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The First Migration:
https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/human - http://www.ushistory.org/us/1b.asp
The Earliest Societies:
http://www.ushistory.org/us/1b.asp
Native American Culture Areas:
http://www.native-languages.org/culture-areas.htm
The European Renaissance:
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-history-basics/art-1010-ddp/v/renaissance-art-introduction

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Centuries before Europe's discovery and colonization of the Americas, the Anasazi people built a complex culture in what is now the southwestern United States. Their cliff dwellings are of particular interest to modern people. Many of these structures remain after centuries of exposure to the elements.

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

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The Vikings:
https://www.history.com/topics/exploration/exploration-of-north-america
Voyages of Christopher Columbus:
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/precontact-and-early-colonial-era/old-and-new-worlds-collide/v/christopher-columbus
Spanish Empire in North America:
https://www.quora.com/What-happened-to-the-land-the-Spanish-Empire-had-in-North-America
Race for Empires:
https://www.peaster.net/cms/lib/TX01000798/Centricity/Domain/359/Ch.2Sec.4.pdf

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Christopher Columbus (video) | Khan Academy

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

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The First English Settlements in North Amerca

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The First English Settlements in North Amerca

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The First English Settlements - AP U.S. History Topic Outlines - Study Notes

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100% Free AP Test Prep website that offers study material to high school students seeking to prepare for AP exams. Enterprising students use this website to learn AP class material, study for class quizzes and tests, and to brush up on course material before the big exam day.

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The First English Settlements in North America
https://www.apstudynotes.org/us-history/topics/the-first-english-settlements/
Great Awakening & Enlightenment affects on colonists:
https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/how-did-great-awakening-affect-colonies-505788
Laws passed on colonists:
https://www.history.com/topics/american-revolution/townshend-acts
Colonists Response:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g1rJrSVDnY

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Great Awakening & Enlightenment affects on the Colonists

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Great Awakening & Enlightenment affects on the Colonists

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How Did The Great Awakening Affect The Colonies

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Get an answer for 'How did the Great Awakening affect the colonies?' and find homework help for other History questions at eNotes

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In 1774 and 1775, the Boston Committee of Correspondence and the Massachusetts Committee of Safety employed Paul Revere as an express rider to carry news, messages, and copies of important documents as far away as New York and Philadelphia.

On the evening of April 18, 1775, Dr. Joseph Warren summoned Paul Revere and gave him the task of riding to Lexington, Massachusetts, with the news that British soldiers stationed in Boston were about to march into the countryside northwest of the town. According to Warren, these troops planned to arrest Samuel Adams and John Hancock, two leaders of the Sons of Liberty, who were staying at a house in Lexington. It was thought they would then continue on to the town of Concord, to capture or destroy military stores - gunpowder, ammunition, and several cannon - that had been stockpiled there. In fact, the British troops had no orders to arrest anyone - Dr. Warren's intelligence on this point was faulty - but they were very much on a major mission out of Boston. Revere contacted an unidentified friend (probably Robert Newman, the sexton of Christ Church in Boston's North End) and instructed him to hold two lit lanterns in the tower of Christ Church (now called the Old North Church) as a signal to fellow Sons of Liberty across the Charles River in case Revere was unable to leave town.

The two lanterns were a predetermined signal stating that the British troops planned to row "by sea" across the Charles River to Cambridge, rather than march "by land" out Boston Neck.

Revere then stopped by his own house to pick up his boots and overcoat, and proceeded the short distance to Boston's North End waterfront. There two friends rowed him across the river to Charlestown. Slipping past the British warship HMS Somerset in the darkness, Revere landed safely. After informing Colonel Conant and other local Sons of Liberty about recent events in Boston and verifying that they had seen his signals in the North Church tower, Revere borrowed a horse from John Larkin, a Charlestown merchant and a patriot sympathizer. While there, a member of the Committee of Safety named Richard Devens warned Revere that there were a number of British patrols in the area who might try to intercept him.

At about eleven o'clock Revere set off on horseback. After narrowly avoiding capture just outside of Charlestown, Revere changed his planned route and rode through Medford, where he alarmed Isaac Hall, the captain of the local militia, informing him of the British movements. He then alarmed almost all the houses from Medford, through Menotomy (today's Arlington) - carefully avoiding the Royall Mansion whose property he rode through (Isaac Royall was a well-known Loyalist) - and arrived in Lexington sometime after midnight.

In Lexington, as he approached the house where Adams and Hancock were staying, Sergeant Monroe, acting as a guard outside the house, requested that he not make so much noise. "Noise!" cried Revere, "You'll have noise enough before long. The regulars are coming out!" According to tradition, John Hancock, who was still awake, heard Revere's voice and said "Come in, Revere! We're not afraid of you". He entered the house and delivered his message.

About half past twelve, William Dawes, who had traveled the longer land route out of Boston Neck, arrived in Lexington carrying the same message as Revere. After both men "refreshed themselves" (i.e. had something to eat and drink), they decided to continue on to Concord, Massachusetts, to verify that the military stores were properly dispersed and hidden away. A short distance outside of Lexington, they were overtaken by Dr. Samuel Prescott, who they determined was a fellow "high Son of Liberty." A short time later, a British patrol intercepted all three men. Prescott and Dawes escaped; Revere was held for some time, questioned, and let go. Before he was released, however, his horse was confiscated to replace the tired mount of a British sergeant. Left alone on the road, Revere returned to Lexington on foot in time to witness the latter part of the battle on Lexington Green.

This story comes from several accounts written by Paul Revere after his Midnight Ride. To see one of them in his own handwriting, with a transcription, visit "Revere's Own Words." To find all the answers to your Midnight Ride questions, see our Frequently Asked Questions page.

For more information and an interactive map experience, view our Midnight Ride Map. You can also "Recreate the Ride" on your own!

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In 1774 and 1775, the Boston Committee of Correspondence and the Massachusetts Committee of Safety employed Paul Revere as an express rider to carry news, messages, and copies of important documents as far away as New York and Philadelphia.

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Paul Reveres Ride/Lexington & Concord:
https://www.paulreverehouse.org/the-real-story/
The Deceleration of Independence:
https://www.aspeninstitute.org/blog-posts/every-american-know-paradox-declaration-independence/
Battle of Saratoga:
https://www.history.com/topics/american-revolution/battle-of-saratoga
Battle of Yorktown/ Treaty of Paris:
https://study.com/academy/lesson/the-battle-of-yorktown-and-the-treaty-of-paris.html

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Battle of Quebec

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

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

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

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

First Battle of Saratoga: Freeman's Farm

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

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

Battle of Bemis Heights

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

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

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

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

Benedict Arnold

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

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

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

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

Saratoga National Historical Park

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

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

Who Won the Battle of Saratoga?

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

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

Significance of the Battle of Saratoga

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

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

Sources

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

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Battle of Saratoga - Definition, Significance & Date

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

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The Last Year of the War

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

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

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

Converging on Yorktown

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

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

The Siege of Yorktown

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

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

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

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

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

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

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View the original text of history's most important documents, including the Articles of Confederation

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Articles Of Confederation:
http://www.ushistory.org/documents/confederation.htm
The Great Compromise:
https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/A_Great_Compromise.htm
Federalism:
https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/A_Great_Compromise.htm
Separation of Powers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=c6ppWf6U_4s
Bill of Rights:
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/road-to-revolution/creating-a-nation/v/the-us-constitution
The Constitution:
https://nccs.net/blogs/americas-founding-documents/bill-of-rights-amendments-1-10

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July 16, 1787

July 16, 1987, began with a light breeze, a cloudless sky, and a spirit of celebration. On that day, 200 senators and representatives boarded a special train for a journey to Philadelphia to celebrate a singular congressional anniversary.

Exactly 200 years earlier, the framers of the U.S. Constitution, meeting at Independence Hall, had reached a supremely important agreement. Their so-called Great Compromise (or Connecticut Compromise in honor of its architects, Connecticut delegates Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth) provided a dual system of congressional representation. In the House of Representatives each state would be assigned a number of seats in proportion to its population. In the Senate, all states would have the same number of seats. Today, we take this arrangement for granted; in the wilting-hot summer of 1787, it was a new idea.

In the weeks before July 16, 1787, the framers had made several important decisions about the Senate's structure. They turned aside a proposal to have the House of Representatives elect senators from lists submitted by the individual state legislatures and agreed that those legislatures should elect their own senators.

By July 16, the convention had already set the minimum age for senators at 30 and the term length at six years, as opposed to 25 for House members, with two-year terms. James Madison explained that these distinctions, based on "the nature of the senatorial trust, which requires greater extent of information and stability of character," would allow the Senate "to proceed with more coolness, with more system, and with more wisdom than the popular[ly elected] branch."

The issue of representation, however, threatened to destroy the seven-week-old convention. Delegates from the large states believed that because their states contributed proportionally more to the nation's financial and defensive resources, they should enjoy proportionally greater representation in the Senate as well as in the House. Small-state delegates demanded, with comparable intensity, that all states be equally represented in both houses. When Sherman proposed the compromise, Benjamin Franklin agreed that each state should have an equal vote in the Senate in all matters-except those involving money.

Over the Fourth of July holiday, delegates worked out a compromise plan that sidetracked Franklin's proposal. On July 16, the convention adopted the Great Compromise by a heart-stopping margin of one vote. As the 1987 celebrants duly noted, without that vote, there would likely have been no Constitution.

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July 16, 1787 July 16, 1987, began with a light breeze, a cloudless sky, and a spirit of celebration. On that day, 200 senators and representatives boarded a special train for a journey to Philadelphia to celebrate a singular congressional anniversary. Exactly 200 years earlier, the framers of the U.S.

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National Center for Constitutional Studies

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*Congress of the United States

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

THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution. RESOLVED by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, two thirds of both Houses concurring, that the following Articles be proposed to the Legislatures of the several States, as amendments to the Constitution of the United States, all, or any of which Articles, when ratified by three fourths of the said Legislatures, to be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of the said Constitution; viz. ARTICLES in addition to, and Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, proposed by Congress, and ratified by the Legislatures of the several States, pursuant to the fifth Article of the original Constitution.

Frederick Augustus Muhlenberg Speaker of the House of Representatives John Adams, Vice-President of the United States and President of the Senate.

Attest, John Beckley, Clerk of the House of Representatives. Sam. A. Otis Secretary of the Senate. *On September 25, 1789, Congress transmitted to the state legislatures twelve proposed amendments, two of which, having to do with Congressional representation and Congressional pay, were not adopted. The remaining ten amendments became the Bill of Rights.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

A well-regulated M ilitia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear A rms shall not be infringed.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.

No person shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise infamous crime unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.

Amendment 6
- Rights of Accused Persons in Criminal Cases

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor; and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States than according to the rules of the common law.

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Preamble to the Bill of Rights *Congress of the United States begun and held at the City of New-York, on Wednesday the fourth of March, one thousand seven hundred and eighty nine.

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The US Constitution (video) | Khan Academy

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

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Rise of Political Parties

- Characteristics of each party

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Led by Hamilton and J. Adams

Want a strong central (national) government

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

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

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

emphasize economic policy of strong commercial growth

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

want to maintain a close trade relationship with Great Britain

declined in significance after the election of 1800

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

Led by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison

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

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

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

believe in an agrarian republic of property-owners

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

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

became the dominant party after the election of 1800

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

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

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

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

Return to Class Schedule

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

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Lynne Cheney, author of "James Madison: A Life Reconsidered" in conversation with Walter Isaacson of the Aspen Institute

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

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

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

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

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

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Lewis and Clark : The Expedition of the Corps of Discovery

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

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Table of Contents

1. Causes of the War of 1812

2. The War of 1812 Breaks Out

3. War of 1812: Mixed Results for American Forces

4. Inspiration for 'The Star Spangled Banner'

5. End of the War of 1812 and Its Impact

6. Impact of the War of 1812

In the War of 1812, the United States took on the greatest naval power in the world, Great Britain, in a conflict that would have an immense impact on the young country's future. Causes of the war included British attempts to restrict U.S. trade, the Royal Navy's impressment of American seamen and America's desire to expand its territory.

The United States suffered many costly defeats at the hands of British, Canadian and Native American troops over the course of the War of 1812, including the capture and burning of the nation's capital, Washington, D.C., in August 1814. Nonetheless, American troops were able to repulse British invasions in New York, Baltimore and New Orleans, boosting national confidence and fostering a new spirit of patriotism. The ratification of the Treaty of Ghent on February 17, 1815, ended the war but left many of the most contentious questions unresolved. Nonetheless, many in the United States celebrated the War of 1812 as a "second war of independence," beginning an era of partisan agreement and national pride.

Causes of the War of 1812

At the outset of the 19th century, Great Britain was locked in a long and bitter conflict with Napoleon Bonaparte's France. In an attempt to cut off supplies from reaching the enemy, both sides attempted to block the United States from trading with the other. In 1807, Britain passed the Orders in Council, which required neutral countries to obtain a license from its authorities before trading with France or French colonies. The Royal Navy also outraged Americans by its practice of impressment, or removing seamen from U.S. merchant vessels and forcing them to serve on behalf of the British.

In 1809, the U.S. Congress repealed Thomas Jefferson 's unpopular Embargo Act, which by restricting trade had hurt Americans more than either Britain or France. Its replacement, the Non-Intercourse Act, specifically prohibited trade with Britain and France. It also proved ineffective, and in turn was replaced with a May 1810 bill stating that if either power dropped trade restrictions against the United States, Congress would in turn resume non-intercourse with the opposing power.

After Napoleon hinted he would stop restrictions, President James Madison blocked all trade with Britain that November. Meanwhile, new members of Congress elected that year-led by Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun-had begun to agitate for war, based on their indignation over British violations of maritime rights as well as Britain's encouragement of Native American hostility against American westward expansion.

Did you know? The War of 1812 produced a new generation of great American generals, including Andrew Jackson, Jacob Brown and Winfield Scott, and helped propel no fewer than four men to the presidency: Jackson, John Quincy Adams, James Monroe and William Henry Harrison.

The War of 1812 Breaks Out

In the fall of 1811, Indiana's territorial governor William Henry Harrison led U.S. troops to victory in the Battle of Tippecanoe. The defeat convinced many Indians in the Northwest Territory (including the celebrated Shawnee chief Tecumseh) that they needed British support to prevent American settlers from pushing them further out of their lands.

Meanwhile, by late 1811 the so-called "War Hawks" in Congress were putting more and more pressure on Madison, and on June 18, 1812, the president signed a declaration of war against Britain. Though Congress ultimately voted for war, both House and Senate were bitterly divided on the issue. Most Western and Southern congressmen supported war, while Federalists (especially New Englanders who relied heavily on trade with Britain) accused war advocates of using the excuse of maritime rights to promote their expansionist agenda.

In order to strike at Great Britain, U.S. forces almost immediately attacked Canada, which was then a British colony. American officials were overly optimistic about the invasion's success, especially given how underprepared U.S. troops were at the time. On the other side, they faced a well-managed defense coordinated by Sir Isaac Brock, the British soldier and administrator in charge in Upper Canada (modern Ontario).

On August 16, 1812, the United States suffered a humiliating defeat after Brock and Tecumseh's forces chased those led by Michigan William Hull across the Canadian border, scaring Hull into surrendering Detroit without any shots fired.

War of 1812: Mixed Results for American Forces

Things looked better for the United States in the West, as Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry's brilliant success in the Battle of Lake Erie in September 1813 placed the Northwest Territory firmly under American control. Harrison was subsequently able to retake Detroit with a victory in the Battle of Thames (in which Tecumseh was killed). Meanwhile, the U.S. navy had been able to score several victories over the Royal Navy in the early months of the war. With the defeat of Napoleon's armies in April 1814, however, Britain was able to turn its full attention to the war effort in North America.

As large numbers of troops arrived, British forces raided the Chesapeake Bay and moved in on the U.S. capital, capturing Washington, D.C., on August 24, 1814, and burning government buildings including the Capitol and the White House.

Inspiration for 'The Star Spangled Banner'

On September 11, 1814, at the Battle of Plattsburgh on Lake Champlain in New York, the American navy soundly defeated the British fleet. And on September 13, 1814, Baltimore's Fort McHenry withstood 25 hours of bombardment by the British Navy.

The following morning, the fort's soldiers hoisted an enormous American flag, a sight that inspired Francis Scott Key to write a poem that would later be set to music and become known as " The Star-Spangled Banner." (Set to the tune of an old English drinking song, it would later be adopted as the U.S. national anthem.) British forces subsequently left the Chesapeake Bay and began gathering their efforts for a campaign against New Orleans.

End of the War of 1812 and Its Impact

By that time, peace talks had already begun at Ghent (modern Belgium), and Britain moved for an armistice after the failure of the assault on Baltimore. In the negotiations that followed, the United States gave up its demands to end impressment, while Britain promised to leave Canada's borders unchanged and abandon efforts to create an Indian state in the Northwest. On December 24, 1814, commissioners signed the Treaty of Ghent, which would be ratified the following February.

On January 8, 1815, unaware that peace had been concluded, British forces mounted a major attack in the Battle of New Orleans, only to meet with defeat at the hands of future U.S. president Andrew Jackson 's army. News of the battle boosted sagging U.S. morale and left Americans with the taste of victory, despite the fact that the country had achieved none of its pre-war objectives.

Impact of the War of 1812

Though the War of 1812 is remembered as a relatively minor conflict in the United States and Britain, it looms large for Canadians and for Native Americans, who see it as a decisive turning point in their losing struggle to govern themselves. In fact, the war had a far-reaching impact in the United States, as the Treaty of Ghent ended decades of bitter partisan infighting in government and ushered in the so-called "Era of Good Feelings."

The war also marked the demise of the Federalist Party, which had been accused of being unpatriotic for its antiwar stance, and reinforced a tradition of Anglophobia that had begun during the Revolutionary War. Perhaps most importantly, the war's outcome boosted national self-confidence and encouraged the growing spirit of American expansionism that would shape the better part of the 19th century.

HISTORY Vault

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In the War of 1812, the United States took on the greatest naval power in the world, Great Britain, in a conflict that would have an immense impact on the young country's future.

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Jacksonian Democracy - spoils system, Bank War, and Trail of Tears

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In the final video in this series, Kim discusses Andrew Jackson's presidency and how he attempted to increase the power of the executive branch. A growing movement of opposition to Jackson coalesced into the Whig Party, which employed many of the same tactics as Jackson in the election of 1840.

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The 'Indian Problem'

White Americans, particularly those who lived on the western frontier, often feared and resented the Native Americans they encountered: To them, American Indians seemed to be an unfamiliar, alien people who occupied land that white settlers wanted (and believed they deserved).

Some officials in the early years of the American republic, such as President George Washington, believed that the best way to solve this "Indian problem" was to simply "civilize" the Native Americans. The goal of this civilization campaign was to make Native Americans as much like white Americans as possible by encouraging them convert to Christianity, learn to speak and read English and adopt European-style economic practices such as the individual ownership of land and other property (including, in some instances in the South, enslaved persons).

In the southeastern United States, many Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, Creek and Cherokee people embraced these customs and became known as the "Five Civilized Tribes."

Did you know? Indian removal took place in the Northern states as well. In Illinois and Wisconsin, for example, the bloody Black Hawk War in 1832 opened to white settlement millions of acres of land that had belonged to the Sauk, Fox and other native nations.

But the Native Americans' land, located in parts of Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, Florida and Tennessee, was valuable, and it grew to be more coveted as white settlers flooded the region. Many of these whites yearned to make their fortunes by growing cotton, and often resorted to violent means to take land from their Indigenous neighbors. They stole livestock; burned and looted houses and towns; committed mass murder; and squatted on land that did not belong to them.

Worcester v. Georgia

State governments joined in this effort to drive Native Americans out of the South. Several states passed laws limiting Native American sovereignty and rights and encroaching on their territory.

In Worcester v. Georgia (1832), the U.S. Supreme Court objected to these practices and affirmed that native nations were sovereign nations "in which the laws of Georgia [and other states] can have no force."

Even so, the maltreatment continued. As President Andrew Jackson noted in 1832, if no one intended to enforce the Supreme Court's rulings (which he certainly did not), then the decisions would "[fall]...still born." Southern states were determined to take ownership of Indian lands and would go to great lengths to secure this territory.

Indian Removal Act

Andrew Jackson had long been an advocate of what he called "Indian removal." As an Army general, he had spent years leading brutal campaigns against the Creeks in Georgia and Alabama and the Seminoles in Florida-campaigns that resulted in the transfer of hundreds of thousands of acres of land from Indian nations to white farmers.

As president, he continued this crusade. In 1830, he signed the Indian Removal Act, which gave the federal government the power to exchange Native-held land in the cotton kingdom east of the Mississippi for land to the west, in the "Indian colonization zone" that the United States had acquired as part of the Louisiana Purchase. This "Indian territory" was located in present-day Oklahoma.

The law required the government to negotiate removal treaties fairly, voluntarily and peacefully: It did not permit the president or anyone else to coerce Native nations into giving up their ancestral lands. However, President Jackson and his government frequently ignored the letter of the law and forced Native Americans to vacate lands they had lived on for generations.

Trail of Tears

In the winter of 1831, under threat of invasion by the U.S. Army, the Choctaw became the first nation to be expelled from its land altogether. They made the journey to Indian Territory on foot (some "bound in chains and marched double file," one historian writes), and without any food, supplies or other help from the government.

Thousands of people died along the way. It was, one Choctaw leader told an Alabama newspaper, a "trail of tears and death."

The Indian-removal process continued. In 1836, the federal government drove the Creeks from their land for the last time: 3,500 of the 15,000 Creeks who set out for Oklahoma did not survive the trip.

Treaty of New Echota

The Cherokee people were divided: What was the best way to handle the government's determination to get its hands on their territory? Some wanted to stay and fight. Others thought it was more pragmatic to agree to leave in exchange for money and other concessions.

In 1835, a few self-appointed representatives of the Cherokee nation negotiated the Treaty of New Echota, which traded all Cherokee land east of the Mississippi - roughly 7 million acres - for $5 million, relocation assistance and compensation for lost property.

To the federal government, the treaty (signed in New Echota, Georgia) was a done deal, but a majority of the Cherokee felt betrayed. Importantly, the negotiators did not represent the tribal government or anyone else. Most Cherokee people considered the Treaty of New Echota fraudulent, and the Cherokee National Council voted in 1836 to reject it.

John Ross

"The instrument in question is not the act of our nation," wrote the nation's principal chief, John Ross, in a letter to the U.S. Senate protesting the Treaty of New Echota. "We are not parties to its covenants; it has not received the sanction of our people." Nearly 16,000 Cherokees signed Ross's petition, but Congress approved the treaty anyway.

By 1838, only about 2,000 Cherokees had left their Georgia homeland for Indian Territory. President Martin Van Buren sent General Winfield Scott and 7,000 soldiers to expedite the removal process. Scott and his troops forced the Cherokee into stockades at bayonet point while his men looted their homes and belongings.

Then, they marched the Indians more than 1,200 miles to Indian Territory. Whooping cough, typhus, dysentery, cholera and starvation were epidemic along the way. Historians estimate that more than 5,000 Cherokee died as a result of the journey.

Legacy of the Trail of Tears

By 1840, tens of thousands of Native Americans had been driven off of their land in the southeastern states and forced to move across the Mississippi to Indian Territory. The federal government promised that their new land would remain unmolested forever, but as the line of white settlement pushed westward, "Indian Country" shrank and shrank. In 1907, Oklahoma became a state and Indian Territory was considered lost.

A 2020 decision by the Supreme Court, however, highlighted ongoing interest in Native American territorial rights. In a 5-4 decision, the Court ruled that a huge area of Oklahoma is still considered an American Indian reservation.

This decision left the state of Oklahoma unable to prosecute Native Americans accused of crimes on those tribal lands - only federal and tribal law enforcement can prosecute such crimes. (A later 2022 Supreme Court decision rolled back some provisions of the 2020 court finding.)

The Trail of Tears - actually a network of different routes - is over 5,000 miles long and covers nine states: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Tennessee. Today, the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail is run by the National Park Service and portions of it are accessible on foot, by horse, by bicycle or by car.

Sources

Trail of Tears. NPS.gov.
Trail of Tears. Museum of the Cherokee Indian.
The Treaty of New Echota and the Trail of Tears. North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
The Treaty That Forced the Cherokee People from Their Homelands Goes on View. Smithsonian Magazine.
Justices rule swath of Oklahoma remains tribal reservation. Associated Press.
Justices limit 2020 ruling on tribal lands in Oklahoma. Associated Press.

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Trail of Tears: Definition, Date & Cherokee Nation - HISTORY

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The Trail of Tears was the deadly route Native Americans were forced to follow when they were pushed off their ancestral lands and into Oklahoma by the Indian Removal Act of 1830.

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In the mid-nineteenth century, newspaper editor John O'Sullivan coined the term 'manifest destiny' to describe the belief that God intended for the United States to occupy North America from Atlantic to Pacific.

Manifest Destiny was the idea that white Americans were divinely ordained to settle the entire continent of North America.

The ideology of Manifest Destiny inspired a variety of measures designed to remove or destroy the native population.

US President James K. Polk (1845-1849) is the leader most associated with Manifest Destiny.

Manifest Destiny inflamed sectional tensions over slavery, which ultimately led to the Civil War.

From sea to shining sea

In 1845, newspaper editor John O'Sullivan coined the term " Manifest Destiny " to describe the ideology of continental expansionism.

Though the term was new, the ideas underlying it were much older, dating back to the first colonial contact between Europeans and Native Americans. The ideology that became known as Manifest Destiny included a belief in the inherent superiority of white Americans, as well as the conviction that they were destined by God to conquer the territories of North America, from sea to shining sea.

The ideology of Manifest Destiny justified extreme measures to clear the native population from the land, including forced removal and violent extermination. For proponents of Manifest Destiny, the American Indians were mere impediments to the forward march of racial and technological progress, and they advocated pursuing a policy of Indian Removal.

James K. Polk and Manifest Destiny

US President James Polk, who served one term in office, from 1845 to 1849, is the leader most associated with the ideology of Manifest Destiny. Polk was a Democrat from Tennessee who had served as Speaker of the House of Representatives and Governor of Tennessee before becoming president. As president, he led the United States to victory over Mexico in the Mexican-American War, which culminated in the transfer of a vast new territory, comprising almost the whole of the modern-day Southwest, from Mexico to the United States.

Polk also resolved the boundary dispute with Great Britain over the Oregon Territory, which had been jointly occupied since 1818. Polk's administration negotiated the Oregon Treaty of 1846 with Britain, which accepted a division of the territory between the United States and Canada at the 49th parallel. The territory acquired by the United States under the provisions of the treaty include the present-day states of Idaho, Oregon, and Washington, as well as parts of Montana and Wyoming.

Consequences of Manifest Destiny

Polk's embrace of Manifest Destiny and the acquisition of new territories inflamed tensions between abolitionists and slaveholders and heightened conflict between white settlers and Native Americans. While the North and South fought over whether the new states admitted to the Union were to be free states or slave states, the battles between the Plains Indians and settlers in Texas grew particularly vicious. Though Comanches put up an especially fierce resistance to the encroachment of white people onto their lands, they were ultimately vanquished and relocated to a reservation in Oklahoma in 1875.

Meanwhile, the debate over the Wilmot Proviso was one of the major events leading up to the Civil War. The proviso, which was strongly opposed by the slaveholding South, asserted that the Mexican-American War had not been fought for the purpose of expanding slavery, and stipulated that slavery would never exist in the territories acquired from Mexico in the war. Ultimately, Polk's territorial expansionism, though aimed at national unity, wound up intensifying sectional conflict and further paving the road to civil war.

What do you think?

Why do you think Polk went to war with Mexico but negotiated with Great Britain?

In your view, what was the most significant component of the ideology of Manifest Destiny?

What sorts of policies were justified in the name of Manifest Destiny?

What were the most consequential outcomes of the ideology of Manifest Destiny?

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Manifest Destiny (article) | Khan Academy

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In the mid-nineteenth century, newspaper editor John O'Sullivan coined the term 'manifest destiny' to describe the belief that God intended for the United States to occupy North America from Atlantic to Pacific. Manifest Destiny was the idea that white Americans were divinely ordained to settle the entire continent of North America.

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The Rise of Political Parties:
https://www.radford.edu/~rvshelton/Parties.htm
The Louisiana Purchase:
https://www.ducksters.com/history/westward_expansion/louisiana_purchase.php
The Corps of Discovery:
https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/aspeninstitute/founding-fathers/james-madison/v/isaacson-with-cheney-khan-academy-lesson-ix
The War of 1812:
https://www.history.com/topics/war-of-1812/war-of-1812
The Monroe Doctrine:
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/the-early-republic/politics-society-early-19th-c/v/the-monroe-doctrine
Nationalism Vs. Sectionalism:
https://www.slideshare.net/smartperson906/american-romanticism-18211341

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Jacksonian Democracy:
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/the-early-republic/age-of-jackson/v/jacksonian-democracy-part-4
Native American Removal:
https://www.history.com/topics/native-american-history/trail-of-tears
Trails West:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDAYV2xCXWQ
Texas Becomes a Nation:
https://slideplayer.com/slide/6451565/
Manifest Destiny:
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/the-early-republic/age-of-jackson/a/manifest-destiny
Mexican - American War:
https://www.history.com/topics/mexican-american-war

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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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The Industrial Revolution:
https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/big-history-project/acceleration/bhp-acceleration/a/the-industrial-revolution
Interchangeable Parts:
https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/interchangeable-parts
The Rise of Organized Labor:
https://www.cliffsnotes.com/study-guides/history/us-history-ii/industrial-america/the-rise-of-organized-labor#targetText=Early%20labor%20unions.,Union%20(NLU)%20in%201866.
The Transportation Revolution:
https://ush1unit2assessment.wordpress.com/2013/11/23/overview-of-the-transportation-revolution/
Eli Whitney Cotton Gin:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLb9QGWK8TA
The Life of a Slave:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qcm1mPWk_pM

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Table of Contents

1. Preindustrial Gunmaking

2. Eli Whitney's Impressive Display

3. The Impact of Interchangeable Parts

During the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century, machines took over most of the manufacturing work from men, and factories replaced craftsmen's workshops. The event that laid the groundwork for this monumental change was the introduction of interchangeable parts, or pre-manufactured parts that were for all practical purposes identical, into the firearms industry. Interchangeable parts, popularized in America when Eli Whitney used them to assemble muskets in the first years of the 19th century, allowed relatively unskilled workers to produce large numbers of weapons quickly and at lower cost, and made repair and replacement of parts infinitely easier.

Preindustrial Gunmaking

Gunmaking was considered an extremely skilled craft in the 18th century, and firearms, including pistols and muskets, were all constructed by hand. In this way, every gun was a one-of-a-kind possession, and a gun broken could not be easily repaired. At the very least, the process was time consuming and expensive, as the gun had to be brought to a craftsman and repaired to order.

Did you know? Eli Whitney first made his name at the tender age of 27 with his invention of the cotton gin, patented in 1794. This revolutionary device was easily copied, however, and several patent infringement lawsuits gained little to no financial reward for Whitney and his partners.

In the mid-18th century, the French gunsmith Honoré LeBlanc suggested the gun parts be made from standardized patterns, so that all gun parts would follow the same design and could be easily replaced if broken. LeBlanc was not alone in imagining the potential value of this concept; an English naval engineer Samuel Bentham had earlier pioneered the use of uniform parts in the production of wooden pulleys for sailing ships. LeBlanc's idea didn't catch on in the French gun market, however, as competing gunsmiths saw clearly the effect that it would have on their craft. In 1789, Thomas Jefferson, then serving as American minister to France, visited LeBlanc's workshop and was impressed by his methods. Despite LeBlanc's efforts, however, it would be left to another man to fully introduce interchangeable parts into the American-and later the international-weapons industry.

Eli Whitney's Impressive Display

In 1797, when Congress voted to prepare the nation for war with France, including the appropriation of a large amount of funds for new weapons, the young inventor Eli Whitney-already known for his invention of the cotton gin in 1794-seized an opportunity to try to make his fortune. In mid-1798, he obtained a government contract to manufacture 10,000 muskets within an extraordinarily short time frame of less than two years.

By January 1801, Whitney had failed to produce a single one of the promised weapons, and was called to Washington to justify his use of Treasury funds before a group that included outgoing president John Adams and Jefferson, now the president-elect. As the story goes, Whitney put on a display for the group, assembling muskets before their eyes by choosing (seemingly at random) from a supply of parts he brought with him. The performance earned Whitney widespread renown and renewed federal support. It was later proven, however, that Whitney's demonstration was a fake, and that he had marked the parts beforehand and they were not exactly interchangeable. Still, Whitney received credit for what Jefferson claimed was the dawn of the machine age.

The Impact of Interchangeable Parts

Whitney proved to be an effective businessman and manager, dividing labor efficiently among his largely unskilled work force and building precision equipment that enabled the production of large numbers of identical parts quickly and at a relatively low cost. The last of the 10,000 muskets that Whitney had promised in his original contract came in eight years late, but were judged to be of superior quality, and he produced 15,000 more within the next four years.

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Preindustrial Gunmaking Eli Whitney's Impressive Display The Impact of Interchangeable Parts During the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century, machines took over most of the manufacturing work from men, and factories replaced craftsmen's workshops. The event that laid the groundwork for this monumental change was the introduction of interchangeable parts, or pre-manufactured parts that were for all practical purposes identical, into the firearms industry.

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The typical factory worker in the late nineteenth century worked ten hours a day, six days a week. Unskilled workers were paid between $1.00 and $1.50 a day; skilled workers might make twice as much, while women (who became a significant percentage of the labor force after the Civil War), children, and African‐Americans were paid considerably less. Workplace accidents were common, and the idea of compensating workers injured on the job was unheard of at the time. To help each other through illness, injury, and deaths, workers formed mutual benefit societies (often organized along ethnic lines), but the assistance these groups provided was minimal. The most serious problem for factory workers was unemployment. It was common for a worker, particularly an unskilled one, to be out of a job at least part of the year.

Early labor unions. Skilled workers, such as cigarmakers, iron molders, and hat finishers formed the first labor unions before the Civil War. Several of these craft unions (so named because they organized workers within specific craft industries) joined together to form the National Labor Union (NLU) in 1866. Although the organization advocated an eight‐hour workday, it did not support strikes to achieve that goal. The NLU was also concerned with social reform, including equal rights for women, establishing worker cooperatives, and temperance. The union, along with organized labor in general, declined sharply in the wake of the depression of 1873 but not before influencing Congress to enact the eight‐hour day for federal employees (1868).

The Knights of Labor, organized in 1869, is considered to be the first industrial union, open to skilled and unskilled workers, women, and African‐Americans. This inclusive policy contributed to its growth, and the union boasted more than 700,000 members by the mid‐1880s. The program of the Knights of Labor was a combination of reform ideas and specific worker demands. Along with setting up cooperative workshops and calling for the regulation of the railroads, the union wanted an eight‐hour workday, legislation protecting the health and safety of workers, and an end to child labor (for children under the age of 14). To achieve these goals, political action and arbitration between employers and labor representatives were preferred over strikes. The decline of the Knights of Labor after 1886 was due to several factors: the failure of several unauthorized strikes, the growing dissatisfaction of craftsmen who felt the union favored the interests of unskilled workers, and the public perception in the wake of the Haymarket Square Riot (1886) that the Knights supported violence.

On May 4, 1886, a mass meeting of workers was called in Chicago's Haymarket Square to protest the death of a striker at the McCormick Harvester plant. When the police tried to disperse the crowd, someone threw a bomb that killed seven policemen and injured several more. The riot that followed resulted in additional deaths on both sides. Although it was one of the three unions on strike at McCormick, the Knights of Labor had nothing to do with the events in Haymarket Square. This fact did not prevent the union from becoming a victim of the antilabor sentiment that swept the country, and its membership declined rapidly over the next four years.

The American Federation of Labor. Founded in 1886 by Samuel Gompers, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) was a federation of skilled workers in national craft unions that maintained their autonomy while working together to promote labor legislation and support strikes. In contrast to its predecessors, the new union focused exclusively on basic labor issues - the eight‐hour workday, higher wages, better working conditions (particularly plant safety), and the right of workers to organize. To Gompers, who began his career in the cigarmakers union, only craftsmen that could not be easily replaced had the leverage necessary to either bargain effectively with employers or go on strike. The AFL had little more than disdain for unskilled workers or blacks, skilled or not, and did not seriously try to organize women. Although he was an immigrant himself, as were many local union men, Gompers nevertheless strongly supported restrictions on immigration to prevent new arrivals from competing with American workers for jobs. Even though it excluded most of the working class, the AFL became the largest single labor organization in the country by 1900 with over one million members.

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The typical factory worker in the late nineteenth century worked ten hours a day, six days a week. Unskilled workers were paid between $1.00 and $1.50 a day; skilled workers might make twice as much, while women (who became a significant percentage of the labor force after the Civil War), children, and African‐Americans were paid considerably less.

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

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America's Journey Through Slavery: The Life Of An Enslaved Person (#GH4974) Trailer

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Immigration to the United States in 1800s

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Immigration to the United States in 1800s

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Immigration to the U.S. in the Late 1800s | National Geographic Society

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Second Great Awakening, Protestant religious revival in the United States from about 1795 to 1835. During this revival, meetings were held in small towns and large cities throughout the country, and the unique frontier institution known as the camp meeting began. Many churches experienced a great increase in membership, particularly among Methodist and Baptist churches. The Second Great Awakening made soul-winning the primary function of ministry and stimulated several moral and philanthropic reforms, including temperance and the emancipation of women. Generally considered less emotional than the Great Awakening of the early 18th century, the second wave of evangelical revivalism led to the founding of numerous colleges and seminaries and to the organization of mission societies across the country.

The Second Great Awakening can be divided into three phases. The first phase (1795-1810) was associated with frontier camp meetings conducted by American preachers James McGready, John McGee, and Barton W. Stone in Kentucky and Tennessee. The second and more conservative phase of the awakening (1810-25) centred in the Congregational churches of New England under the leadership of theologians Timothy Dwight, Lyman Beecher, Nathaniel W. Taylor, and Asahel Nettleton. The third and final phase (1825-35) stemmed from the activities of evangelist Charles Grandison Finney, who began his revivalism in small towns in western New York in the 1820s but eventually conducted revival meetings in the largest cities in the United States and Britain.

During the Second Great Awakening revivalistic theology in many denominations shifted from Calvinism to a practical Arminianism as preachers emphasized the ability of sinners to make an immediate decision for their salvation; theological differences almost disappeared among evangelical churches. Moreover, under Finney's aegis a rationale for carefully contrived revival techniques evolved. After 1835 an irregular corps of professional revival experts traveled through the towns and cities of America and Britain organizing annual revival meetings at the invitation of local pastors who wanted to reinvigorate their churches. Although many American Protestants lost interest in revivalism in the first half of the 20th century, tent revivals as well as annual revivals in churches in the South and Midwest continued to be an important feature of Protestant church life.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Melissa Petruzzello.

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Second Great Awakening | Description, History, & Key Figures

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Second Great Awakening, Protestant religious revival in the United States from about 1795 to 1835. Many churches experienced a great increase in membership, and the revival stimulated moral reforms, such as the temperance movement. Learn more about the Second Great Awakening and its impact on American Protestantism.

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Abolitionist Movement Prior to Civil War

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Abolitionist Movement Prior to Civil War

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What Is an Abolitionist?

An abolitionist, as the name implies, is a person who sought to abolish slavery during the 19th century. More specifically, these individuals sought the immediate and full emancipation of all enslaved people.

Most early abolitionists were white, religious Americans, but some of the most prominent leaders of the movement were also Black men and women who had escaped from bondage.

The abolitionists saw slavery as an abomination and an affliction on the United States, making it their goal to eradicate slave ownership. They sent petitions to Congress, ran for political office and inundated people of the South with anti-slavery literature.

These staunch activists wanted to abolish slavery completely, which differed from the ideas of other groups like the Free Soil Party, which opposed the expansion of slavery into U.S. territories and newly formed states such as Kansas.

Did you know? Female abolitionists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott went on to become prominent figures in the women's rights movement.

How Did Abolitionism Start?

Opposition to slavery wasn't a new concept when abolitionism started. Since the inception of the Atlantic slave trade, which began in the 16th century, critics voiced their disapproval of the system.

In an early effort to stop slavery, the American Colonization Society, founded in 1816, proposed the idea of freeing slaves and sending them back to Africa. This solution was thought to be a compromise between antislavery activists and slavery supporters.

By 1860, nearly 12,000 African Americans had returned to Africa.

Missouri Compromise

The Missouri Compromise of 1820, which allowed Missouri to become a slave state, further provoked anti-slave sentiment in the North.

The abolitionist movement began as a more organized, radical and immediate effort to end slavery than earlier campaigns. It officially emerged around 1830.

Historians believe ideas set forth during the religious movement known as the Second Great Awakening inspired abolitionists to rise up against slavery. This Protestant revival encouraged the concept of adopting renewed morals, which centered around the idea that all men are created equal in the eyes of God.

Abolitionism started in states like New York and Massachusetts and quickly spread to other Northern states.

Laws Inflame Tensions

In 1850, Congress passed the controversial Fugitive Slave Act, which required all escaped enslaved people to be returned to their owners and American citizens to cooperate with the captures.

Seven years later, the Supreme Court ruled in the Dred Scott decision that Black people-free or enslaved-didn't have legal citizenship rights. Owners of enslaved people were also granted the right to take their enslaved workers to Western territories. These legal actions and court decisions sparked outrage among abolitionists.

Famous Abolitionists

Many Americans, including free and formerly enslaved people, worked tirelessly to support the abolitionist movement. Some of the most famous abolitionists included:

William Lloyd Garrison: A very influential early abolitionist, Garrison started a publication called The Liberator, which supported the immediate freeing of all enslaved men and women.

Frederick Douglass: Douglass escaped slavery himself and published a memoir titled Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. An instrumental figure in the abolitionist movement, he also supported women's suffrage.

Harriet Beecher Stowe: Stowe was an author and abolitionist who was best known for her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Susan B. Anthony: Anthony was an author, speaker and women's rights activist who also supported the abolitionist movement. She is revered for her diligent efforts in fighting for women's rights to vote.

: Brown was a radical abolitionist who organized various raids and uprisings, including an infamous raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia.

Harriet Tubman: Tubman was a fugitive enslaved person and abolitionist who was known for helping escaped enslaved people reach the North via the Underground Railroad network.

Sojourner Truth: Best known for her speech, "Ain't I a Woman?," Truth was both an abolitionist and a women's rights advocate.

Rift Widens Between North and South

As it gained momentum, the abolitionist movement caused increasing friction between states in the North and the slave-owning South. Critics of abolition argued that it contradicted the U.S. Constitution, which left the option of slavery up to individual states.

Abolitionism was illegal in the South, and President Andrew Jackson banned the U.S. Postal Service from delivering any publications that supported the movement.

In 1833, a white student at Lane Theological Seminary named Amos Dresser was publicly whipped in Nashville, Tennessee, for possessing abolitionist literature while traveling through the city.

Elijah Lovejoy

In 1837, a pro-slavery mob attacked a warehouse in Alton, Illinois, in an attempt to destroy abolitionist press materials. During the raid, they shot and killed newspaper editor and abolitionist Elijah Lovejoy.

After the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 was passed, both pro- and anti-slavery groups inhabited the Kansas Territory. In 1856, a pro-slavery group attacked the town of Lawrence, which was founded by abolitionists from Massachusetts. In retaliation, abolitionist John Brown organized a raid that killed five pro-slavery settlers.

Then, in 1859, Brown led 21 men to capture the U.S. arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. He and his followers were seized by a group of Marines and convicted of treason. Brown was hanged for the crime.

The Civil War and Its Aftermath

President Abraham Lincoln opposed slavery but was cautious about fully supporting the more radical ideas of the abolitionists. As the power struggle between the North and the South reached its peak, the Civil War broke out in 1861.

As the bloody war waged on, Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, calling for the freeing of enslaved people in areas of the rebellion. And in 1865, the Constitution was ratified to include the Thirteenth Amendment, which officially abolished all forms of slavery in the United States.

Abolitionist Movement Ends

Though the abolitionist movement seemed to dissolve after the addition of the Thirteenth Amendment, many historians argue that the effort didn't completely cease until the 1870 passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, which extended voting rights to Black men. Meanwhile, the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, granted citizenship to all persons "born or naturalized in the United States," including former enslaved people.

When slavery officially ended, many prominent abolitionists turned their focus to women's rights issues. Historians believe that the experiences and lessons learned during the abolitionist movement paved the way for leaders who were eventually successful in the women's suffrage movements.

Abolitionist ideals and traditions also served as a model for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP), which was formed in 1909.

HISTORY Vault: Black History

Sources

Abolition and the Abolitionists. National Geographic.
Early abolition. Khan Academy.
Abolitionist Sentiment Grows. UShistory.org.

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Abolitionist Movement - Definition & Famous Abolitionists | HISTORY

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The abolitionist movement was the effort to end slavery, led by famous abolitionists like Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth and John Brown.

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The Kansas-Nebraska Act Explained: US History Review

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Election of 1860 & the Road to Disunion: Crash Course US History #18

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Immigration to the United States in the 1800s:
https://www.nationalgeographic.org/photo/immigration-1870-1900/
Second Great Awakening:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Second-Great-Awakening
Abolitionist Movement Prior to Civil War:
https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/abolitionist-movement
Womens Rights Movement in the 1800s: https://thedevelopmentofwomensrights.weebly.com/
Compromise of 1850: http://www.ushistory.org/us/30d.asp
Kansas/Nebraska Act: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Phir7DPWTrM
Lincoln/Douglas Debates: https://www.britannica.com/event/Lincoln-Douglas-debates
Election of 1860:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roNmeOOJCDY

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

How it ended

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

In context

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

Before the Battle

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

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

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

During the Battle

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

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

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

Aftermath

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

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

Fort Sumter: Featured Resources

Related Battles

Charleston Harbor, SC | April 12, 1861

Result: Confederate Victory

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

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Kim and Sal talk about the Emancipation Proclamation.

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

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Here's Why the Battle of Vicksburg Was So Important

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Southern Surrender at Appomattox Courthouse

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Southern Surrender at Appomattox Courthouse

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In Appomattox, Virginia, on April 9, 1865, Robert E. Lee surrenders his 28,000 Confederate troops to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, effectively ending the American Civil War. Forced to abandon the Confederate capital of Richmond, blocked from joining the surviving Confederate force in North Carolina, and harassed constantly by Union cavalry, Lee had no other option.

In retreating from the Union army's Appomattox Campaign, the Army of Northern Virginia had stumbled through the Virginia countryside stripped of food and supplies. At one point, Union cavalry forces under General Philip Sheridan had actually outrun Lee's army, blocking their retreat and taking 6,000 prisoners at Sayler's Creek. Desertions were mounting daily, and by April 8 the Confederates were surrounded with no possibility of escape. On April 9, Lee sent a message to Grant announcing his willingness to surrender. The two generals met in the parlor of the Wilmer McLean home at one o'clock in the afternoon.
READ MORE: Why the Civil War Actually Ended 16 Months After Lee Surrendered
Lee and Grant, both holding the highest rank in their respective armies, had known each other slightly during the Mexican War and exchanged awkward personal inquiries. Characteristically, Grant arrived in his muddy field uniform while Lee had turned out in full dress attire, complete with sash and sword. Lee asked for the terms, and Grant hurriedly wrote them out. All officers and men were to be pardoned, and they would be sent home with their private property-most important, the horses, which could be used for a late spring planting. Officers would keep their side arms, and Lee's starving men would be given Union rations.

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In Appomattox, Virginia, on April 9, 1865, Robert E. Lee surrenders his 28,000 Confederate troops to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, effectively ending the American Civil War. Forced to abandon the Confederate capital of Richmond, blocked from joining the surviving Confederate force in North Carolina, and harassed constantly by Union cavalry, Lee had no other option.

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The 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

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

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This article was most recently revised and updated by

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

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

The full text of the amendment is:

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Adam Augustyn.

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

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

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

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

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

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Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library & Museums

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The Disputed Election of 1876

The election of 1876 between Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden of New York was one of the most hostile, controversial campaigns in American history. Tilden won the popular vote and led in the electoral college, but 19 votes from three Republican-controlled states (Louisiana, Florida, and South Carolina) remained disputed. Oregon's count was also challenged. Allegations of widespread voter fraud forced Congress to set up a special electoral commission to determine the winner, composed of fifteen congressmen and Supreme Court justices. The commission finally announced their decision only two days before the inauguration. The vote was 8-7 along party lines to award the disputed electoral college votes to Hayes, making him the winner.

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Visit President Rutherford B. Hayes' wooded estate named Spiegel Grove, home of America's first presidential library. Tour the president's 31-room Victorian mansion, see his tomb, visit the newly renovated museum, explore the library and walk the mile of paved trails.

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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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The Fall of Fort Sumter: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/fort-sumter
The Emancipation Proclamation: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/civil-war-era/slavery-and-the-civil-war/v/emancipation-proclamation
Clara Barton and American Red Cross: https://www.redcross.org/about-us/who-we-are/history/clara-barton.html
The Battle of Gettysburg: https://www.nationalreview.com/2013/06/great-battle-gettysburg-mackubin-thomas-owens/
The Battle of Vicksburg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sE1bYVwH1jM
Southern Surrender at Appomattox Courthouse: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/robert-e-lee-surrenders

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The 13th Amendment: https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendment/amendment-xiii
The 14th Amendment: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Fourteenth-Amendment
The 15th Amendment: https://guides.loc.gov/15th-amendment
The Election of 1876: https://www.rbhayes.org/hayes/disputed-election-of-1876/
Plessy V. Ferguson: https://kcpt.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/bf09.socst.us.const.plessy/plessy-v-ferguson/

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Transcontinental Railroad ‑ Construction, Competition & Impact

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In 1862, the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific Railroad Companies began building a transcontinental railroad that would link the United States from east to west. Over the next seven years, the two companies raced toward each other from Sacramento, California on the one side to Omaha, Nebraska on the other, struggling against great risks before they met at Promontory, Utah, on May 10, 1869.

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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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Bessemer process, the first method discovered for mass-producing steel. Though named after Sir Henry Bessemer of England, the process evolved from the contributions of many investigators before it could be used on a broad commercial basis. It was apparently conceived independently and almost concurrently by Bessemer and by William Kelly of the United States. As early as 1847, Kelly, a businessman-scientist of Pittsburgh, began experiments aimed at developing a revolutionary means of removing impurities from pig iron by an air blast. Kelly theorized that not only would the air, injected into the molten iron, supply oxygen to react with the impurities, converting them into oxides separable as slag, but that the heat evolved in these reactions would increase the temperature of the mass, keeping it from solidifying during the operation. After several failures, he succeeded in proving his theory and rapidly producing steel ingots.

In 1856 Bessemer, working independently in Sheffield, developed and patented the same process. Whereas Kelly had been unable to perfect the process owing to a lack of financial resources, Bessemer was able to develop it into a commercial success. Another Englishman, Robert Forester Mushet, found that adding an alloy of carbon, manganese, and iron after the air-blowing was complete restored the carbon content of the steel while neutralizing the effect of remaining impurities, notably sulfur. A Swedish ironmaster, Goran Goransson, redesigned the Bessemer furnace, or converter, making it reliable in performance. The end result was a means of mass-producing steel. The resultant volume of low-cost steel in Britain and the United States soon revolutionized building construction and provided steel to replace iron in railroad rails and many other uses.

The Bessemer converter is a cylindrical steel pot approximately 6 metres (20 feet) high, originally lined with a siliceous refractory. Air is blown in through openings (tuyeres) near the bottom, creating oxides of silicon and manganese, which become part of the slag, and of carbon, which are carried out in the stream of air. Within a few minutes an ingot of steel can be produced, ready for the forge or rolling mill.

The original Bessemer converter was not effective in removing the phosphorus present in sizable amounts in most British and European iron ore. The invention in England, by Sidney Gilchrist Thomas, of what is now called the Thomas-Gilchrist converter, which was lined with a basic material such as burned limestone rather than an (acid) siliceous material, overcame this problem. Another drawback to Bessemer steel, its retention of a small percentage of nitrogen from the air blow, was not corrected until the 1950s. The open-hearth process, which was developed in the 1860s, did not suffer from this difficulty, and it eventually outstripped the Bessemer process to become the dominant steelmaking process until the mid-20th century. The open-hearth process was in turn replaced by the basic oxygen process, which is actually an extension and refinement of the Bessemer process.

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Bessemer process | Dates, Definition, & Facts

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Bessemer process, the first method discovered for mass-producing steel. Though named after Sir Henry Bessemer of England, the process evolved from the contributions of many investigators before it could be used on a broad commercial basis. It was apparently conceived independently and almost concurrently by Bessemer and by William Kelly of the United States.

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After the Civil War, the United States rapidly transformed into an industrial, urbanized nation. Technological innovation, economic growth, development of large-scale agriculture, and the expansion of the federal government characterized the era, as did the social tensions brought about by immigration, financial turmoil, federal Indian policy, and increasing demands for rights by workers, women, and minorities.

This group of objects highlights innovation and industrialization in the late 1800s, and the benefits as well as detriments of becoming an economic and industrial power.

Century Vase, 1876

Made by Union Porcelain Works, Greenpoint, New York

The American Industrial Revolution transformed the nation from a scattering of isolated communities into an economic and industrial giant, in part due to the country’s wealth of natural resources. Forests, minerals, waterways, and huge tracts of arable land for farming and ranching provided the raw materials that fueled growth and development, often at the expense of the environment.

This vase celebrates 100 years of American progress and depicts now-vanished icons of the American landscape such as bison, a wooden reaper, and a steamship.

Railroad Spike, 1869

Commemorative of the final spike that completed the transcontinental railroad

Railroads were the basis of the nation’s industrial economy in the late 1800s, creating new markets, carrying billions of tons of freight to every corner of the country, and opening up the West for development. Thanks in part to the railroad providing access to new land for farming, agricultural production doubled in the 1870s, which in turn increased railroad traffic.

Gift of Union Pacific Railroad, Mr. A. E. Stoddard, President

Stock Ticker, about 1900

Made by the Western Union Telegraph Company

The U.S. economy grew rapidly after the Civil War, fueled by an astounding rise in wealth, wages, production, and corporate mergers, along with limited government regulation. The volume of stocks traded rose sharply with corporations’ need for investment capital and the development of new technologies. The 1867 invention of the stock ticker, transmitting up-to-the-minute share prices over telegraph lines, modernized the stock exchange.

Gift of Western Union Corporation

Incandescent Lamp, about 1891

Made by Edison General Electric Company

Many inventions in the late 1880s helped speed urban growth, allowing for taller buildings, more efficient factories, and better transportation. One of the most dramatic improvements occurred in artificial lighting. Thomas Edison’s development of an electric lamp that did not rely on open flames made lighting more practical for factories, offices, and homes, and transformed city life.

Gift of General Electric Lighting Company, through Terry K. McGowan

Tinfoil Phonograph, 1878

Invented by Thomas Alva Edison

Thomas Edison helped usher in an age of organized research in support of commerce and industry that reshaped American life. Vowing to turn out inventions on a regular basis, Edison and his team of scientists, engineers, draftsmen, and laborers developed or improved over 1,000 patents, from huge electric generators to this early phonograph.

Gift of American Telephone and Telegraph Company

Alexander Graham Bell's Big Box Telephone, 1876

One of the first commercially available telephones

Telegraph lines could carry only one coded message per wire at a time, which became a hindrance as the volume of communication increased. To overcome this problem, Alexander Bell used his knowledge of acoustics to devise a method of sending multiple tonal messages over a wire. This led to the telephone, and a communication revolution that transformed business and daily life.

Gift of American Telephone and Telegraph Company

Cross, 1875–99

Made by a Hispanic Catholic in New Mexico

New Mexico has experienced many cultural encounters since the arrival of the Spanish in the early 1500s. Following the United States’ 1848 annexation of the area at the end of war with Mexico, the population of the territory boomed, bringing together Catholics of Spanish descent, indigenous tribes, Protestant missionaries, and Anglo American settlers. Though often in conflict, these communities forged a distinctive regional identity that survives to the present.

Silver Presentation Cup, about 1900

Presented to Susan B. Anthony on her eightieth birthday

Although American women fought for black suffrage, they were unable to vote in federal elections themselves until 1920. As suffragists moved out of the parlor and into the streets, they challenged the notion that a woman’s place was solely in the home. Susan B. Anthony shocked the nation when she was jailed in 1872 for illegally trying to vote.

Gift of National American Woman Suffrage Association

Print, 1870s

Black politicians during Reconstruction

With the end of the Civil War, hard-won constitutional amendments abolished slavery and established citizenship and voting rights for black Americans. But during and after Reconstruction, blacks were often treated as second-class citizens. Southern states continued to restrict black voting, and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan led to decades of violence.

From the Ralph E. Becker Collection of Political Americana

Statue, late 1800s

Made by the Union Porcelain Works, Greenpoint, New York

In the late 1800s, black Americans gained citizenship and the vote, while immigrants from Europe and Asia came to the country in record numbers. As these minorities strove for economic prosperity and social justice, some white Americans reacted to the rapidly changing social order with apprehension and hostility. The relationship of the three figures in this statue captures this tension.

Gift of Mrs. Franklin Chace

Singer Sewing Machine Patent Model, 1889

Factory machine for making buttonholes

American goods were increasingly made in factories as companies adopted large-scale, standardized production methods in the late 1800s. Specialized machines took the place of manual tasks—such as sewing buttonholes for ready-made clothing—speeding up the work to meet the growing demands of a nation of consumers. The advent of more simply constructed women’s apparel in the 1890s gave a further boost to the clothing industry.

Sholes & Glidden Typewriter, 1873

Made by E. Remington & Sons

The development of corporations after the Civil War led to the creation of multiple layers of office management. The vast demand for professional managers and clerical staff encouraged education and the growth of the middle class. The introduction of the typewriter gave women the opportunity to enter the corporate workplace.

Gift of Wyckoff, Seamans & Benedict

John Brown Lennon's Delegate Badge, 1893

From the Journeymen Tailors’ Union convention

Rapid industrial development in the late 1800s changed where and how Americans worked. By 1900, U.S. factories employed 4.5 million people, most working long hours for low wages in often unhealthful conditions. Workers organized local and national unions in response, leading to an intense period of political activity, strikes, and sometimes violent clashes in the fight for labor rights.

Gift of D. E. Lennon

Jeans, 1873-96

Made by Levi Strauss & Co., San Franscisco

Between 1870 and 1900 over 430 million acres were settled in the United States, most of them in the West. Mining, ranching, and farming drew waves of settlers, and cities and commerce followed. In 1873 San Francisco merchant LeviStrauss and tailor Jacob Davis patented a designfor rugged workers’ pants for western wear—the first jeans, advertised at right in 1875.

Gift of Walter Haas Jr.

Winchester Rifle, 1881

Captured from Sioux when Chief Low Dog surrendered in Montana Territory

Through most of the 1800s, Americans viewed the nation’s westward expansion as a symbol of its providence as a land of wealth and progress. But Indian tribes resisted the encroachment of settlers in their territories, setting off decades of violence. The federal government gradually pushed the tribes to more isolated areas, offering U.S. citizenship, but few opportunities, to those who agreed to accept allotments of land on reservations.

Man's Gown, about 1896

Ordered from China by Lee B. Lok in 1896

With the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, thousands of Chinese laborers were left jobless in the western United States. Unwelcome in California, where it was feared they competed for low-paying jobs, many moved to the East Coast. Lee Lok emigrated from China to San Francisco in 1881 and then moved to New York City’s Chinatown where he worked in a general store. Although he could not become a U.S. citizen, his children could, and did.

Gift of James Edgar Mead and Virginia Lee Mead

The objects below are no longer on view

Harvester and Self-Raking Reaper Patent Model, 1877

Patented by William Whiteley

Increasingly mechanized farming meant fewer laborers were needed on farms, releasing them to work in urban industrial jobs. As the cities grew, demand increased for agricultural goods in turn. Inventors looked for new ways for farming to be more efficient and profitable, including making improvements to existing technology such as the mechanical reaper first developed by Cyrus McCormick in 1834.

Creeping Baby Doll, 1870s

Patented by Robert J. Clay

In the 1870s, changing notions of childhood meant that Anglo American parents had only recently accepted crawling, or creeping, as a natural stage in a baby’s development rather than a bad habit.  Prior to this, generations of American children had been prevented from crawling on all fours, an activity then associated with animals and the insane.

Child's Dress, 1876

Made from fabric purchased at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition

Celebrating innovations in industry and the arts, the international Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition commemorated the hundredth anniversary of the American Revolution, embodied Americans’ confidence in the future, and revealed the country’s potential to the rest of the world. Among the crowds attending the centennial was Henry Fletcher, who purchased the patriotic fabric his wife used to make this dress for their first child, born in 1876.

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After the Civil War, the United States rapidly transformed into an industrial, urbanized nation. Technological innovation, economic growth, development of large-scale agriculture, and the expansion of the federal government characterized the era, as did the social tensions brought about by immigrati…

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Industrial Growth and the Rise of Big Business

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Concern about "the trusts" and the rise of big business was not new in 1912. The trust issue went back at least to the 1880s.

Americans were often ambivalent about "the trusts" and the phenomenon of the rise of big business. On the one hand, Americans admired the efficiencies that large businesses provided. Department stores, for instance, grew at the expense of small merchants because department stores were popular. The large stores provided attractive spaces for customers, as well as a wide range of different goods arranged in "departments" such as clothing for women and men, dry goods, appliances, hardware, and so forth.

On the other hand, Americans worried that the growth of large firms eliminated many opportunities for individuals to go into business. The limitation of those opportunities seemed somehow to lessen freedom itself and to have potentially dangerous implications for republican society and democratic government. Here the department store appears as a pig, keeping out the hungry small business person.

Frank Beard and other cartoonists expressed this ambivalence well before 1912. The ambivalence resulted in a long history of antitrust activity before the election of 1912.

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Concern about "the trusts" and the rise of big business was not new in 1912. The trust issue went back at least to the 1880s. Americans were often ambivalent about "the trusts" and the phenomenon of the rise of big business. On the one hand, Americans admired the efficiencies that large businesses provided.

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Media Credits

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Source

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Immigration to the U.S. in the Late 1800s | National Geographic Society

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Media Credits The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit. The Rights Holder for media is the person or group credited. Source other

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright 2019 Digital History

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

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The Growth of Mass Communication - Late 1800s

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The Growth of Mass Communication - Late 1800s

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Did you read the newspaper this morning? Maybe you watched a morning news show, or listened to news updates broadcast from your favorite radio station. Or, if you're like me, you take regular work breaks to skim headlines on the Internet and look at news updates on your Twitter feed.

Each of these methods represents the use of mass media. Mass media consists of any means of communication intended to reach a general, public audience. Note that mass media is widely used to reference the entire public communications industry, including:

Newspapers

Magazines

Flyers

Billboards

Automated telemarketing

Radio broadcasts

Television broadcasts

Internet articles

Social media posts

Studies show that mass media indirectly influences commerce, culture and politics. In terms of politics, mass media allows the public to see and hear candidates early in, and throughout, an election process. The media also highlights particular political issues and social problems for the audience. These days, most politicians engage the mass media for self-promotion purposes. This includes things like:

Broadcasting their political advertisements

Making television interviews and appearances

Publishing their articles and essays

Exchanging information through social media

Mass media is, therefore, a valuable commodity. In the United States, corporations control most mass media. However, in countries such as China and Russia, the national government controls the mass media. This is known as state media. Let's take a closer look at a few of the more popular types of mass media.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the print media was the most dominant form of media. Print media is made up of books, newspapers, newsletters and magazines. It's any communication intended for the general public that's lightweight, portable and printed on paper. Print media in the United States essentially began with The Federalist Papers, which were published and distributed to promote the ratification of the Constitution. For nearly 200 years, newspapers were politically run. But by the mid-19th century, print media had evolved.

The evolution was due to several factors, including the invention of the telegraph. The telegraph allowed newspapers to receive a steady stream of news dispatches from all over the world. New steam-powered printing presses allowed for higher supplies, while growing literacy rates led to higher demand. As a result, more independent newspapers joined the growing print media field and some newspapers soon reached circulations in the millions.

By the latter half of the 19th century, competition led to yellow journalism. This is journalism that exploits, distorts or exaggerates in order to attract readers. Widespread support for the Spanish-American War can be attributed to yellow journalism. President McKinley wanted to avoid a war, but sensationalized articles portrayed him as weak and encouraged the war in order to give Cubans independence.

Magazine circulation increased during this time as well, leading to our nation's first investigative journalism. Muckrakers were a group of journalists who exposed injustices and political corruption in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In fact, the muckraking tactics of two young Washington Post reporters exposed the Watergate scandal of the 1970s, and muckraking is common today.

This brings us to the broadcast media. Broadcast media includes radio, television and Internet. It's any audio and/or video communication intended for the general public. By the end of the 19th century, radio was invented, but only used as a two-way communication system in industrial and military settings. In the 1920s, several manufacturers decided to mass-produce radio receivers for sale to the general public. As an incentive for people to buy radios, these same manufacturers created radio stations. That's why, for example, General Electric owns NBC.

Franklin Roosevelt was the first president to regularly use radio addresses. He broadcast a series of 'fireside chats' between 1933 and 1944 in order to discuss various political issues, such as the banking crisis. Throughout World War II, radio was the main source of up-to-the-minute news information.

Then came television. Though invented in the 1920s, television wasn't marketed to the public until the late 1940s. It quickly grew to be a popular source of news and information. By 1952, the Democratic and Republican national conventions were televised. That same year, Dwight Eisenhower effectively used the first political ads in his successful presidential bid.

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development of the mass media & journalism in the united states: history & timeline - video & lesson transcript | study.com

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Development of the Mass Media & Journalism in the United States: History & Timeline - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

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Did you read the newspaper this morning? Maybe you watched a morning news show, or listened to news updates broadcast from your favorite radio station. Or, if you're like me, you take regular work breaks to skim headlines on the Internet and look at news updates on your Twitter feed.

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The Transcontinental Railroad: https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/transcontinental-railroad
Massacare At Wounded Knee:
https://study.com/academy/lesson/massacre-at-wounded-knee-summary-history-quiz.html
Dawes General Allotment Act of 1887:
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/the-gilded-age/american-west/a/the-dawes-act
The Homestead & Morrill Acts:
https://into-the-westah1.weebly.com/homestead-act-and-morrill-land.html

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The Rise of Immigration - Late 1800s:
https://www.nationalgeographic.org/photo/immigration-1870-1900/
The Growth of Cities:
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3514
Tenement Life - Causes and Effects: https://slideplayer.com/slide/9159208/
The Growth of Mass Communication - Late 1800s:
https://study.com/academy/lesson/development-of-the-mass-media-journalism-in-the-united-states-history-timeline.html

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The Bessemer Process:
https://www.britannica.com/technology/Bessemer-process
Growth of Invention - Late 1800s:
https://americanhistory.si.edu/american-stories/1870-1900-industrial-development
The Rise of Big Business:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVn_23WpJM8
The Antitrust Movement:
https://ehistory.osu.edu/exhibitions/1912/trusts/TheAntitrustMovement
The labor Movement:
https://www.rlmartstudio.com/product/labor-movement/

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The 'Forgotten' Presidents of the Gilded Age

After Reconstruction, through the turn of the 20th century, America experienced a Gilded Age. It was an era of extremes, remembered for big businesses, and the men who ran them, and for the unmatched accomplishments of inventors like Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and Alexander Graham Bell. This era saw unparalleled industrialization, immigration, and urbanization, the emergence of labor unions, and a middle class. During this little slice of history, American politicians - especially presidents - took a backseat. But that's not to say the era wasn't political.

Voter participation was at an all-time high, and elections often had razor-thin margins, but neither party really seemed to do anything. Congress debated little more than tariffs and currency, despite decades of unrelenting social and economic change in the nation. The presidency was virtually powerless, the names of Gilded Age presidents nearly unknown:

Rutherford B. Hayes - Selected in what has come to be called the 'corrupt bargain' to end Reconstruction.

James Garfield - Shot dead after just four months.

Chester Arthur - Whose party refused to nominate him after he actually accomplished something.

Grover Cleveland - Who may be most famously remembered as the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms.

Benjamin Harrison - Whose most memorable legacy might be that he was the grandson of President William Henry Harrison, and

William McKinley - Known for starting a war and then being assassinated by an anarchist.

The presidents themselves weren't implicated in any major scandals, but many of the people around them were. This fact was largely blamed on patronage, sometimes also called the ' spoils system.' Whatever you call it, the problem was that government jobs were generally granted to people as a reward for their political favors. This may be why some historians go back as far as President Ulysses S. Grant in the list of Gilded Age politicians - because he ramped up the era of presidential patronage and because of his blissful ignorance of the cesspool of corruption around him.

For example, despite his aggressive work to increase social equality and quell the KKK, Grant is also remembered well for the infamous Crédit Mobilier scandal. His own vice president shielded a corrupt railroad firm from federal investigation in exchange for stock in their company. Grant's critics noted that the president might have been an honest man, but he had appointed relatives, old army buddies, and party hacks to important positions, regardless of their skills or experience.

Civil Service Reform

It wasn't until President James Garfield's assassination in 1881 that steps were finally taken to reign in this kind of political patronage. A mentally-unstable man named Charles Guiteau had volunteered on Garfield's campaign, as many thousands of people do every election cycle. But Guiteau thought he deserved to be appointed as an ambassador in return. When the job offer never came, an indignant Guiteau shot and killed President Garfield. So when Vice President Chester Arthur acceded to the Presidency, he pushed through the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act.

To this day, the law requires that most federal jobs be filled on the basis of merit, determined by performance on an exam. It also prevents most civil service employees from being fired based on their political views. In 2013, the Pendleton Act applied to more than 90% of federal workers. Despite his effectiveness, President Chester Arthur was not nominated by the Republican Party to run as its candidate in the 1886 election.

Unfortunately, the Pendleton Act had an unintended side effect; the political parties now had to find another source of income, since they could no longer count on donations from wealthy job seekers. Increasingly, they turned to industrial leaders, who purchased influence and assured that legislation would continue to favor big business. Frustrated farmers organized the Populist Party to advance their own agenda, but it was quickly engulfed by the Democrats. In short, the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act officially brought patronage and the spoils system to an end in the federal government, but it did not end the corruption.

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gilded age politics: political machines & civil service reform - video & lesson transcript | study.com

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Gilded Age Politics: Political Machines & Civil Service Reform - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

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After Reconstruction, through the turn of the 20th century, America experienced a Gilded Age. It was an era of extremes, remembered for big businesses, and the men who ran them, and for the unmatched accomplishments of inventors like Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and Alexander Graham Bell.

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The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project is a university-chartered research center associated with the Department of History of The George Washington University

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Rise of Labor Organizations (Early 1900s)

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Rise of Labor Organizations (Early 1900s)

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

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

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Temperance and Woman Suffrage: Reform Movements and the Women Who Changed America

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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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Rise of Political Machines (Late 1800s): https://study.com/academy/lesson/gilded-age-politics-political-machines-civil-service-reform.html
Progressive Reform (Late 1800s): https://www2.gwu.edu/~erpapers/teachinger/glossary/progressive-era.cfm
Rise of Labor Organizations (Early 1900s): https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/labor
Women’s Suffrage & the Temperance Movement (Late 1800s/Early 1900s): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHwHZAufuYk
Election of 1912: https://www.britannica.com/event/United-States-presidential-election-of-1912
Isolationism vs. Imperialism: https://www.lewrockwell.com/2006/11/jeff-taylor/imperialism-and-isolationism-contrasting-approaches-to-foreign-policy/

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Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/archduke-ferdinand-assassinated
New Technology of World War I: https://www.quora.com/Did-technology-impact-the-result-of-WWI-How
President Wilson’s Fourteen Points: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/rise-to-world-power/us-in-wwi/v/woodrow-wilson-s-fourteen-points
Treaty of Versailles: https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/treaty-of-versailles-1

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Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

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Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

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Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie are shot to death by a Bosnian Serb nationalist during an official visit to the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. The killings sparked a chain of events that led to the outbreak of World War I by early August. On June 28, 1919, five years to the day after Franz Ferdinand's death, Germany and the Allied Powers signed the Treaty of Versailles, officially marking the end of World War I.

The archduke traveled to Sarajevo in June 1914 to inspect the imperial armed forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina, annexed by Austria-Hungary in 1908. The annexation had angered Serbian nationalists, who believed the territories should be part of Serbia. A group of young nationalists hatched a plot to kill the archduke during his visit to Sarajevo, and after some missteps, 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip was able to shoot the royal couple at point-blank range, while they traveled in their official procession, killing both almost instantly.

The assassination set off a rapid chain of events, as Austria-Hungary immediately blamed the Serbian government for the attack. As large and powerful Russia supported Serbia, Austria asked for assurances that Germany would step in on its side against Russia and its allies, including France and possibly Great Britain. On July 28, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and the fragile peace between Europe's great powers collapsed, beginning the devastating conflict now known as the First World War.

After more than four years of bloodshed, the Great War ended on November 11, 1918, after Germany, the last of the Central Powers, surrendered to the Allies. At the peace conference in Paris in 1919, Allied leaders would state their desire to build a post-war world that was safe from future wars of such enormous scale. The Versailles Treaty, signed on June 28, 1919, tragically failed to achieve this objective. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's grand dreams of an international peace-keeping organization faltered when put into practice as the League of Nations. Even worse, the harsh terms imposed on Germany, the war's biggest loser, led to widespread resentment of the treaty and its authors in that country-a resentment that would culminate in the outbreak of the Second World War two decades later.

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Austria's Archduke Ferdinand assassinated | June 28, 1914 | HISTORY

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Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie are shot to death by a Bosnian Serb nationalist during an official visit to the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. The killings sparked a chain of events that led to the outbreak of World War I by early August.

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As we go into January of 1918, let's remind ourselves of the context, the background that's going on, especially relative to World War I. First of all in April of 1917, a lot of the context is what happened in 1917, you have the U.S. declares war on Germany. The main argument they give is this unrestricted submarine warfare that the Germans are undertaking. You also have the fall of the Russian Empire. ... Fall of Russian Empire... You have the revolution that overthrows the Czar in February, March of 1917, and then in October, you have the Bolsheviks take over in a coup. This essentially, the Bolsheviks, once they take over, they have no interest in terms of continuing the war with Germany. So you have an armistice declared and the Russians are in the process of negotiating the terms of a treaty with the Central Powers. They're kind of negotiating the Brest-Litovsk Treaty as we speak. On top of that, you have, because the central powers don't have to focus on Russia on the eastern front anymore, they're trying to bring their, especially Germany, is trying to bring its troops back to the western front, and they want to do it before the U.S. can mobilize in any significant way. So, race on western front ... western front ... Between, essentially, can Germany get its troops and do an offensive that can put probably France out of the war before the U.S. has a chance to significantly reinforce the western front? This is essentially between German, redeploy troops from the eastern front, German troops ... troops from eastern, from eastern front versus new American troops ... versus new Americans. This is the backdrop. No one really knew what exactly was going to happen on the western front. Certain military analysts will say Germany was able to prosecute this two front war against a major empire and Russia, now they're going to be able to focus completely on the western front, Germany might be able to deal the decisive blow. Others would say the U.S. it's this emerging power, it's bringing fresh troops in, it has a major industrial capacity. The U.S. could, especially if the war were to last a good bit, the U.S. might be the decisive element for the allies. So that's the background in which President Wilson, President Woodrow Wilson on January of 1918, January 8th, gives a speech to the joint sessions of congress. This is part of the text of the speech, I'm just going to read through it, I'm not going to read the entire speech. He talks about many things, essentially; why are we in World War I, what is the moral causes of World War I, and his speech is most famous for his articulation of the "Fourteen Points". Let's just read into it because it really informs a lot of what happened in the Treaty of Versailles, which is essentially the peace treaty with Germany, which the U.S. ironically did not ratify, but it also lays out the tension in the Paris Peace Conferences after World War I between those who were more idealistic like Woodrow Wilson, and those who might have been a little bit more vengeful, especially against the Central Powers. Here we go, this is part of the speech: "We enter this war because violations of right had occurred which touched us to the quick and made the life of our own people impossible unless they were corrected and the world secured once for all against their recurrence. What we demand in this war, therefore, is nothing peculiar to ourselves. it is that the world be made fit and safe to live in ..." This is very idealistic. Remember, all these others, especially these European powers are all about who gets what land, who gets what empire, who gets to take advantage of whatever colony. "... and particularly that it be made safe for every peace-loving nation which, like our own, wishes to live its own life, determine is own institutions, be assured of justice and fair dealing by the other peoples of the world as against force and selfish aggression. All the peoples of the world are in effect partners in this interest, and for our own part, we see very clearly that unless justice be done to others it will not be done to us. The program of the world's peace, therefore, is our program; and that program, the only possible program, all we see it, is this:" These are his Fourteen Points and I'll try to kind of give some context for each of them. The first is: "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." The context here is actually after the Bolsheviks took over, they started releasing all these secret covenants and understandings that the Russian Empire had been getting into. We've already talked about all the entanglements and the alliances that led to World War I, so this is Wilson's attempt to say, "Hey, let's just do everything out in the open. That'll let everyone kind of know, give more transparency, what may or may not occur, based on their actions." Number 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." So no more of these British blockades, no more of this unrestricted submarine warfare, the only time we can dictate what happens in open waters is if the international community trying to decide that it wants to enforce international covenants. Number 3, "The removal of all economic barriers and the establishment of equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance." So essentially, it's free trade. ... free trade ... Number 4, "Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety." So he's trying to undo some of this militarism, this buildup of arms that essentially allowed World War I to happen with the ferocity that it did and with the quickness with which it did. Number 5, "A free,open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance ot 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." This is a big deal that probably did not make the British or the French happy. This is essentially saying self-determination, the people who are in those nations, in those states, their interests matter just as much. "A free open-minded absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims." This is a pretty big deal. Remember, we're kind of exiting this period of empires, most of the European powers still think that these international empires are essentially part of their prestige. Number 6, "The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest cooperation 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 ..." This is still one sentence and then you put period there, semi-colon ... And I guess he had to read that himself, " ... 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 ..." Remember, they're negotiating with the Central Powers on Brest-Litovsk, " ... 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." So it's saying look, Wilson doesn't know whether the allies or the Central Powers are going to win on the western front, but they know that the Central Powers are dictating terms to Russia with Brest-Litovsk. It's like, this is going to be a test of your good will, of your comprehension of the need of this newly-emerging of state now that the Bolsheviks have taken over. Obviously at this point, you don't have the antagonism between the U.S. and the future Soviet Union that is going to emerge. They're saying give Russia a chance to be herself. Number 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." This is kind of obvious. When the Germans rolled through Belgium, that's how they got to France. It was a justification that Great Britain used for entering the war, so get out of Belgium. Number 8, "All French territories should be freed and 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." Alsace-Lorraine, we've touched on it several times. That's this region right over here. It was taken by Germany, essentially the unification of Germany during the Franco-Prussian War, which was a [unintelligible] region. This was one of the justifications, this was why France might have gone into a war with Germany, and what Germany almost wanted to be preemptive against France because they said France might want to take some of that territory back. 9, "A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality." Hey, where do people speak Italian? 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." This is another big deal. It's another breaking up of an empire. It's another self-determination point of the "Fourteen Points". Austria-Hungary, we've already said it was an empire. It included many, many, many nationalities. You have the Czechs right around there. You have the Slovacs right around there. You have the Austrians, German-speaking people, right over there. You have the Hungarians, roughly over there. You have the Slovenians roughly over there. You have the Croatians roughly over there. You have the Bosnians roughly over there. You have many, many other nationalities especially as you get close to the border with Romania and the border with the Ukraine. It's like, let these people determine, let them determine their own fate to some degree. There are all these nationalities. That was number 10. "The freest opportunity to autonomous development." He's not saying that they necessarily need their own states, but that they should have the opportunity to self-govern in some way. Number 11, "Romania, 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." This is kind of laying the groundwork for the future state of Yugoslavia, which is going to be roughly over there. It's kind of the state of the southern Slavs, which is what the whole motivation [unintelligible] for assassinating Archduke Ferdinand which some would argue was kind of the spark that lit World War I. "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 an autonomous development ..." Once again, self-determination. "... and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees." So the Dardanelles, we've talked about it before, that is, that's this right over here, so that you have access between the Aegean Sea and the Black Sea. And we are almost there. So then you have, "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." Poland did not exist as its own state prior to World War I. Now you have Woodrow Wilson is advocating it. It will be carved out roughly of this area right over there. Then finally, point 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." This is essentially, this is the point, that leads to the formation of the League of Nations. When we talk about big ideas, this is a big idea, especially back then. You have Europe who keeps getting into wars with each other. Hey, why don't we all cooperate at this middle level and we have this club of all of the nations to resolve disputes and make sure that we don't have another World War I. So, very, very, very big idealistic idea, it gets formed as an outcome of the Treaty of Versailles, which is drafted during the Paris Peace Conferences after World War I. The unfortunate thing of the League of Nations is that even though this was kind of, the idea was coming from Woodrow Wilson, the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations was not ratified by the U.S. The U.S. never entered the League of Nations, which kind of made it a little bit hollow, and the League of Nations did not have the power to stop World War II from happening only a few decades later, and would later be replaced by the United Nations. This is a really, really, really, really big idea. Because of these big ideas, Woodrow Wilson, these very idealistic ideas, everyone in Europe is talking about territory and imperialism and how do they take control of other people, take control of their resources, and now you have the American President saying it's all about self-determination. It's about making the world safe for democracy, safe for commerce, about open agreements. It's a very powerful idea. This would kind of form the basis, the more idealistic side of American Foreign Policy over the 20th Century. Some would say that there's another very cynical side that takes into account self-interest, but this is the idealistic side of American Foreign Policy, especially through the 20th Century. For this, for his work in this in this area, Woodrow Wilson wins the Nobel Prize a few years later. This right here is a picture of the Nobel Prize looks like, both sides of it. Now, just to kind of foreshadow some of the tension as we get into the Paris Peace Conference, not everyone was as idealistic. You obviously these European powers who bled much harder than the Americans did, although the Americans did contribute significant cost, or troops, to the effort and they lost many, many folks. Obviously if you're French, you had these Germans on your territory. You lost a significant fraction of your population, a huge fraction of your male population. You might be a little bit angrier. So of course, you have Georges Clemenceau who was the Prime Minister of France. He was a little bit more skeptical of the "Fourteen Points". This is a quote from him, he actually has many slightly entertaining quotes, "Mr. Wilson bores me with his "Fourteen Points" while God Almighty has only ten." This will kind of foreshadow some of the tension between Clemenceau and the British, and European allies on one side, and the Americans as we go to the Paris Peace Conference. They were a little bit looking out more for revenge, especially against the Germans while the Americans, especially Woodrow Wilson, was a lot more idealistic.

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Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points (video) | Khan Academy

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As we go into January of 1918, let's remind ourselves of the context, the background that's going on, especially relative to World War I. First of all in April of 1917, a lot of the context is what happened in 1917, you have the U.S. declares war on Germany.

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The Fourteen Points

In a speech to Congress in January 1918, Wilson laid out his idealistic vision for the world after World War I, which was at the time sometimes referred to as "the war to end all wars."

In addition to specific territorial settlements based on an Allied victory, Wilson's so-called Fourteen Points emphasized the need for national self-determination for Europe's different ethnic populations.

Wilson also proposed the founding of a "general association of nations" that would mediate international disputes and foster cooperation between different nations in the hopes of preventing war on such a large scale in the future. This organization eventually became known as the League of Nations.

When German leaders signed the armistice ending hostilities in World War I on November 11, 1918, they believed Wilson's vision would form the basis for any future peace treaty. This would not prove to be the case.

Paris Peace Conference

The Paris Peace Conference opened on January 18, 1919, a date that was significant in that it marked the anniversary of the coronation of German Emperor Wilhelm I, which took place in the Palace of Versailles at the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871.

Prussian victory in that conflict had resulted in Germany's unification and its seizure of Alsace and Lorraine provinces from France. In 1919, France and its prime minister, Georges Clemenceau, had not forgotten the humiliating loss and intended to avenge it in the new peace agreement.

Treaty of Versailles Terms

The " Big Four" leaders of the victorious Western nations-Wilson of the United States, David Lloyd George of Great Britain, Georges Clemenceau of France and, to a lesser extent, Vittorio Orlando of Italy-dominated the peace negotiations in Paris. Germany and the other defeated powers-Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey-were not represented at the Paris Peace Conference. Also absent was Russia, which had fought as one of the Allied powers until 1917, when, following the Russian Revolution, the country's new Bolshevik government concluded a separate peace with Germany and withdrew from the conflict.

The Big Four themselves had competing objectives in Paris: Clemenceau's main goal was to protect France from yet another attack by Germany. He sought heavy reparations from Germany as a way of limiting German economic recovery after the war and minimizing this possibility.

Lloyd George, on the other hand, saw the rebuilding of Germany as a priority in order to reestablish the nation as a strong trading partner for Great Britain. For his part, Orlando wanted to expand Italy's influence and shape it into a major power that could hold its own alongside the other great nations.

Wilson opposed Italian territorial demands, as well as previously existing arrangements regarding territory between the other Allies; instead, he wanted to create a new world order along the lines of his Fourteen Points. The other leaders saw Wilson as too naive and idealistic, and his principles were difficult to translate into policy.

In the end, the European Allies imposed harsh peace terms on Germany, forcing the nation to surrender around 10 percent of its territory and all of its overseas possessions. Other key provisions of the Treaty of Versailles called for the demilitarization and occupation of the Rhineland, limited Germany's army and navy, forbade it to maintain an air force, and required it to conduct war crimes trials against Kaiser Wilhelm II and other leaders for their aggression.

Most importantly, Article 231 of the treaty, better known as the " war guilt clause," forced Germany to accept full responsibility for starting World War I and pay enormous reparations for Allied war losses.

How Did the Treaty of Versailles Lead to World War II?

The Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919, exactly five years after the Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo, sparking the outbreak of the war. Though the treaty included a covenant creating the League of Nations, an international organization aimed at preserving peace, the harsh terms imposed on Germany helped ensure that peace would not last for long.

Germans were furious about the treaty, seeing it as a diktat, or dictated peace; they bitterly resented the sole blame of war being placed at their feet. The nation's burden of reparations eventually topped 132 billion gold Reichsmarks, the equivalent of some $33 billion, a sum so great that no one expected Germany to be able to pay in full; in fact, economists like John Maynard Keynes predicted the European economy would collapse if it did.

Keynes was not the only prominent critic of the Treaty of Versailles: The French military leader Ferdinand Foch refused to attend the signing ceremony, as he thought the treaty didn't do enough to secure against a future German threat, while the U.S. Congress failed to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, and later concluded a separate peace with Germany. The United States would never join the short-lived League of Nations.

November Criminals

In the years following the Treaty of Versailles, many ordinary Germans believed they had been betrayed by the "November Criminals," those leaders who signed the treaty and formed the post-war government.

Radical right-wing political forces-especially the National Socialist Workers' Party, or the Nazis-would gain support in the 1920s and '30s by promising to reverse the humiliation of the Versailles Treaty.

With the onset of the Great Depression after 1929, economic unrest destabilized the already vulnerable Weimar Republic government in Germany, setting the stage for Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's fateful rise to power in 1933.

Sources

The Paris Peace Conference and the Treaty of Versailles. U.S. Department of State: Office of the Historian.
"The Treaty of Versailles: An Uneasy Peace," WBUR.org (excerpt from Michael Neiberg, The Treaty of Versailles: A Concise History), August 13, 2017.
Treaty of Versailles. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
The Treaty of Versailles, 1919. Chateau de Versailles.

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Treaty of Versailles: Definition, Terms, Dates & WWI - HISTORY

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The Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1919 and set harsh terms for Germany's surrender to Allied powers after World War I, setting the stage for World War II.