisan trades late in the colonial period. The earliest recorded strike occurred in 1768 when New York journeymen tailors protested a wage reduction.

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Section 4                                      Women’s Suffrage & the Temperance Movement (Late 1800s/Early 1900s)

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Section 4                                      Women’s Suffrage & the Temperance Movement (Late 1800s/Early 1900s)

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Here is an image of Women's suffrage movement in the early 1900s

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Section 5                                       Election of 1912

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Section 5                                       Election of 1912

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Here is a video about the election of 1912.

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U.S. presidential election of 1912 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

NARRATOR: In 1912 all three presidential candidates were Progressives. Theodore Roosevelt had been president in 1902. He had forced the coal mine owners to settle with the union. He had stopped Hill and Harriman when they tried to monopolize the western railroads. He accepted trusts as inevitable, but insisted the federal government regulate them. He denounced Woodrow Wilson's call for the limitations of federal power as the surest way to allow the employer to work his employees to death.

ROOSEVELT: The liberty of which Mr. Wilson speaks today means merely the liberty of the factory owner to close his operatives into some crazy death trap on a stuffed floor where, if fire starts, the slaughter is immense.

NARRATOR: Roosevelt was running as a Progressive against the incumbent William Howard Taft.

But Taft, too, ran as a Progressive. He claimed accurately that he had carried out more legal actions against the trusts than Roosevelt ever had.

TAFT: We must make up the abuses in the good old Anglo-Saxon ways, adjust our statutory remedies to the fitness of the thing, place our confidence in the public servants who show themselves alive to public need, and courageous and energetic enough to prosecute the offenders to convictions.

NARRATOR: Which brings us back to the beginning--Woodrow Wilson's campaign film starring everybody's favorite villain, the fat capitalist. By 1912 the Muckrakers had done their work well. Our villain carried on his back the accumulated sins of a thousand trusts. He carried with him the stench of the tenements, the nameless miners who had been killed in his mine shafts, the hordes of farmers who had been dispossessed by his sheriffs, the anguished children who had collapsed at his looms, the army of politicians who were on his payroll. He was behind it all. If he could be regulated by law, the world would be a better and a happier place.

And so Teddy Roosevelt said, let the federal government control him. And William Howard Taft replied, yes, but I can control him better than Teddy Roosevelt ever did. And Woodrow Wilson added, he's too fat, too big; let us break him up into a thousand smaller businessmen; send me your dollars, and I will bring forth the Progressive world. For Wilson, too, preached the Progressive litany.

WILSON: We hold that the night labor of women and children is abnormal and should be prohibited; we hold that the employment of women over 48 hours per week is abnormal and should be prohibited; we hold that the 7 day working week is abnormal; we hold that one day of rest in 7 should be provided by law.

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NARRATOR: In 1912 all three presidential candidates were Progressives. Theodore Roosevelt had been president in 1902. He had forced the coal mine owners to settle with the union. He had stopped Hill and Harriman when they tried to monopolize the western railroads. He accepted trusts as inevitable, but insisted the federal government regulate them.

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Section 6                                     Isolationism vs. Imperialism

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Section 6                                     Isolationism vs. Imperialism

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Here is an article about Isolationism and Imperialism.

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Imperialists believe that the American government should protect what it considers to be the national interest, even if that means getting involved in conflicts around the globe. They also maintain that it is the government's duty to spread our political and economic systems to other countries, by force if necessary. In other words, they believe in U.S. leadership of the world. The Federalists were the original American imperialists. Being Anglophiles, they looked to Great Britain as the role model for American foreign policy. Federalists desired strong financial and commercial ties to Europe and an economy based on overseas trade. Power needed to be concentrated in a strong federal government in order to speak with one voice to the governments of other nations. A strong military was needed to protect the interests of American bankers and businessmen. An admirer of Caesar and Napoleon, Alexander Hamilton desired an imperialistic foreign policy for the new nation. In 1799, Major General Hamilton "was a man who dreamed dreams, and in his imagination he was already leading his army into Louisiana, the Floridas and points south. 'We ought,' he said, 'to squint at South America.'" The ideological division in early American public policy is clear: "Hamilton longs for empire, opulence, and glory for the nation, whereas Jefferson seeks virtue, freedom, and happiness for the social individual." Hamilton was "very opportunistic about international diplomacy" and distrusted "moralizing in foreign policy." 1

Isolationists believe that the American government should be predominantly concerned about the needs and desires of its own citizens. They do not believe our government should be potentially involved in every conflict around the globe. They do not believe our government should attempt to control the governments of other nations. In other words, they believe in national self-determination. The Anti-Federalists and Democratic-Republicans were the original American isolationists. They believed in decentralized politics, agrarian-based economics, no standing army, staying out of Europe's continual bloodshed, and friendship with the people of other nations but non-alliance with those people's governments. Isolationists are often characterized as provincial bumpkins. This characterization hardly fits the nation's premier isolationist. Jefferson was a diplomat and a student of language, science, and philosophy. Cosmopolitan in outlook, he nonetheless opposed national involvement in overseas political and military conflicts. Referring to a controversy about the West Indies, in a 1791 letter to an American diplomat, he stated, "If there be one principle more deeply rooted than any other in the mind of every American, it is, that we should have nothing to do with conquest." In 1799, Jefferson wrote, "I am for free commerce with all nations; political connection with none; and little or no diplomatic establishment. And I am not for linking ourselves by new treaties with the quarrels of Europe; entering that field of slaughter to preserve their balance..." In his first inaugural address (1801), President Jefferson urged "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none." He held this view throughout his life. 2

Using the word isolationism to describe Jefferson's foreign policy is an oversimplification. Setting aside the negative images with which it is saddled due to 70 years of imperial propaganda, the term is still problematic because it does not express the full range of Jefferson's thought. In addition to the obvious forswearing of entangling alliances, Jeffersonian isolationism involved support for a republic rather than an empire, for national sovereignty, for ethical conduct, for human rights, and for popular control of foreign policy. These five beliefs could be thought of as causes, components, or concomitants of isolationism. Jefferson "vigorously rejected the view that only individuals are bound by a moral code, and that nations are free to act in accordance with self-interest without any restraints." Writing to James Madison in 1789, he remarked, "I know but one code of morality for men, whether acting singly or collectively. He who says I will be a rogue when I act in company with a hundred others, but an honest man when I act alone, will be believed in the former assertion but not in the latter." Despite his belief in the importance of moral conduct in foreign relations, Jefferson was not nave in his view of the world. He had, for example, a realistic assessment of foreign governments. In 1812, Jefferson condemned both the French and British governments for trying to "draw to themselves the power, the wealth and the resources of other nations." Three years later, he called Napoleon "the wretch...who has been the author of more misery and suffering to the world, than any being who ever lived before him. After destroying the liberties of his country, he has exhausted all its resources, physical and moral, to indulge his own maniac ambition, his own tyrannical and overbearing spirit." He did not, however, have a favorable view of the British government and other opponents of Napoleon. Jefferson condemned the imperialism of all the leading countries of Europe: "The will of the allies? There is no more moderation, forbearance, or even honesty in theirs, than in that of Bonaparte. They have proved that their object, like his, is plunder." 3

Isolationism is a problematic word. It is an epithet, it is anachronistic when applied to Jefferson, and it fails to indicate the full range of thought involved. Admittedly, it is a flawed term, but it may be the best term available. Non-interventionism is a non-definition that merely calls attention to another undefined term, the word continentalism never caught on after being proposed by scholar Charles Beard, and neutrality is too vague. To some, isolationism may imply ostrich-like, willful ignorance of the rest of the world, but this was never the case with its most famous practitioners. The isolation is not one of intellect, trade, or travel, but one of entangling alliances, military conflict, and imperial domination. For isolationists, national self-determination for colonies and national sovereignty for America are closely-related principles emanating from a common source: a commitment to democracy, freedom, and decentralization. Isolationism is the foreign policy of traditional liberals. As Robert Morss Lovett noted in 1924 in his Progressive Party statement for the elite journal Foreign Affairs,

It is historically characteristic of governments devoted to conservative measures and the maintenance of the status quo in domestic affairs to develop an aggressive policy in foreign affairs, and similarly for governments whose chief outlook is toward the progressive improvement of existing conditions to seek to disembarrass themselves from the complications of foreign policy.

This progressive tradition was first manifested in power through the presidency of Thomas Jefferson.

Isolationism may be an unfortunate term in some ways, but it describes a real, deep, and honorable tradition in American politics. Prior to the 1930s, the ideological underpinning of our approach to the world lacked a distinct label because it was simply accepted as traditional U.S. foreign policy. In his 1776 pamphlet Common Sense, Thomas Paine wrote, "As Europe is our market for trade, we ought to form no partial connection with any part of it. It is the true interest of America to steer clear of European contentions..." In 1796, George Washington's Farewell Address noted, "The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible....It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world..." The Independence Day speech of Secretary of State John Quincy Adams in 1821 indicated that isolationism was still taken for granted 25 years later. Referring to America, he reminded the House of Representatives, "She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings...She goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own." The Monroe Doctrine acted as an isolationist bulwark for many years, until it was corrupted by the Theodore Roosevelt Corollary (1904) and virtually set aside by Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt. The Doctrine asserted,

In the wars of the European powers in matters relating to themselves we have never taken any part, nor does it comport with our policy to do so....It is impossible that the allied powers [of Europe] should extend their political system to any portion of either [American] continent without endangering our peace and happiness; nor can anyone believe that our southern brethren, if left to themselves, would adopt it of their own accord....It is still the true policy of the United States to leave the [Latin American] parties to themselves, in hope that other powers will pursue the same course.

In opposing the annexation of Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) in 1870, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Charles Sumner (R-MA) argued that Caribbean islands "should not be absorbed by the United States, but should remain as independent powers, and should try for themselves to make the experiment of self-government....To the African belongs the equatorial belt and he should enjoy it undisturbed." Things began to change dramatically in 1898. With the annexation of Hawaii and the Spanish-American War, we were well on our way to becoming an empire with extensive political and military ties to the rest of the world. As a result, traditional foreign policy fell into disfavor among U.S. elites and was eventually disparaged by the dismissive term isolationism. Meanwhile, when the word imperialism fell out of favor, it was exchanged for the more euphemistic internationalism.

The Best of Jeff Taylor

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Imperialism and Isolationism: Contrasting Approaches to Foreign Policy - LewRockwell LewRockwell.com

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DIGG THIS Imperialists believe that the American government should protect what it considers to be the national interest, even if that means getting involved in conflicts around the globe. They also maintain that it is the government's duty to spread our political and economic systems to other countries, by force if necessary.

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Section 1                                         Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

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Section 1                                         Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

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Here is a video about the assassination of the Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand.

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The Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand Cartoon

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Section 2                                        New Technology of World War I

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Section 2                                        New Technology of World War I

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Here is an article about the new Technology in WWI.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Section 3                                        President Wilson’s 14 Points

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Section 3                                        President Wilson’s 14 Points

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Here is an article about President Wilson's 14 Points he created after WWI.

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Fourteen Points, (January 8, 1918), declaration by U.S. Pres. Woodrow Wilson during World War I outlining his proposals for a postwar peace settlement.

On January 8, 1918, President Wilson, in his address to a joint session of the United States Congress, formulated under 14 separate heads his ideas of the essential nature of a post-World War I settlement. The text of the Fourteen Points is as follows:

1. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.

2. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants.

3. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance.

4. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.

5. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.

6. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest coöperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national policy and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing; and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their good will, of their comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy.

7. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored, without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single act will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws which they have themselves set and determined for the government of their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of international law is forever impaired.

8. All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all.

9. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality.

10. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity of autonomous development.

11. Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea; and the relations of the several Balkan states to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality; and international guarantees of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan states should be entered into.

12. The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees.

13. An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant.

14. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.

On October 3-4, 1918, Prince Maximilian of Baden, the German imperial chancellor, sent a note, via Switzerland, to President Wilson, requesting an immediate armistice and the opening of peace negotiations on the basis of the Fourteen Points. Germans would later argue a "betrayal" when faced by the harsher terms of the Armistice and the Treaty of Versailles.

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Fourteen Points, declaration by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson during World War I outlining his proposals for a postwar peace settlement. On January 8, 1918, Wilson, in his address to a joint session of Congress, formulated under 14 separate heads his ideas of the essential nature of a post-World War I settlement.

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Section 4                                      Treaty of Versailles

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Section 4                                      Treaty of Versailles

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Here is a picture after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles.