# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Where Did The First Americans Come From?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Arctic

The Arctic culture area, a cold, flat, treeless region (actually a frozen desert) near the Arctic Circle in present-day Alaska, Canada and Greenland, was home to the Inuit and the Aleut. Both groups spoke, and continue to speak, dialects descended from what scholars call the Eskimo-Aleut language family.

Because it is such an inhospitable landscape, the Arctic's population was comparatively small and scattered. Some of its peoples, especially the Inuit in the northern part of the region, were nomads, following seals, polar bears and other game as they migrated across the tundra. In the southern part of the region, the Aleut were a bit more settled, living in small fishing villages along the shore.

Did you know? According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are about 4.5 million Native Americans and Alaska Natives in the United States today. That's about 1.5 percent of the population.

The Inuit and Aleut had a great deal in common. Many lived in dome-shaped houses made of sod or timber (or, in the North, ice blocks). They used seal and otter skins to make warm, weatherproof clothing, aerodynamic dogsleds and long, open fishing boats (kayaks in Inuit; baidarkas in Aleut).

By the time the United States purchased Alaska in 1867, decades of oppression and exposure to European diseases had taken their toll: The native population had dropped to just 2,500; the descendants of these survivors still make their homes in the area today.

The Subarctic

The Subarctic culture area, mostly composed of swampy, piney forests (taiga) and waterlogged tundra, stretched across much of inland Alaska and Canada. Scholars have divided the region's people into two language groups: the Athabaskan speakers at its western end, among them the Tsattine (Beaver), Gwich'in (or Kuchin) and the Deg Xinag (formerly-and pejoratively-known as the Ingalik), and the Algonquian speakers at its eastern end, including the Cree, the Ojibwa and the Naskapi.

In the Subarctic, travel was difficult-toboggans, snowshoes and lightweight canoes were the primary means of transportation-and population was sparse. In general, the peoples of the Subarctic did not form large permanent settlements; instead, small family groups stuck together as they traipsed after herds of caribou. They lived in small, easy-to-move tents and lean-tos, and when it grew too cold to hunt they hunkered into underground dugouts.

The growth of the fur trade in the 17th and 18th centuries disrupted the Subarctic way of life-now, instead of hunting and gathering for subsistence, the Indians focused on supplying pelts to the European traders-and eventually led to the displacement and extermination of many of the region's native communities.

The Northeast

The Northeast culture area, one of the first to have sustained contact with Europeans, stretched from present-day Canada's Atlantic coast to North Carolina and inland to the Mississippi River valley. Its inhabitants were members of two main groups: Iroquoian speakers (these included the Cayuga, Oneida, Erie, Onondaga, Seneca and Tuscarora), most of whom lived along inland rivers and lakes in fortified, politically stable villages, and the more numerous Algonquian speakers (these included the Pequot, Fox, Shawnee, Wampanoag, Delaware and Menominee) who lived in small farming and fishing villages along the ocean. There, they grew crops like corn, beans and vegetables.

Life in the Northeast culture area was already fraught with conflict-the Iroquoian groups tended to be rather aggressive and warlike, and bands and villages outside of their allied confederacies were never safe from their raids-and it grew more complicated when European colonizers arrived. Colonial wars repeatedly forced the region's Indigenous people to take sides, pitting the Iroquois groups against their Algonquian neighbors. Meanwhile, as white settlement pressed westward, it eventually displaced both sets of Indigenous people from their lands.

The Southeast

The Southeast culture area, north of the Gulf of Mexico and south of the Northeast, was a humid, fertile agricultural region. Many of its natives were expert farmers-they grew staple crops like maize, beans, squash, tobacco and sunflower-who organized their lives around small ceremonial and market villages known as hamlets. Perhaps the most familiar of the Southeastern Indigenous peoples are the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole, sometimes called the Five Civilized Tribes, some of whom spoke a variant of the Muskogean language.

By the time the U.S. had won its independence from Britain, the Southeast culture area had already lost many of its native people to disease and displacement. In 1830, the federal Indian Removal Act compelled the relocation of what remained of the Five Civilized Tribes so that white settlers could have their land. Between 1830 and 1838, federal officials forced nearly 100,000 Indigenous people out of the southern states and into "Indian Territory" (later Oklahoma) west of the Mississippi. The Cherokee called this frequently deadly trek the Trail of Tears.

The Plains

The Plains culture area comprises the vast prairie region between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, from present-day Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. Before the arrival of European traders and explorers, its inhabitants-speakers of Siouan, Algonquian, Caddoan, Uto-Aztecan and Athabaskan languages-were relatively settled hunters and farmers. After European contact, and especially after Spanish colonists brought horses to the region in the 18th century, the peoples of the Great Plains became much more nomadic.

Groups like the Crow, Blackfeet, Cheyenne, Comanche and Arapaho used horses to pursue great herds of buffalo across the prairie. The most common dwelling for these hunters was the cone-shaped teepee, a bison-skin tent that could be folded up and carried anywhere. Plains Indians are also known for their elaborately feathered war bonnets.

As white traders and settlers moved west across the Plains region, they brought many damaging things with them: commercial goods, like knives and kettles, which Indigenous people came to depend on; guns; and disease. By the end of the 19th century, white sport hunters had nearly exterminated the area's buffalo herds. With settlers encroaching on their lands and no way to make money, the Plains natives were forced onto government reservations.

The Southwest

The peoples of the Southwest culture area, a huge desert region in present-day Arizona and New Mexico (along with parts of Colorado, Utah, Texas and Mexico) developed two distinct ways of life.

Sedentary farmers such as the Hopi, the Zuni, the Yaqui and the Yuma grew crops like corn, beans and squash. Many lived in permanent settlements, known as pueblos, built of stone and adobe. These pueblos featured great multistory dwellings that resembled apartment houses. At their centers, many of these villages also had large ceremonial pit houses, or kivas.

Other Southwestern peoples, such as the Navajo and the Apache, were more nomadic. They survived by hunting, gathering and raiding their more established neighbors for their crops. Because these groups were always on the move, their homes were much less permanent than the pueblos. For instance, the Navajo fashioned their iconic eastward-facing round houses, known as hogans, out of materials like mud and bark.

By the time the southwestern territories became a part of the United States after the Mexican War, many of the region's native people had already been killed. (Spanish colonists and missionaries had enslaved many of the Pueblo Indians, for example, working them to death on vast Spanish ranches known as encomiendas.) During the second half of the 19th century, the federal government resettled most of the region's remaining natives onto reservations.

The Great Basin

The Great Basin culture area, an expansive bowl formed by the Rocky Mountains to the east, the Sierra Nevadas to the west, the Columbia Plateau to the north, and the Colorado Plateau to the south, was a barren wasteland of deserts, salt flats and brackish lakes. Its people, most of whom spoke Shoshonean or Uto-Aztecan dialects (the Bannock, Paiute and Ute, for example), foraged for roots, seeds and nuts and hunted snakes, lizards and small mammals. Because they were always on the move, they lived in compact, easy-to-build wikiups made of willow poles or saplings, leaves and brush. Their settlements and social groups were impermanent, and communal leadership (what little there was) was informal.

After European contact, some Great Basin groups got horses and formed equestrian hunting and raiding bands that were similar to the ones we associate with the Great Plains natives. After white prospectors discovered gold and silver in the region in the mid-19th century, most of the Great Basin's people lost their land and, frequently, their lives.

California

Before European contact, the temperate California area had more people than any other North American landscape at the time, with approximately 300,000 people in the mid-16th century. It's estimated that 100 different tribes and groups spoke more than 200 dialects. These languages were derived from the Penutian (the Maidu, Miwok and Yokuts), the Hokan (the Chumash, Pomo, Salinas and Shasta), the Uto-Aztecan (the Tubabulabal, Serrano and Kinatemuk) and the Athapaskan (the Hupa, among others). Many of the "Mission Indians" who were driven out of the Southwest by Spanish colonization also spoke Uto-Aztecan dialects.

Despite this great diversity, many native Californians lived very similar lives. They did not practice much agriculture. Instead, they organized themselves into small, family-based bands of hunter-gatherers known as tribelets. Inter-tribelet relationships, based on well-established systems of trade and common rights, were generally peaceful.

Spanish explorers infiltrated the California region in the middle of the 16th century. In 1769, the cleric Junipero Serra established a mission at San Diego, inaugurating a particularly brutal period in which forced labor, disease and assimilation nearly exterminated the culture area's native population.

The Northwest Coast

The Northwest Coast culture area, along the Pacific coast from British Columbia to the top of Northern California, has a mild climate and an abundance of natural resources. In particular, the ocean and the region's rivers provided almost everything its people needed-salmon, especially, but also whales, sea otters, seals and fish and shellfish of all kinds. As a result, unlike many other hunter-gatherers who struggled to eke out a living and were forced to follow animal herds from place to place, the Indians of the Pacific Northwest were secure enough to build permanent villages that housed hundreds of people apiece.

Those villages operated according to a rigidly stratified social structure, more sophisticated than any outside of Mexico and Central America. A person's status was determined by his closeness to the village's chief and reinforced by the number of possessions-blankets, shells and skins, canoes and even slaves-he had at his disposal. (Goods like these played an important role in the potlatch, an elaborate gift-giving ceremony designed to affirm these class divisions.)

Prominent groups in the region included the Athapaskan Haida and Tlingit; the Penutian Chinook, Tsimshian and Coos; the Wakashan Kwakiutl and Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka); and the Salishan Coast Salish.

The Plateau

The Plateau culture area sat in the Columbia and Fraser River basins at the intersection of the Subarctic, the Plains, the Great Basin, California and the Northwest Coast (present-day Idaho, Montana and eastern Oregon and Washington). Most of its people lived in small, peaceful villages along streams and riverbanks and survived by fishing for salmon and trout, hunting and gathering wild berries, roots and nuts.

In the southern Plateau region, the great majority spoke languages derived from the Penutian (the Klamath, Klikitat, Modoc, Nez Perce, Walla Walla and Yakima or Yakama). North of the Columbia River, most (the Skitswish (Coeur d'Alene), Salish (Flathead), Spokane and Columbia) spoke Salishan dialects.

In the 18th century, other native groups brought horses to the Plateau. The region's inhabitants quickly integrated the animals into their economy, expanding the radius of their hunts and acting as traders and emissaries between the Northwest and the Plains.

In 1805, the explorers Lewis and Clark passed through the area, followed by increasing numbers of white settlers. By the end of the 19th century, most of the remaining members of Plateau tribes had been cleared from their lands and resettled in government reservations.

Photo Galleries

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Native American Cultures - Facts, Regions & Tribes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Native Americans, also known as American Indians and Indigenous Americans, are the indigenous peoples of the United States. By the time European adventurers arrived in the 15th century A.D., scholars estimate that more than 50 million Native Americans were already living in the Americas - 10 million in the area that would become the United States.

# data[].attributes.body
Chapter 1:
The First Migration Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EBknU7D1OI

The Earliest North American Societies Picture: https://padlet-uploads.storage.googleapis.com/305700749/8fc2b6dd3ace0657423d504e73c168dd/Screenshot_2018_11_11_at_1_32_28_PM.png

Native American Culture Areas: https://www.history.com/topics/native-american-history/native-american-cultures

The European Renaissance:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/history-of-Europe/The-Renaissance

Chapter 2:
Spanish Empire in North America:
https://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h438.html

Race for Empires in North America:
https://www.peaster.net/cms/lib/TX01000798/Centricity/Domain/359/Ch.2Sec.4.pdf

Voyages of Christopher Columbus:
https://padlet-uploads.storage.googleapis.com/305700749/50e81200b49bf5ec5d93ba99393434db/Screenshot_2018_11_14_at_8_02_36_PM.png

The Vikings:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G_Z7p6hyxc

Chapter 3

English Settlement In North America: https://padlet-uploads.storage.googleapis.com/305700749/b00f700f29b444570d27cad2ae8cc569/Screenshot_2018_11_14_at_8_18_53_PM.png

Colonists Affected by the Great Awakening and the Enlightenment:
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-ushistory1os2xmaster/chapter/great-awakening-and-enlightenment/

Acts Passed Against Colonists:
http://www.stamp-act-history.com/british-taxation-colonial-america/list-of-british-acts/

Colonists Response:
http://historyofmassachusetts.org/american-revolution-acts/

Chapter 4
Paul Revere's Ride/ Lexington and Concord:
https://www.biography.com/news/paul-reveres-ride-facts

The Declaration Of Independence:
http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/
Battle of Saratoga:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZNpbSP6Glo

Battle of Yorktown/ Treaty of Paris:
https://www.google.com/search?q=battle+of+yorktown+treaty+of+paris&rlz=1CAXWWL_enUS835&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi0v4zA0KfgAhVMKa0KHVZZDUkQ_AUIDigB&biw=1366&bih=610&safe=active&ssui=on#imgrc=zJUWsR1dfJa67M:

Chapter 5/6
The Articles of Confederation: http://www.ushistory.org/documents/confederation.htm

The Great Compromise:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTtV9-8jj8k

Federalism:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0gosGXSgsI

Separation of Powers:
http://www.ncsl.org/research/about-state-legislatures/separation-of-powers-an-overview.aspx

The Constitution:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnVmIrAiQB8

The Bill of Rights:
https://axiomamuse.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/bill-of-rights.jpg

Ch 7/9
The Rise of Political Parties:
https://padlet-uploads.storage.googleapis.com/305700749/3e028753ec417426661c5e5b370187e1/donkeyelephantboxersrgb_p.png

The Louisiana Purchase:
https://www.monticello.org/thomas-jefferson/louisiana-lewis-clark/the-louisiana-purchase/

The Corps of Discovery:
https://www.history.com/topics/westward-expansion/lewis-and-clark

The Monroe Doctrine:
https://www.history.com/topics/westward-expansion/monroe-doctrine

The War of 1812:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6eGJVScjVo

Nationalism vs. Sectionalism:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79Wv1D8cmog

Ch. 10/11
Jacksonian Democracy:
https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/jacksonian-democracy

Native American Removal:
https://userscontent2.emaze.com/images/9900ae8f-2ef8-4449-b3c0-3cd45fa171c4/b9eccf9e-7818-46e8-bf11-d01a902e9149.jpg

Trails West:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbhu61Rycaw

Texas Becomes a Nation:
https://www.tsl.texas.gov/treasures/republic/index.html

Manifest Destiny:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vmg0RrHSdK8

Mexican American War:
https://www.history.com/topics/mexican-american-war/mexican-american-war

Chapter 12/13:
The Industrial Revolution:
https://www.history.com/topics/industrial-revolution

Interchangeable Parts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpmDC7_3O1M

The Rise  of Organized Labor:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/91/An_overcrowded_shoemaker%27s_workshop_in_Somers_Town_Wellcome_M0012976.jpg/800px-An_overcrowded_shoemaker%27s_workshop_in_Somers_Town_Wellcome_M0012976.jpg

The Transportation Revolution:
https://firstindustrialrevolution.weebly.com/transportation-revolution.html

Eli Whitney's Cotton Gin:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLb9QGWK8TA

The Life of A Slave:
http://www.ushistory.org/us/27b.asp

Chapter 14/15
Immigration to the United States in the 1800s:
https://www.libertyellisfoundation.org/immigration-timeline

Second Great Awakening:
https://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/

Abolitionist Movement Prior To The Civil War:
https://www.historynet.com/abolitionist-movement

Women Rights Movement In The 1800's:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=HGEMscZE5dY

Compromise Of 1850:
http://www.ushistory.org/us/images/00080486.gif

Kansas/Nebraska Act:
https://socialstudiesforkids.com/graphics/kansas-nebraska-act.jpg

Lincoln/Douglas Debates:
https://www.britannica.com/event/Lincoln-Douglas-debates

Election of 1860:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roNmeOOJCDY

Chapter 16:
The Fall Of Ft. Sumter:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3IwgtrMKKM

The Emancipation Proclamation:
https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation

Clara Barton and the American Red Cross:
https://www.redcross.org/about-us/who-we-are/history/clara-barton.html

The Battle of Gettysburg:
https://i0.wp.com/www.nationalreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/pic_giant_062913_SM_Battle-of-Gettysburgh-4.jpg?fit=600%2C350&ssl=1

The Battle of Vicksburg:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OktdqgBKD9E

Southern Surrender at Appomattox Courthouse:
https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/appomattox-court-hous
Chapter 17:

Chapter 18:
Transcontinental Railroad:
https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/transcontinental-railroad

Massacre at Wounded Knee:
http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/knee.htm

Dawes General Allotment Act of 1887:
https://iloveancestry.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dawes2-general-allotment-ac.jpg

The Homestead and Morrill Acts:
https://www.youtube.com/wa
tch?v=pieHG0Zaz3Y

Chapter 19:
The Bessemer Process:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uh_RAMqRgr

Growth of Invention:
https://americanhistory.si.edu/american-stories/1870-1900-industrial-development

The Rise of Big Businesses:
https://ehistory.osu.edu/exhibitions/1912/trusts/RiseBigBusiness

The Antitrust Movement:
https://hbr.org/2017/12/the-rise-fall-and-rebirth-of-the-u-s-antitrust-movement

The Labor Movement:
https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/c_fill,f_auto,fl_progressive,g_center,h_675,pg_1,q_80,w_1200/ms6hik3ia0xqkrex0y2m.jpg

Chapter 20:
The Rise of Immigration:
http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/timeline/riseind/immgnts/

The Growth of Cities:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpBbnL3pMRA

Tenement Life:
https://www.history.com/topics/immigration/tenements

Growth of Mass Communication:
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3315
Chapter 21/22:
Political Machines:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/political-machine
Progressive Reform:
https://www.cliffsnotes.com/study-guides/history/us-history-ii/the-progressive-era-19001920/political-and-social-reforms
Rise of Labor Organizations: https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/labor
Women Suffrage and Temperance Movement: https://amazingwomeninhistory.com/womens-suffrage-and-temperance-movement/
Ch. 23:
Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand:
https://www.history.com/news/the-assassination-of-archduke-franz-ferdinand-100-years-ago
Tech in WWI:
https://res.cloudinary.com/fen-learning/image/upload/c_limit,w_300,h_173/infopls_images/images/wwonetank.jpg
14 Points:
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/wilson-delivers-fourteen-points-speech
Treaty of Versailles:
http://en.chateauversailles.fr/discover/history/key-dates/treaty-versailles-1919

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Few historians are comfortable with the triumphalist and western Europe-centred image of the Renaissance as the irresistible march of modernity and progress. A sharp break with medieval values and institutions, a new awareness of the individual, an awakened interest in the material world and nature, and a recovery of the cultural heritage of ancient Greece and Rome-these were once understood to be the major achievements of the Renaissance. Today, every particular of this formula is under suspicion if not altogether repudiated. Nevertheless, the term Renaissance remains a widely recognized label for the multifaceted period between the heyday of medieval universalism, as embodied in the papacy and Holy Roman Empire, and the convulsions and sweeping transformations of the 17th century.

In addition to Classical scholarship, the systematic investigation of the physical world, and commercial enterprise based on private capital, other important innovations of the Middle Ages that came into their own in the period included the revival of urban life, banking, the formation of states, and vernacular literatures. In religious life, the Renaissance was a time of the broadening and institutionalizing of earlier initiatives in lay piety and lay-sponsored clerical reforms, rather than the abandonment of traditional beliefs. In government, city-states and regional and national principalities supplanted the fading hegemony of the empire and the papacy and obliterated many of the local feudal jurisdictions that had covered Europe, although within states power continued to be monopolized by elites drawing their strength from both landed and mercantile wealth. If there was a Renaissance "rediscovery of the world and of man," as the 19th-century historians Jules Michelet (in the seventh volume of his History of France) and Jacob Burckhardt (in The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy [1860]) asserted, it can be found mainly in literature and art, influenced by the latest and most successful of a long series of medieval Classical revivals. For all but exceptional individuals and a few marginal groups, the standards of behaviour continued to arise from traditional social and moral codes. Identity derived from class, family, occupation, and community, although each of these social forms was itself undergoing significant modification. Thus, for example, while there is no substance to Burckhardt's notion that in Italy women enjoyed perfect equality with men, the economic and structural features of Renaissance patrician families may have enhanced the scope of activity and influence of women of that class. Finally, the older view of the Renaissance centred too exclusively on Italy, and within Italy on a few cities- Florence, Venice, and Rome. By discarding false dichotomies-Renaissance versus Middle Ages, Classical versus Gothic, modern versus feudal-one is able to grasp more fully the interrelatedness of Italy with the rest of Europe and to investigate the extent to which the great centres of Renaissance learning and art were nourished and influenced by less exalted towns and by changes in the pattern of rural life.

For additional treatment of Renaissance thought and intellectual activity, see humanism and classical scholarship.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
History of Europe - Renaissance, Art, Culture

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
History of Europe - Renaissance, Art, Culture: Few historians are comfortable with the triumphalist and western Europe-centred image of the Renaissance as the irresistible march of modernity and progress.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- - - Books You May Like Include: ----

Commanches by T.R. Fehrenbach.
Authoritative and immediate, this is the classic account of the most powerful of the American Indian tribes. T.R. Fehrenbach traces the Comanches' ris...
The Comanche Empire by Pekka Hamalainen.
In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, at the high tide of imperial struggles in North America, an indigenous empire rose to dominate the f...
The Birth of America: From Before Columbus to the Revolution by William R. Polk.
In this provocative account of colonial America, William R. Polk explores the key events, individuals, and themes of this critical period. With vivid ...

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

# data[].attributes.headline
Colonists affected by the Great Awakening and the Enlightenment

# data[].attributes.subject
Colonists affected by the Great Awakening and the Enlightenment

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Learning Objectives

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

Explain the significance of the Great Awakening

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two Opposing Views of George Whitefield

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Review Question

Who were the Freemasons, and why were they significant?

Answer to Review Question

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

Glossary

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

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

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

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Navigation Acts were trade rules that governed commerce between Britain and its colonies. The first of the Navigation Acts existed for almost two centuries and was repealed in 1849. The laws were designed to protect British economic interests in colonial trade and to protect its industry against the rapidly growing Dutch navigation trade.

The purpose of the Molasses Act was to protect British West Indies exports to the American colonies from the more fertile French and Spanish islands of Martinique and Santo Domingo. It was not designed to raise revenue but it was used as a trade barrier. The duty was set at 6p per gallon of imported foreign molasses, corruption became endemic and illegal trade was widespread. In its first year it collected £330 sterling and during the period of 1738-1741 it collected £76 a year. Not until 1763 was the collection of the duty enforced when the duty was lowered to 2d a gallon and in 1764 it was replaced by the Sugar Act.

The Currency Act of 1751 prohibited the issue of new bills of credit by New England colonies: Rhode Island, Massachusetts Bay, New Hampshire and Connecticut. Parliament decided to enact the Currency Act of 1751 to control currency depreciation against silver and sterling and to ensure its value for payments of debt to British merchants. A subsequent Currency Act enacted in 1764 extended the policy to all British colonies in the Americas increasing more tension between Britain and America.

It amended the existing 1733 Molasses Act. The Act increased the duty of molasses from 2d to 3d of gallon of imported molasses. It enforced the Navigation Acts by prohibiting vessels to directly transport cargo to the colonies. Vessels had to unload its cargo in Britain, pay duties and reload its cargo before sailing to the colonies. The Sugar Act imposed a £7 a ton on wine imported from Madeira, the Azores and Canary Islands. It added hides, skins, potash and other products to the list of commodities that could be legally exported. The act was strictly enforced through the Vice-Admiralty Courts.

The Stamp Act intended to raise revenue by requiring the purchase of stamps to be placed on public documents, there were 55 documents subject to the duty. Violators were to be prosecuted in the vice-admiralty courts. For the first time the British had levied an explicit tax on the colonist for the purpose of raising revenue, previous taxes were seen as trade taxes and tolerated by colonial residents. Opposition to the tax was widespread as it represented an infringement on their rights. Opposition groups such as the Sons of Liberty sprung everywhere. The Act was nullified in March 1766.

The act required colonial assemblies to provide housing, food and drink to British troops stationed in their towns with the purpose of improving living conditions and decreasing the cost to the crown. Soldiers were to be housed in barracks or empty public buildings and not in private residences. It was the duty of local legislatures to fund the expenses. In 1766 the New York assembly refused to raise the money and in 1767 Parliament passed the New York Suspending Act on July 1767 which suspended the assembly until they complied with the new law.

The Declaratory Act was passed on March 18, 1766, at the same time as the repeal of the 1765 Stamp Act. The act was used as a justification for the repeal of the Stamp Act and as a face saving action. The 1766 Declaratory Act stated that the colonies are subordinate and dependent on the Imperial Crown and Parliament of Britain and that Parliament had the authority to pass laws.

The Act imposed import duties on 72 items including paint, tea, glass and paper. The revenue raised from it was to provide for the salaries of colonial officers and its administration. It also authorized the Supreme Court to issue writs of assistance for violators, established the American Customs Board and expanded Admiralty Courts. Protests against the Townshend Acts led to the Boston Massacre.

The Tea Act of 1773 granted the East India Company exclusive license to import and distribute tea to the American colonies. Tea was sold in America at 10s per pound, half its previous price and less than the cost of smuggled tea. Despite the economic benefit to end consumers of tea, the law damaged the position of independent shippers, smugglers and local shopkeepers. On December 1773 Bostonians dumped 342 chests of tea into the Boston Harbor in an event known as the Boston Tea Party.

As retaliation for the Boston Tea Party, Britain imposed the Coercive Acts in 1774. The Coercive Acts were a package of five laws: Boston Port Act, Massachusetts Government act, Administration of Justice Act, Quartering Act and Quebec Act.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Navigation Acts were trade rules that governed commerce between Britain and its colonies. The first of the Navigation Acts existed for almost two centuries and was repealed in 1849. The laws were designed to protect British economic interests in colonial trade and to protect its industry against the rapidly growing Dutch navigation trade.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The series of acts passed by Parliament during the 1760s and 1770s is what initially sparked the unrest that led to the American Revolution.

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

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

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

The Sugar Act:

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

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

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

The Currency Act:

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

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

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

The Stamp Act:

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

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

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

The Townshend Acts:

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

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

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

The Tea Act:

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

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

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

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

The Coercive Acts:

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

The Coercive Acts included:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Acts of the American Revolution - History of Massachusetts Blog

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

# data[].attributes.headline
Paul Revere's Ride/Lexington and Concord

# data[].attributes.subject
Paul Revere's Ride/Lexington and Concord

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

hen in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. - That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, - That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. - Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. - And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America hen in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
View the original text of history's most important documents, including the Articles of Confederation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Great Compromise Explained in 5 Minutes: US History Review

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Federalism: Crash Course Government and Politics #4

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The term "trias politica" or "separation of powers" was coined by Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, an 18th century French social and political philosopher. His publication, Spirit of the Laws, is considered one of the great works in the history of political theory and jurisprudence, and it inspired the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Constitution of the United States. Under his model, the political authority of the state is divided into legislative, executive and judicial powers. He asserted that, to most effectively promote liberty, these three powers must be separate and acting independently.

Separation of powers, therefore, refers to the division of government responsibilities into distinct branches to limit any one branch from exercising the core functions of another. The intent is to prevent the concentration of power and provide for checks and balances.

The traditional characterizations of the powers of the branches of American government are:

The legislative branch is responsible for enacting the laws of the state and appropriating the money necessary to operate the government.

The executive branch is responsible for implementing and administering the public policy enacted and funded by the legislative branch.

The judicial branch is responsible for interpreting the constitution and laws and applying their interpretations to controversies brought before it.

Forty state constitutions specify that government be divided into three branches: legislative, executive and judicial. California illustrates this approach; "The powers of state government are legislative, executive, and judicial. Persons charged with the exercise of one power may not exercise either of the others except as permitted by this Constitution."

While separation of powers is key to the workings of American government, no democratic system exists with an absolute separation of powers or an absolute lack of separation of powers. Governmental powers and responsibilities intentionally overlap; they are too complex and interrelated to be neatly compartmentalized. As a result, there is an inherent measure of competition and conflict among the branches of government. Throughout American history, there also has been an ebb and flow of preeminence among the governmental branches. Such experiences suggest that where power resides is part of an evolutionary process.

This page provides resources for legislators and staff to use in addressing separation of powers issues. It organizes them into broad categories and links to a diverse set of resources to illustrate how the doctrine applies to specific issues under each category. The resources include law review articles, court cases and legislative reports.

Resources

Alaska: Alaska Legislature, Separation of Powers
http://w3.legis.state.ak.us/docs/pdf/Separation_of_Powers.pdf

Iowa: Iowa Legislative Services Agency, Legislative Guide to Separation of Powers, 2005
https://www.legis.iowa.gov/DOCS/Central/Guides/lgseppwr.pdf

Minnesota: Minnesota House Research, Separation of Powers: When Statutes and Court Rules Conflict, 2005
http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hrd/pubs/ss/ssseppw.pdf
Receiving Information or Recommending Additions
If you have any questions, please contact Brenda Erickson in NCSL's Denver office at (303) 364-7700. Also, please contact Brenda if you would like to recommend legislative resources or case law that may enhance the Separation of Powers website.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
national conference of state legislatures

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The term "trias politica" or "separation of powers" was coined by Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, an 18th century French social and political philosopher. His publication, Spirit of the Laws, is considered one of the great works in the history of political theory and jurisprudence, and it inspired the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Constitution of the United States.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A look at Jefferson's role in the Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the size of the young American republic.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Lewis and Clark: Expedition, Purpose & Facts - HISTORY

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Lewis and Clark Expedition began in 1804 when Thomas Jefferson asked Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the lands of the Louisiana Purchase.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Purpose Behind the Monroe Doctrine

By the early 1820s, many Latin American countries had won their independence from Spain or Portugal, with the U.S. government recognizing the new republics of Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia and Mexico in 1822.

Yet both Britain and the United States worried that the powers of continental Europe would make future attempts to restore colonial regimes in the region. Russia had also inspired concerns of imperialism, with Czar Alexander I claiming sovereignty over territory in the Pacific Northwest and banning foreign ships from approaching that coast in 1821.

Though Monroe had initially supported the idea of a joint U.S.-British resolution against future colonization in Latin America, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams argued that joining forces with the British could limit future U.S. opportunities for expansion, and that Britain might well have imperialist ambitions of its own.

Adams convinced Monroe to make a unilateral statement of U.S. policy that would set an independent course for the young nation and claim a new role as protector of the Western Hemisphere.
WATCH: James Monroe
Monroe's Message to Congress

During the president's customary message to Congress on December 2, 1823, Monroe expressed the basic tenets of what would later become known as the Monroe Doctrine.

According to Monroe's message (drafted largely by Adams), the Old World and the New World were fundamentally different, and should be two different spheres of influence. The United States, for its part, would not interfere in the political affairs of Europe, or with existing European colonies in the Western Hemisphere.

"The American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for colonization by any European powers," Monroe continued. Any attempt by a European power to exert its influence in the Western Hemisphere would, from then on, be seen by the United States as a threat to its security.

In declaring separate spheres of influence and a policy of non-intervention in the foreign affairs of Europe, the Monroe Doctrine drew on past statements of American diplomatic ideals, including George Washington's Farewell Address in 1796, and James Madison's declaration of war with Britain in 1812.

Monroe Doctrine in Practice: US Foreign Policy

At the time Monroe delivered his message to Congress, the United States was still a relatively minor player on the world stage. It clearly did not have the military or naval power to back up its assertion of unilateral control over the Western Hemisphere, and Monroe's bold policy statement was largely ignored outside U.S. borders.

In 1833, the United States did not invoke the Monroe Doctrine to oppose British occupation of the Falkland Islands; it also declined to act when Britain and France imposed a naval blockade against Argentina in 1845.

But as the nation's economic and military strength grew, it began backing up Monroe's words with actions. When the Civil War drew to a close, the U.S. government supplied military and diplomatic support to Benito Juárez in Mexico, enabling his forces to overthrow the regime of Emperor Maximilian, who had been placed on the throne by the French government, in 1867.

Roosevelt Corollary

From 1870 onward, as the United States emerged as a major world power, the Monroe Doctrine would be used to justify a long series of U.S. interventions in Latin America. This was especially true after 1904, when President Theodore Roosevelt claimed the U.S. government's right to intervene to stop European creditors who were threatening armed intervention in order to collect debts in Latin American countries.

But his claim went further than that. "Chronic wrongdoing...may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation," Roosevelt announced in his annual message to Congress that year. "In the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power."

Known as the "Roosevelt Corollary" or the " Big Stick " policy, Roosevelt's expansive interpretation was soon used to justify military interventions in Central America and the Caribbean, including the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Haiti and Cuba.

Some later policymakers tried to soften this aggressive interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who introduced a Good Neighbor policy to replace the Big Stick.

But though treaties signed during and after World War II reflected a policy of greater cooperation between North and South American countries, including the Organization for American States (OAS), the United States continued to use the Monroe Doctrine to justify its interference in the affairs of its southern neighbors.
READ MORE: 4 Key Milestones of Theodore Roosevelt's Foreign Policy
Cold War Into the 21st Century

During the Cold War era, President John F. Kennedy invoked the Monroe Doctrine during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when he ordered a naval and air quarantine of Cuba after the Soviet Union began building missile-launching sites there. In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan similarly used the 1823 policy principle to justify U.S. intervention in El Salvador and Nicaragua, while his successor, George H.W. Bush, similarly sanctioned a U.S. invasion of Panama to oust Manuel Noriega.

With the end of the Cold War and the dawn of the 21st century, the United States reduced its military involvements in Latin America, while continuing to assert a powerful influence in the affairs of the region.

At the same time, socialist leaders in Latin America, such as Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela, have earned support from their citizens by resisting what they view as U.S. imperialism, underscoring the complicated legacy of the Monroe Doctrine and its defining influence on U.S. foreign policy in the Western Hemisphere.

Sources

Monroe Doctrine, 1823. U.S. State Department: Office of the Historian.
"Before Venezuela, US had long involvement in Latin America." Associated Press, January 25, 2019.
" The Economist Explains: What is the Monroe Doctrine?" The Economist, February 12, 2019.
Theodore Roosevelt's Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, 1904. OurDocuments.gov.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Monroe Doctrine - Definition, Purpose & Significance

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Monroe Doctrine, established by President James Monroe in 1823, was a U.S. policy of opposing European colonialism in the Western Hemisphere.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The War of 1812   Crash Course US History #11

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
An ambiguous, controversial concept, Jacksonian Democracy in the strictest sense refers simply to the ascendancy of Andrew Jackson and the Democratic party after 1828. More loosely, it alludes to the entire range of democratic reforms that proceeded alongside the Jacksonians' triumph-from expanding the suffrage to restructuring federal institutions. From another angle, however, Jacksonianism appears as a political impulse tied to slavery, the subjugation of Native Americans, and the celebration of white supremacy-so much so that some scholars have dismissed the phrase "Jacksonian Democracy" as a contradiction in terms.

Such tendentious revisionism may provide a useful corrective to older enthusiastic assessments, but it fails to capture a larger historical tragedy: Jacksonian Democracy was an authentic democratic movement, dedicated to powerful, at times radical, egalitarian ideals-but mainly for white men.

Socially and intellectually, the Jacksonian movement represented not the insurgency of a specific class or region but a diverse, sometimes testy national coalition. Its origins stretch back to the democratic stirrings of the American Revolution, the Antifederalists of the 1780s and 1790s, and the Jeffersonian Democratic Republicans. More directly, it arose out of the profound social and economic changes of the early nineteenth century.

Recent historians have analyzed these changes in terms of a market revolution. In the Northeast and Old Northwest, rapid transportation improvements and immigration hastened the collapse of an older yeoman and artisan economy and its replacement by cash-crop agriculture and capitalist manufacturing. In the South, the cotton boom revived a flagging plantation slave economy, which spread to occupy the best lands of the region. In the West, the seizure of lands from Native Americans and mixed-blood Hispanics opened up fresh areas for white settlement and cultivation-and for speculation.

Not everyone benefited equally from the market revolution, least of all those nonwhites for whom it was an unmitigated disaster. Jacksonianism, however, would grow directly from the tensions it generated within white society. Mortgaged farmers and an emerging proletariat in the Northeast, nonslaveholders in the South, tenants and would-be yeomen in the West-all had reasons to think that the spread of commerce and capitalism would bring not boundless opportunities but new forms of dependence. And in all sections of the country, some of the rising entrepreneurs of the market revolution suspected that older elites would block their way and shape economic development to suit themselves.

By the 1820s, these tensions fed into a many-sided crisis of political faith. To the frustration of both self-made men and plebeians, certain eighteenth-century elitist republican assumptions remained strong, especially in the seaboard states, mandating that government be left to a natural aristocracy of virtuous, propertied gentlemen. Simultaneously, some of the looming shapes of nineteenth-century capitalism-chartered corporations, commercial banks, and other private institutions-presaged the consolidation of a new kind of moneyed aristocracy. And increasingly after the War of 1812, government policy seemed to combine the worst of both old and new, favoring the kinds of centralized, broad constructionist, top-down forms of economic development that many thought would aid men of established means while deepening inequalities among whites. Numerous events during and after the misnamed Era of Good Feelings-among them the neo-Federalist rulings of John Marshall's Supreme Court, the devastating effects of the panic of 1819, the launching of John Quincy Adams's and Henry Clay's American System-confirmed a growing impression that power was steadily flowing into the hands of a small, self-confident minority.

Proposed cures for this sickness included more democracy and a redirection of economic policy. In the older states, reformers fought to lower or abolish property requirements for voting and officeholding, and to equalize representation. A new generation of politicians broke with the old republican animus against mass political parties. Urban workers formed labor movements and demanded political reforms. Southerners sought low tariffs, greater respect for states' rights, and a return to strict constructionism. Westerners clamored for more and cheaper land and for relief from creditors, speculators, and bankers (above all, the hated Second Bank of the United States).

It has confounded some scholars that so much of this ferment eventually coalesced behind Andrew Jackson-a one-time land speculator, opponent of debtor relief, and fervent wartime nationalist. By the 1820s, however, Jackson's personal business experiences had long since altered his opinions about speculation and paper money, leaving him eternally suspicious of the credit system in general and banks in particular. His career as an Indian fighter and conqueror of the British made him a popular hero, especially among land-hungry settlers. His enthusiasm for nationalist programs had diminished after 1815, as foreign threats receded and economic difficulties multiplied. Above all, Jackson, with his own hardscrabble origins, epitomized contempt for the old republican elitism, with its hierarchical deference and its wariness of popular democracy.

After losing the "corrupt bargain" presidential election of 1824, Jackson expanded upon his political base in the lower and mid-South, pulling together many strands of disaffection from around the country. But in successfully challenging President John Quincy Adams in 1828, Jackson's supporters played mainly on his image as a manly warrior, framing the contest as one between Adams who could write and Jackson who could fight. Only after taking power did the Jacksonian Democracy refine its politics and ideology. Out of that self-definition came a fundamental shift in the terms of national political debate.

The Jacksonians' basic policy thrust, both in Washington and in the states, was to rid government of class biases and dismantle the top-down, credit-driven engines of the market revolution. The war on the Second Bank of the United States and subsequent hard-money initiatives set the tone-an unyielding effort to remove the hands of a few wealthy, unelected private bankers from the levers of the nation's economy. Under the Jacksonians, government-sponsored internal improvements generally fell into disfavor, on the grounds that they were unnecessary expansions of centralized power, beneficial mainly to men with connections. The Jacksonians defended rotation in office as a solvent to entrenched elitism. To aid hard-pressed farmers and planters, they pursued an unrelenting (some say unconstitutional) program of Indian removal, while backing cheap land prices and settlers' preemption rights.

Around these policies, Jacksonian leaders built a democratic ideology aimed primarily at voters who felt injured by or cut off from the market revolution. Updating the more democratic pieces of the republican legacy, they posited that no republic could long survive without a citizenry of economically independent men. Unfortunately, they claimed, that state of republican independence was exceedingly fragile. According to the Jacksonians, all of human history had involved a struggle between the few and the many, instigated by a greedy minority of wealth and privilege that hoped to exploit the vast majority. And this struggle, they declared, lay behind the major problems of the day, as the "associated wealth" of America sought to augment its domination.

The people's best weapons were equal rights and limited government-ensuring that the already wealthy and favored classes would not enrich themselves further by commandeering, enlarging, and then plundering public institutions. More broadly, the Jacksonians proclaimed a political culture predicated on white male equality, contrasting themselves with other self-styled reform movements. Nativism, for example, struck them as a hateful manifestation of elitist puritanism. Sabbatarians, temperance advocates, and other would-be moral uplifters, they insisted, should not impose righteousness on others. Beyond position-taking, the Jacksonians propounded a social vision in which any white man would have the chance to secure his economic independence, would be free to live as he saw fit, under a system of laws and representative government utterly cleansed of privilege.

As Jacksonian leaders developed these arguments, they roused a noisy opposition-some of it coming from elements of the coalition that originally elected Jackson president. Reactionary southern planters, centered in South Carolina, worried that the Jacksonians' egalitarianism might endanger their own prerogatives-and perhaps the institution of slavery-if southern nonslaveholders carried them too far. They also feared that Jackson, their supposed champion, lacked sufficient vigilance in protecting their interests-fears that provoked the nullification crisis in 1832-1833 and Jackson's crushing of extremist threats to federal authority. A broader southern opposition emerged in the late 1830s, mainly among wealthy planters alienated by the disastrous panic of 1837 and suspicious of Jackson's successor, the Yankee Martin Van Buren. In the rest of the country, meanwhile, the Jacksonian leadership's continuing hard-money, antibank campaigns offended more conservative men-the so-called Bank Democrats-who, whatever their displeasure with the Second Bank of the United States, did not want to see the entire paper money credit system dramatically curtailed.

The oppositionist core, however, came from a cross-class coalition, strongest in rapidly commercializing areas, that viewed the market revolution as the embodiment of civilized progress. Far from pitting the few against the many, oppositionists argued, carefully guided economic growth would provide more for everyone. Government encouragement-in the form of tariffs, internal improvements, a strong national bank, and aid to a wide range of benevolent institutions-was essential to that growth. Powerfully influenced by the evangelical Second Great Awakening, core oppositionists saw in moral reform not a threat to individual independence but an idealistic cooperative effort to relieve human degradation and further expand the store of national wealth. Eager to build up the country as it already existed, they were cool to territorial expansion. Angered by Jackson's large claims for presidential power and rotation in office, they charged that the Jacksonians had brought corruption and executive tyranny, not democracy. Above all, they believed that personal rectitude and industriousness, not alleged political inequalities, dictated men's failures or successes. The Jacksonians, with their spurious class rhetoric, menaced that natural harmony of interests between rich and poor which, if only left alone, would eventually bring widespread prosperity.

By 1840, both the Jacksonian Democracy and its opposite (now organized as the Whig party) had built formidable national followings and had turned politics into a debate over the market revolution itself. Yet less than a decade later, sectional contests linked to slavery promised to drown out that debate and fracture both major parties. In large measure, that turnabout derived from the racial exclusiveness of the Jacksonians' democratic vision.

The Jacksonian mainstream, so insistent on the equality of white men, took racism for granted. To be sure, there were key radical exceptions-people like Frances Wright and Robert Dale Owen-who were drawn to the Democracy's cause. North and South, the democratic reforms achieved by plebeian whites-especially those respecting voting and representation-came at the direct expense of free blacks. Although informed by constitutional principles and genuine paternalist concern, the Jacksonian rationale for territorial expansion assumed that Indians (and, in some areas, Hispanics) were lesser peoples. As for slavery, the Jacksonians were determined, on both practical and ideological grounds, to keep the issue out of national affairs. Few mainstream Jacksonians had moral qualms about black enslavement or any desire to meddle with it where it existed. More important, they believed that the mounting antislavery agitation would distract attention from the artificial inequalities among white men and upset the party's delicate intersectional alliances. Deep down, many suspected that the slavery issue was but a smokescreen thrown up by disgruntled elitists looking to regain the initiative from the real people's cause.

Through the 1830s and 1840s, the mainstream Jacksonian leadership, correctly confident that their views matched those of the white majority, fought to keep the United States a democracy free from the slavery question-condemning abolitionists as fomenters of rebellion, curtailing abolitionist mail campaigns, enforcing the congressional gag rule that squelched debate on abolitionist petitions, while fending off the more extremist proslavery southerners. In all of this fighting, however, the Jacksonians also began to run afoul of their professions about white egalitarianism. Opposing antislavery was one thing; silencing the heretics with gag rules amounted to tampering with white people's equal rights. More important, Jacksonian proexpansionism-what one friendly periodical, the Democratic Review boosted as "manifest destiny"-only intensified sectional rifts. Slaveholders, quite naturally, thought they were entitled to see as much new territory as legally possible opened up to slavery. But that prospect appalled northern whites who had hoped to settle in lily white areas, untroubled by that peculiar institution whose presence (they believed) would degrade the status of white free labor.

It would take until the 1850s before these contradictions fully unraveled the Jacksonian coalition. But as early as the mid-1840s, during the debates over Texas annexation, the Mexican War, and the Wilmot Proviso, sectional cleavages had grown ominous. The presidential candidacy of Martin Van Buren on the Free-Soil ticket in 1848-a protest against growing southern power within the Democracy-amply symbolized northern Democratic alienation. Southern slaveholder Democrats, for their part, began to wonder if anything short of positive federal protection for slavery would spell doom for their class-and the white man's republic. In the middle remained a battered Jacksonian mainstream, ever hopeful that by raising the old issues, avoiding slavery, and resorting to the language of popular sovereignty, the party and the nation might be held together. Led by men like Stephen A. Douglas, these mainstream compromisers held sway into the mid-1850s, but at the cost of constant appeasement of southern concerns, further exacerbating sectional turmoil. Jacksonian Democracy was buried at Fort Sumter, but it had died many years earlier.

There was a grim, ironic justice to the Jacksonians' fate. Having tapped into the disaffection of the 1820s and 1830s and molded it into an effective national party, they advanced the democratization of American politics. By denouncing the moneyed aristocracy and proclaiming the common man, they also helped politicize American life, broadening electoral participation to include an overwhelming majority of the electorate. Yet this very politicization would ultimately prove the Jacksonian Democracy's undoing. Once the slavery issue entered the concerns of even a small portion of the electorate, it proved impossible to remove without trampling on some of the very egalitarian principles the Jacksonians were pledged to uphold.

None of this, however, should be a source of self-satisfaction to modern Americans. Although the Jacksonian Democracy died in the 1850s, it left a powerful legacy, entwining egalitarian aspirations and class justice with the presumptions of white supremacy. Over the decades after the Civil War, that legacy remained a bulwark of a new Democratic party, allying debt-ridden farmers and immigrant workers with the Solid South. The Second Reconstruction of the 1950s and 1960s forced Democrats to reckon with the party's past-only to see party schismatics and Republicans pick up the theme. And at the close of the twentieth century, the tragic mix of egalitarianism and racial prejudice so central to the Jacksonian Democracy still infected American politics, poisoning some of its best impulses with some of its worst.

Fact Check

We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Jacksonian Democracy - Definition, Summary & Significance

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Jacksonian Democracy refers to the ascendancy of President Andrew Jackson (in office 1829 -1837)and the Democratic party after the election of 1828. More loosely, it alludes to the entire range of democratic reforms that proceeded during Jacksons' tenure-from expanding suffrage to restructuring federal institutions, but also slavery, the subjugation of Native Americans, and the celebration of white supremacy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Manifest Destiny Explained in One Minute

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Industrial Revolution: Definition and Inventions | HISTORY

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Industrial Revolution occurred when agrarian societies became more industrialized and urban. Learn where and when the Industrial Revolution started, and the inventions that made it possible.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Invention of Interchangeable Parts  1798

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Before the Industrial Revolution, there was a time lag in almost everything that took place in the United States. It took weeks and sometimes months just to send a letter or pass information. It took...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
0:00 / 3:36•Watch full video

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Eli Whitney - Inventor of the Cotton Gin | Mini Bio | BIO

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Interpretation of Slave Quarter, Carter's Grove Plantation, Williamsburg

Slave life varied greatly depending on many factors.

Life on the fields meant working sunup to sundown six days a week and having food sometimes not suitable for an animal to eat. Plantation slaves lived in small shacks with a dirt floor and little or no furniture. Life on large plantations with a cruel overseer was oftentimes the worst. However, work for a small farm owner who was not doing well could mean not being fed.

The stories about cruel overseers were certainly true in some cases. The overseer was paid to get the most work out of the slaves; therefore, overseers often resorted to whatever means was necessary. Sometimes the slaves would drive the overseer off the plantation in desperation. When slaves complained that they were being unfairly treated, slaveholders would most often be very protective of their "property" and would release the overseer.

Slaves who worked inside the plantation homes often had better living and working conditions than slaves who worked in the fields.

In some cases, a driver was used rather than an overseer. The difference between the overseer and the driver was simple: drivers were slaves themselves. A driver might be convinced by a master to manage the slaves for better privileges. Drivers were usually hated by the rest of the slaves. These feelings often led to violence.

Large plantations often required some slaves to work in the plantation home. These slaves enjoyed far better circumstances. Domestic slaves lived in better quarters and received better food. They sometimes were able to travel with the owner's family. In many cases, a class system developed within the slave community. Domestic slaves did not often associate themselves with plantation slaves. They often aspired to arrange courtships for their children with other domestic slaves.

This Slave Code booklet for Washington D.C., was published in 1862, only one month before Lincoln abolished slavery in the nation's capitol. More lenient than most states' slave codes, the District's code allowed slaves to hire themselves out and live apart from their masters.

As the Peculiar Institution spread across the South, many states passed "slave codes," which outlined the rights of slaves and the acceptable treatment and rules regarding slaves. Slave codes varied from state to state, but there were many common threads. One could not do business with a slave without the prior consent of the owner. Slaves could be awarded as prizes in raffles, wagered in gambling, offered as security for loans, and transferred as gifts from one person to another.

A slave was not permitted to keep a gun. If caught carrying a gun, the slave received 39 lashes and forfeited the gun. Blacks were held incompetent as witnesses in legal cases involving whites. The education of slaves was prohibited. Anyone operating a school or teaching reading and writing to any African-American in Missouri could be punished by a fine of not less than $500 and up to six months in jail. Slaves could not assemble without a white person present. Marriages between slaves were not considered legally binding. Therefore, owners were free to split up families through sale.

Any slave found guilty of arson, rape of a white woman, or conspiracy to rebel was put to death. However, since the slave woman was chattel, a white man who raped her was guilty only of a trespass on the master's property. Rape was common on the plantation, and very few cases were ever reported.

Virginia's Slave Code of 1705
Virginia's slave code of 1705 was designed to settle the questions about the status of non-Christian servants... they were all made slaves. The law served as a model for codes in other colonies. This webpage from PBS provides a brief overview and links to related topics.

Report broken link

Antebellum Slavery
What happens when an ardent abolitionist marries a member of one of the largest slaveholders in the South? A disastrous marriage - and a moving epic of slavery in the South. Read excerpts from the account, which includes physical and mental abuse as well as the story of the largest sale of human beings in the history of the United States. Links to other moving stories surrounding antebellum (before the war) slavery abound as well.

Report broken link

Virginia's slave codes
If any slave resist his master ... correcting such slave, and shall happen to be killed in such correction ... the master shall be free of all punishment ... as if such accident never happened. Read more about the 1705 slave code which served as a model for future laws.

Report broken link

Few slaves wrote letters or diaries because they weren't allowed to read or write, but some broke the rules and wrote down their stories.
Learn More...

Report broken link

If you like our content, please share it on social media!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Slave Life and Slave Codes [ushistory.org]

# data[].attributes.headline
Immigration to the United States in the 1800s 

# data[].attributes.subject
Immigration to the United States in the 1800s 

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

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Discover | Statue of Liberty & Ellis Island

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

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Charles G. Finney, evangelist, was hired as Professor of Theology at Oberlin College and later served as Oberlin's president. He was an influential evangelist during the Second Great Awakening religious movement.

The Second Great Awakening was a U.S. religious revival that began in the late eighteenth century and lasted until the middle of the nineteenth century. While it occurred in all parts of the United States, it was especially strong in the Northeast and the Midwest.

By the late 1700s, many people in the U.S. no longer regularly attended church services. This occurred for several reasons. Some believed that God did not play an important role in everyday life. God was also supposedly unconcerned with a person's church attendance; rather, God would judge the person on how he or she had lived his or her life on Earth. Other people had become too consumed with earning a living to have time to worship God. As a result of declining religious convictions, many religious faiths sponsored religious revivals. These revivals emphasized human beings' dependence upon God.

Most of the religious revivals occurred as camp meetings. Adherents and interested parties would spend several days hearing the word of God from various religious leaders. While these services were often very emotional, they did not become hysterical gatherings as many earlier revivals had become. They also served as social gatherings. Many people in the U.S. living on the frontier did not have regular contact with their neighbors. The revivals allowed these people an opportunity to hear God's word, but they also provided rural families an opportunity to talk and trade with one another.

Perhaps the most influential evangelist of the Second Great Awakening was Charles Finney. He began to spread his message in western New York during the early 1820s. In 1835, he became a professor of theology at Oberlin College in Ohio. He eventually served as Oberlin College's president.

Numerous religious groups benefited from the Second Great Awakening. Baptists and Methodists found the largest number of converts, swelling their numbers across the United States, including in Ohio. New religious groups also resulted from the revivals. These groups were unsatisfied with the already established faiths and created their own doctrines. Among these groups were the Mormons.

The revivals encouraged people to return to God. Many people in the U.S. were convinced to more actively dedicate their lives to God and to live in a godly manner. As a result, church attendance increased during the first half of the nineteenth century. A desire to reform the U.S. also arose out of the Second Great Awakening. The U.S. temperance and abolitionist movements were both greatly influenced by the revival movement and its messages. Additionally, women's involvement in the revival provided support for the women's rights movement.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Charles G. Finney, evangelist, was hired as Professor of Theology at Oberlin College and later served as Oberlin's president. He was an influential evangelist during the Second Great Awakening religious movement. The Second Great Awakening was a U.S. religious revival that began in the late eighteenth century and lasted until the middle of the nineteenth century.

# data[].attributes.headline
Abolitionist Movement Prior To The Civil War

# data[].attributes.subject
Abolitionist Movement Prior To The Civil War

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Facts, information and articles about Abolitionist Movement, one of the causes of the civil war

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

Slavery Comes To The New World

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

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

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

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

Learn More About Slavery In America

The Missouri Compromise And Dred Scott

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

Learn more about Dred Scott

The Abolitionism Movement Spreads

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

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

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

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

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

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

Frederick Douglass: A Black Abolitionist

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

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

The Seneca Falls Convention

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

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

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

Learn more about the Seneca Falls Convention

Harriet Tubman and The Underground Railroad

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

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

Learn more about Harriet Tubman
Learn more about the Underground Railroad

Harriet Beecher Stowe: Abolitionist and Author

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

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

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

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

Abolitionism, Politics and the Election Of Abraham Lincoln

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

John Brown: Abolitionism's Fiery Crusader

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

Learn more about John Brown

Dred Scott V. Sanford

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

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

Learn more about the Dred Scott Decision

John Brown's Raid On Harpers Ferry

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

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

Abraham Lincoln: Abolitionist President

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

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

Learn more about Abraham Lincoln
Learn more about the Emancipation Proclamation

The 13th Amendment: The Abolitionism Movement Triumphs

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

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

Articles Featuring The Abolitionist Movement From History Net Magazines

Featured Article

More Abolitionism Articles

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

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Women's Suffrage: Crash Course US History #31

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
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.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Lincoln-Douglas debates | Summary, Dates, Significance, & Facts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
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.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Election of 1860 & the Road to Disunion: Crash Course US History #18

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Sound Smart: Fort Sumter and the Civil War | History

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free."

Despite this expansive wording, the Emancipation Proclamation was limited in many ways. It applied only to states that had seceded from the United States, leaving slavery untouched in the loyal border states. It also expressly exempted parts of the Confederacy (the Southern secessionist states) that had already come under Northern control. Most important, the freedom it promised depended upon Union (United States) military victory.

Although the Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery in the nation, it captured the hearts and imagination of millions of Americans and fundamentally transformed the character of the war. After January 1, 1863, every advance of federal troops expanded the domain of freedom. Moreover, the Proclamation announced the acceptance of black men into the Union Army and Navy, enabling the liberated to become liberators. By the end of the war, almost 200,000 black soldiers and sailors had fought for the Union and freedom.

From the first days of the Civil War, slaves had acted to secure their own liberty. The Emancipation Proclamation confirmed their insistence that the war for the Union must become a war for freedom. It added moral force to the Union cause and strengthened the Union both militarily and politically. As a milestone along the road to slavery's final destruction, the Emancipation Proclamation has assumed a place among the great documents of human freedom.

The original of the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, is in the National Archives in Washington, DC. With the text covering five pages the document was originally tied with narrow red and blue ribbons, which were attached to the signature page by a wafered impression of the seal of the United States. Most of the ribbon remains; parts of the seal are still decipherable, but other parts have worn off.

The document was bound with other proclamations in a large volume preserved for many years by the Department of State. When it was prepared for binding, it was reinforced with strips along the center folds and then mounted on a still larger sheet of heavy paper. Written in red ink on the upper right-hand corner of this large sheet is the number of the Proclamation, 95, given to it by the Department of State long after it was signed. With other records, the volume containing the Emancipation Proclamation was transferred in 1936 from the Department of State to the National Archives of the United States.

The Emancipation Proclamation

Select Resources

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Enlarge The Emancipation Proclamation (page 1) Record Group 11 General Records of the United States View in National Archives Catalog Español President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Learn about Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross who led the organization for 23 years.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Vicksburg Campaign: The Civil War in Four Minutes

# data[].attributes.headline
Southern Surrender at Appomattox Courthouse

# data[].attributes.subject
Southern Surrender at Appomattox Courthouse

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Table of Contents

1. Battle of Appomattox Court House

2. Lee Surrenders to Grant

3. The Final Battle of the Civil War?

The Battle of Appomattox Court House was fought on April 9, 1865, near the town of Appomattox Court House, Virginia, and led to Confederate General Robert E. Lee's surrender of his Army of Northern Virginia to Union General Ulysses S. Grant. Days earlier, Lee had abandoned the Confederate capital of Richmond and the city of Petersburg; his goal was to rally the remnants of his beleaguered troops, meet Confederate reinforcements in North Carolina and resume fighting. But the resulting Battle of Appomattox Court House, which lasted only a few hours, effectively brought the four-year Civil War to an end.

Battle of Appomattox Court House
WATCH: Appomattox Court House
In retreat from the Union army's Appomattox campaign, which began in March 1865, the Army of Northern Virginia stumbled westward through the Virginia countryside stripped of food and supplies. At one point, Union cavalry forces under General Philip Sheridan had outrun General Lee's troops, blocking their retreat and taking approximately 6,000 prisoners at Sayler's Creek.

Confederate desertions were mounting daily, and by April 8 the Rebels were almost completely surrounded. Nonetheless, early on the morning of April 9, Confederate troops led by Major General John B. Gordon mounted a last-ditch offensive that was initially successful. Soon, however, the Confederates saw that they were hopelessly outnumbered by two corps of Union soldiers who had marched all night to cut off the Confederate advance.

Later that morning, Lee-cut off from all provisions and all support-famously declared that "there is nothing left me to do but to go and see Gen. Grant, and I would rather die a thousand deaths." But Lee also knew his remaining troops, numbering about 28,000, would quickly turn to pillaging the countryside in order to survive.

With no remaining options, Lee sent a message to General Ulysses Grant announcing his willingness to surrender the Army of Northern Virginia. The two war-weary generals met in the front parlor of the Wilmer McLean home at one o'clock that afternoon.

Lee Surrenders to Grant

Lee and Grant, both of whom held the highest rank in their respective armies, had known each other slightly during the Mexican-American War (1846-48) and began their dialogue by exchanging awkward personal inquiries. Characteristically, Grant had arrived in his mud-splattered field uniform while Lee had turned out in full dress attire, complete with sash and sword.

Did you know? In 1869, the house where Lee surrendered to Grant was sold at public auction after owner Wilmer McLean defaulted on his loan repayments. In the ensuing years, the house had a series of owners before it was reconstructed and opened to the public by the National Park Service in 1949.

Lee asked for the terms of surrender, and Grant hurriedly wrote them out. Generously, all officers and men were to be pardoned, and they would be sent home with their private property-most important to the men were 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.

Quieting a band that had begun to play in celebration, Grant told his officers, "The war is over. The Rebels are our countrymen again." Although scattered resistance continued for several weeks-the final skirmish of the Civil War occurred on May 12 and 13 at the Battle of Palmito Ranch near Brownsville, Texas-for all practical purposes the Civil War had come to an end.

The Final Battle of the Civil War?

News of the surrender traveled slowly. Although scattered resistance continued for several weeks-there were six battles that took place after Appomattox, with the final skirmish of the Civil War occurring on May 12 and 13 at the Battle of Palmito Ranch near Brownsville, Texas-for all practical purposes, the Civil War had come to an end.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Appomattox Court House - Definition, Date & Location

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Appomattox Court House, located in Virginia, is where Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in April 1865, bringing an end to the Civil War.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
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.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
If you're seeing this message, it means we're having trouble loading external resources on our website.

If you're behind a web filter, please make sure that the domains *.kastatic.org and *.kasandbox.org are unblocked.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Fourteenth Amendment and equal protection

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
If you're seeing this message, it means we're having trouble loading external resources on our website. If you're behind a web filter, please make sure that the domains *.kastatic.org and *.kasandbox.org are unblocked.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
National Constitution Center - The 15th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The 15th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

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

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Transcontinental Railroad ‑ Construction, Competition & Impact

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
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.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
On the morning of December 29, 1890, the Sioux chief Big Foot and some 350 of his followers camped on the banks of Wounded Knee creek. Surrounding their camp was a force of U.S. troops charged with the responsibility of arresting Big Foot and disarming his warriors. The scene was tense. Trouble had been brewing for months.
The once proud Sioux found their free-roaming life destroyed, the buffalo gone, themselves confined to reservations dependent on Indian Agents for their existence. In a desperate attempt to return to the days of their glory, many sought salvation in a new mysticism preached by a Paiute shaman called Wovoka. Emissaries from the Sioux in South Dakota traveled to Nevada to hear his words. Wovoka called himself the Messiah and prophesied that the dead would soon join the living in a world in which the Indians could live in the old way surrounded by plentiful game. A tidal wave of new soil would cover the earth, bury the whites, and restore the prairie. To hasten the event, the Indians were to dance the Ghost Dance. Many dancers wore brightly colored shirts emblazoned with images of eagles and buffaloes. These "Ghost Shirts" they believed would protect them from the bluecoats' bullets. During the fall of 1890, the Ghost Dance spread through the Sioux villages of the Dakota reservations, revitalizing the Indians and bringing fear to the whites. A desperate Indian Agent at Pine Ridge wired his superiors in Washington, "Indians are dancing in the snow and are wild and crazy....We need protection and we need it now. The leaders should be arrested and confined at some military post until the matter is quieted, and this should be done now." The order went out to arrest Chief Sitting Bull at the Standing Rock Reservation. Sitting Bull was killed in the attempt on December 15. Chief Big Foot was next on the list.
When he heard of Sitting Bull's death, Big Foot led his people south to seek protection at the Pine Ridge Reservation. The army intercepted the band on December 28 and brought them to the edge of the Wounded Knee to camp. The next morning the chief, racked with pneumonia and dying, sat among his warriors and powwowed with the army officers. Suddenly the sound of a shot pierced the early morning gloom. Within seconds the charged atmosphere erupted as Indian braves scurried to retrieve their discarded rifles and troopers fired volley after volley into the Sioux camp. From the heights above, the army's Hotchkiss guns raked the Indian teepees with grapeshot. Clouds of gun smoke filled the air as men, women and children scrambled for their lives. Many ran for a ravine next to the camp only to be cut down in a withering cross fire.

When the smoke cleared and the shooting stopped, approximately 300 Sioux were dead, Big Foot among them. Twenty-five soldiers lost their lives. As the remaining troopers began the grim task of removing the dead, a blizzard swept in from the North. A few days later they returned to complete the job. Scattered fighting continued, but the massacre at Wounded Knee effectively squelched the Ghost Dance movement and ended the Indian Wars.

Philip Wells was a mixed-blood Sioux who served as an interpreter for the Army. He later recounted what he saw that Monday morning:
"I was interpreting for General Forsyth ( Forsyth was actually a colonel) just before the battle of Wounded Knee, December 29, 1890. The captured Indians had been ordered to give up their arms, but Big Foot replied that his people had no arms. Forsyth said to me, 'Tell Big Foot he says the Indians have no arms, yet yesterday they were well armed when they surrendered. He is deceiving me. Tell him he need have no fear in giving up his arms, as I wish to treat him kindly.' Big Foot replied, 'They have no guns, except such as you have found.' Forsyth declared, 'You are lying to me in return for my kindness.'

During this time a medicine man, gaudily dressed and fantastically painted, executed the maneuvers of the ghost dance, raising and throwing dust into the air. He exclaimed 'Ha! Ha!' as he did so, meaning he was about to do something terrible, and said, 'I have lived long enough,' meaning he would fight until he died. Turning to the young warriors who were squatted together, he said 'Do not fear, but let your hearts be strong. Many soldiers are about us and have many bullets, but I am assured their bullets cannot penetrate us. The prairie is large, and their bullets will fly over the prairies and will not come toward us. If they do come toward us, they will float away like dust in the air.' I turned to Major Whitside and said, 'That man is making mischief,' and repeated what he had said. Whitside replied, 'Go direct to Colonel Forsyth and tell him about it,' which I did.

Forsyth and I went to the circle of warriors where he told me to tell the medicine man to sit down and keep quiet, but he paid no attention to the order. Forsyth repeated the order. Big Foot's brother-in-law answered, 'He will sit down when he gets around the circle.' When the medicine man came to the end of the circle, he squatted down. A cavalry sergeant exclaimed, 'There goes an Indian with a gun under his blanket!' Forsyth ordered him to take the gun from the Indian, which he did. Whitside then said to me, 'Tell the Indians it is necessary that they be searched one at a time.' The young warriors paid no attention to what I told them. I heard someone on my left exclaim, 'Look out! Look out!' I saw five or six young warriors cast off their blankets and pull guns out from under them and brandish them in the air. One of the warriors shot into the soldiers, who were ordered to fire into the Indians. I looked in the direction of the medicine man. He or some other medicine man approached to within three or four feet of me with a long cheese knife, ground to a sharp point and raised to stab me. He stabbed me during the melee and nearly cut off my nose. I held him off until I could swing my rifle to hit him, which I did. I shot and killed him in self-defense.
Troop 'K' was drawn up between the tents of the women and children and the main body of the Indians, who had been summoned to deliver their arms. The Indians began firing into 'Troop K' to gain the canyon of Wounded Knee creek. In doing so they exposed their women and children to their own fire. Captain Wallace was killed at this time while standing in front of his troops. A bullet, striking him in the forehead, plowed away the top of his head. I started to pull off my nose, which was hung by the skin, but Lieutenant Guy Preston shouted, 'My God Man! Don't do that! That can be saved.' He then led me away from the scene of the trouble."

References:
Brown, Dee, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (1971); Jensen, Richard, et. al, Eyewitness at Wounded Knee (1991); Utley, Robert M., The Last Days of the Sioux Nation (1963); Wells, Philip, "Ninety-six Years among the Indians of the Northwest", North Dakota History, 15, no. 2 (1948).

How To Cite This Article:
"Massacre At Wounded Knee, 1890," EyeWitness to History, www.eyewitnesstohistory.com (1998).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
On the morning of December 29, 1890, the Sioux chief Big Foot and some 350 of his followers camped on the banks of Wounded Knee creek. Surrounding their camp was a force of U.S. troops charged with the responsibility of arresting Big Foot and disarming his warriors. The scene was tense.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Homestead Act of 1862 Explained: US History Review

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
On this channel you can get education and knowledge for general issues and topics

# data[].attributes.body
Late 1800's

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
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.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
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…

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The late nineteenth century saw the rise of "big business" in important areas of economic activity. ("Big" is never defined precisely, but the quantitative term is popularly used to connote something important.) Big business firms were institutions that used management to control economic activity. Big business firms broke themselves into different functions, or "departments," and used managers to coordinate the work of departments, and "middle managers" to coordinate work among departments.

Railroads were the first "big businesses" in the United States. After railroad companies began to operate on tracks that stretched for fifty and more miles, their owners soon realized that they had to divide responsibilities among different managers, with coordination of the various functions of the company--from soliciting business, to operating trains, to maintaining facilities, to financing everything. By the 1850s railroad executives were perfecting systems of managerial control over their ever more complex firms.

After the railroads pioneered the formation of "big business," big businesses appeared in manufacturing and distribution.

Big city department stores were a form of "big business." They combined many different retail operations in one organization, and placed them together in one building. By 1912 department stores were principal features of the downtown districts of every city.

Still other big businesses, mail order firms such as Sears, Roebuck, were by 1912 serving rural areas and small towns.

Thus when Americans shopped in 1912, they were likely to encounter a "big business." In their stores, moreover, they were likely to find products manufactured by "big businesses."

The "big business" form of organization spread rapidly in manufacturing industries after about 1870.

In some lines of manufacturing, there were advantages to have a single organization control raw materials, transportation, fabrication, and distribution. When he sold his steel company in 1901, for example, Andrew Carnegie was the most efficient--and the wealthiest--steel maker in the world. Carnegie steel had control over sources of coal, coke, and iron ore. Carnegie steel exercised control over ships and railroads that brought raw materials to its mills in the Pittsburgh district. Carnegie insisted on his mill remaining the most advanced of their day. Not only did Carnegie Steel manufacture steel, the company also produced finished products like railroad rails and bridge girders. All of these operations were in a single managerial organization. Managers controlled the flow of materials. Carnegie Steel was so efficient that it could undercut all of its competitors and still make large profits.

Meatpacking was another industry that witnessed the rise and perfection of "big business" forms. After 1870, several Chicago meatpackers built huge, complex organizations for purchasing animals, butchering them, and distributing meat to markets all across the nation. Their companies used all of the byproducts of the animals they slaughtered. Skins went into leather goods, hoofs into glue, bones into fertilizer, and fat into soap. One wag commented that the only part of the hog the Chicago packers did not use and sell was the squeal!

By the end of the nineteenth century, Standard Oil, led by John D. Rockefeller, dominated the refining and distribution of petroleum products in the United States, and extended its reach well beyond the nation's borders.

When an entrepreneur like Carnegie was successful in building an efficient organization to control manufacturing processes, he drove competitors out of business. A steel maker either had to compete by mimicking Carnegie's managerial techniques, or go into a niche, or specialized, market that the big steel companies did not enter. In the case of meatpacking, by 1900 thousands of local butchers found themselves squeezed, because they were less efficient than the Chicago packers. Small shopkeepers sometimes faced ruin from large department store competitors. These businesses following older, more traditional practices sometimes fueled popular sentiment to "bust" the trusts.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The late nineteenth century saw the rise of "big business" in important areas of economic activity. ("Big" is never defined precisely, but the quantitative term is popularly used to connote something important.) Big business firms were institutions that used management to control economic activity.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Antitrust in the U.S. is now undergoing disruption. We may be witnessing the rise of the fifth cycle - namely a progressive, anti-monopoly, New Brandeis School. An emerging group of young scholars are inquiring whether we truly benefited from competition with little antitrust enforcement. The mounting evidence suggests no. To be clear, the anti-monopoly New Brandeis School does not suggest or promote unrestricted intervention or the jettisoning of economic analysis in antitrust enforcement. All agree that intervention should be measured to avoid chilling competition, innovation and investment. The question is one of degree. The hope is for an enforcement policy which is carefully designed, but not diluted.

What happened to the antitrust movement? This was the question asked by Richard Hofstadter in the mid-1960s. Antitrust, observed the historian, once was the subject of a progressive movement in the U.S. that stirred public agitation and imagination, despite few antitrust prosecutions. By the 1960s, there were many antitrust prosecutions (by both Democratic and Republican administrations), but without any antitrust movement. Fifty years later, the U.S. has neither an antitrust movement nor much enforcement. That needs to change.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of the U.S. Antitrust Movement

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Antitrust in the U.S. is now undergoing disruption. We may be witnessing the rise of the fifth cycle - namely a progressive, anti-monopoly, New Brandeis School. An emerging group of young scholars are inquiring whether we truly benefited from competition with little antitrust enforcement. The mounting evidence suggests no.

# data[].attributes.body
Late 1800's

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
International Stock Food Factory, between 1900 and 1910
Detroit Publishing Company

In the decades following the Civil War, the United States emerged as an industrial giant. Old industries expanded and many new ones, including petroleum refining, steel manufacturing, and electrical power, emerged. Railroads expanded significantly, bringing even remote parts of the country into a national market economy.

Industrial growth transformed American society. It produced a new class of wealthy industrialists and a prosperous middle class. It also produced a vastly expanded blue collar working class. The labor force that made industrialization possible was made up of millions of newly arrived immigrants and even larger numbers of migrants from rural areas. American society became more diverse than ever before.

Not everyone shared in the economic prosperity of this period. Many workers were typically unemployed at least part of the year, and their wages were relatively low when they did work. This situation led many workers to support and join labor unions. Meanwhile, farmers also faced hard times as technology and increasing production led to more competition and falling prices for farm products. Hard times on farms led many young people to move to the city in search of better job opportunities.

Americans who were born in the 1840s and 1850s would experience enormous changes in their lifetimes. Some of these changes resulted from a sweeping technological revolution. Their major source of light, for example, would change from candles, to kerosene lamps, and then to electric light bulbs. They would see their transportation evolve from walking and horse power to steam-powered locomotives, to electric trolley cars, to gasoline-powered automobiles. Born into a society in which the vast majority of people were involved in agriculture, they experienced an industrial revolution that radically changed the ways millions of people worked and where they lived. They would experience the migration of millions of people from rural America to the nation's rapidly growing cities.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Overview | Rise of Industrial America, 1876-1900 | U.S. History Primary Source Timeline | Classroom Materials at the Library of Congress | Library of Congress

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In the decades following the Civil War, the United States emerged as an industrial giant. Old industries expanded and many new ones, including petroleum refining, steel manufacturing, and electrical power, emerged. Railroads expanded significantly, bringing even remote parts of the country into a national market economy. Industrial growth transformed American society.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Urbanisation and the growth of global cities

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In the 19th century, more and more people began crowding into America's cities, including thousands of newly arrived immigrants seeking a better life than the one they had left behind. In New York City-where the population doubled every decade from 1800 to 1880-buildings that had once been single-family dwellings were increasingly divided into multiple living spaces to accommodate this growing population.

Known as tenements, these narrow, low-rise apartment buildings-many of them concentrated in the city's Lower East Side neighborhood-were all too often cramped, poorly lit and lacked indoor plumbing and proper ventilation. By 1900, some 2.3 million people (a full two-thirds of New York City's population) were living in tenement housing.

The Rise of Tenement Housing

In the first half of the 19th century, many of the more affluent residents of New York's Lower East Side neighborhood began to move further north, leaving their low-rise masonry row houses behind. At the same time, more and more immigrants began to flow into the city, many of them fleeing the Irish Potato Famine, or Great Hunger, in Ireland or revolution in Germany. Both of these groups of new arrivals concentrated themselves on the Lower East Side, moving into row houses that had been converted from single-family dwellings into multiple-apartment tenements, or into new tenement housing built specifically for that purpose.

Did you know? By 1900, more than 80,000 tenements had been built in New York City. They housed a population of 2.3 million people, a full two-thirds of the city's total population of around 3.4 million.

A typical tenement building had five to seven stories and occupied nearly all of the lot upon which it was built (usually 25 feet wide and 100 feet long, according to existing city regulations). Many tenements began as single-family dwellings, and many older structures were converted into tenements by adding floors on top or by building more space in rear-yard areas. With less than a foot of space between buildings, little air and light could get in.

In many tenements, only the rooms on the street got any light, and the interior rooms had no ventilation (unless air shafts were built directly into the room). Later, speculators began building new tenements, often using cheap materials and construction shortcuts. Even new, this kind of housing was at best uncomfortable and at worst highly unsafe.

Calls for Reform

New York was not the only city in America where tenement housing emerged as a way to accommodate a growing population during the 1900s. In Chicago, for example, the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 led to restrictions on building wood-frame structures in the center of the city and encouraged the construction of lower-income dwellings on the city's outskirts.

Unlike in New York, where tenements were highly concentrated in the poorest neighborhoods of the city, in Chicago they tended to cluster around centers of employment, such as stockyards and slaughterhouses. Nowhere, however, did the tenement situation become as dire as it was in New York, particularly on the Lower East Side. A cholera epidemic in 1849 took some 5,000 lives, many of them poor people living in overcrowded housing.

During the infamous New York draft riots that tore apart the city in 1863, rioters were not only protesting against the new military conscription policy; they were also reacting to the intolerable conditions in which many of them were living. The Tenement House Act of 1867 legally defined a tenement for the first time and set construction regulations; among these were the requirement of one toilet (or privy) per 20 people.

"How the Other Half Lives"

The existence of tenement legislation did not guarantee its enforcement, however, and conditions were little improved by 1889, when the Danish-born author and photographer Jacob Riis was researching the series of newspaper articles that would become his seminal book "How the Other Half Lives."

Riis had experienced firsthand the hardship of immigrant life in New York City, and as a police reporter for newspapers, including The Evening Sun, he had gotten a unique view into the grimy, crime-infested world of the Lower East Side. Seeking to draw attention to the horrible conditions in which many urban Americans were living, Riis photographed what he saw in the tenements and used these vivid photos to accompany the text of "How the Other Half Lives," published in 1890.

The hard facts included in Riis' book-such as the fact that 12 adults slept in a room some 13 feet across, and that the infant death rate in the tenements was as high as 1 in 10-stunned many in America and around the world and led to a renewed call for reform.

Two major studies of tenements were completed in the 1890s, and in 1901 city officials passed the Tenement House Law, which effectively outlawed the construction of new tenements on 25-foot lots and mandated improved sanitary conditions, fire escapes and access to light. Under the new law-which in contrast to past legislation would actually be enforced-pre-existing tenement structures were updated, and more than 200,000 new apartments were built over the next 15 years, supervised by city authorities.

Life After the Tenements

By the late 1920s, many tenements in Chicago had been demolished and replaced with large, privately subsidized apartment projects. The next decade saw the implementation of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, which would transform low-income housing in many American cities through programs including slum clearing and the building of public housing.

The first fully government-built public housing project opened in New York City in 1936. Called First Houses, it consisted of a number of rehabilitated pre-law tenements covering a partial block at Avenue A and East 3rd Street, an area that had been considered part of the Lower East Side.

Among the trendy restaurants, boutique hotels and bars that can be found in the neighborhood today, visitors can still get a glimpse into its past at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, located at 97 Orchard Street.

Built in 1863, the building is an example of an "old-law" tenement (as defined by the Tenement House Act of 1867) and was home over the years for some 7,000 working class immigrants. Though the basement and the first floor have been renovated, the rest of the building looks much the same as it did in the 19th century, and has been designated a National Historic Site.

Fact Check

We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In the 19th century, more and more people began crowding into America's cities, including thousands of newly arrived immigrants seeking a better life than the one they had left behind. In New York City-where the population doubled every decade from 1800 to 1880-buildings that had once been single-family dwellings were increasingly divided into multiple living spaces to accommodate this growing population.

# data[].attributes.body
Late 1800's

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The end of the 19th century also marked a critical turning point in the history of book publishing, as marketing wizards like Frank Doubleday organized the first national book promotional campaigns, created the modern best seller, and transformed popular writers like Jack London into celebrities.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Political machine | Definition, History, & Facts

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

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
During the Progressive Era (1900–1920), the country grappled with the problems caused by industrialization and urbanization. Progressivism, an urban, midd

# data[].attributes.headline
Women´s Suffrage & the Temperance Movement 

# data[].attributes.subject
Women´s Suffrage & the Temperance Movement 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
by Keri Engel

It might seem like women's rights and alcohol prohibition would be on opposite sides of the political spectrum. But did you know that throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, women's suffrage and the temperance movement were both considered radical causes? Many suffragists, in addition to their work for women's rights, were also a part of the temperance movement, which advocated for reduced or no alcohol consumption.

Both movements culminated in the same year: 1920, when the 18th Amendment prohibiting alcohol came into effect and the 19th Amendment enfranchising women was ratified.

How was the women's suffrage movement connected to the temperance movement?

Let's take a look at how it started...

Why Did the Temperance Movement Want Prohibition?

As the United States developed, its people started turning from light alcoholic beverages, such as beer and hard cider, to stronger beverages like rum and whiskey as they became cheaper.

The production of rum especially was part of the whole slave trade. Slaves from Africa were brought to the West Indies to grow sugar, which was used to make rum. That's why it started to become available so cheaply.

What many citizens saw as an epidemic of alcoholism followed.

Remember that at this time, women had no rights. A woman was legally not a person, and was considered to be the property of her father or husband.

So what happened if a woman got married to a man who turned out to be an alcoholic? If he spent all their money on booze, or even became violent?

Legally, there was no escape.

What could women do?

All they could do was ask men to stop drinking so much.

"THE BOTTLE: He is discharged from his employment for drunkenness: They pawn their clothes to supply the bottle."

That's how the rise of cheap alcohol and growing alcoholism led to the growth of the women's temperance movement in the early 19th century.

Advocates for temperance linked the consumption of alcohol with greater issues like violent crime, poverty, unemployment, and domestic violence.

Though at first campaigning for moderation, the movement became more radical after the Civil War and began calling for complete prohibition of all alcohol. National organizations such as the Anti-Saloon League and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union grew quickly, and by the late 19th century became very powerful in lobbying for prohibition legislation.

"Fearful quarrels and brutal violence are the natural consequences of the frequent use of the bottle."

Women's Suffrage and Prohibition

Around the turn of the 20th century, Western society still overwhelmingly believed in biological determinism: that men and women had different inherent natures determined by their respective biology.

Women were thought to be morally superior to men by nature, and many advocates for women's suffrage argued that women should have the vote because of this.

Advocates for temperance wanted women to have the vote because it was believed they would vote for prohibition due to their moral superiority. Many breweries, on the other hand, lobbied against the suffrage movement out of fear of losing their businesses to prohibition.

A Respectable Suffrage Movement

Groups such as the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), founded in 1873, linked together the causes of Christianity, temperance, and social reform.

As a religious organization, the WCTU was seen as a more ladylike and respectable way for women to become involved in the struggle for suffrage. Since each local chapter of the WCTU was autonomous, local leaders had the freedom to act on issues such as women's suffrage under the banner of a respectable religious organization.

Francis Willard (1839-1898) was a suffragist and a temperance movement leader

Suffrage and Temperance Movement Leaders

Many of the most famous early feminists and women's suffrage advocates were also supporters of prohibition. The WCTU's second president, Francis Willard, broadened the organization's activism with her slogan "Do everything." A feminist and suffragist, Francis Willard fought not only for temperance and women's suffrage, but for other radical causes such as workers' unions, federal aid for education, and an eight-hour workday.

Perhaps the most famous pair of United States suffragists, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, were temperance activists before they became involved in the women's suffrage movement. Susan B. Anthony, before becoming a famous speaker on women's rights, gave her first speech at a Daughters of Temperance dinner. Together Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton co-founded the Woman's State Temperance Society in 1852, the first women's state temperance society in America.

Though the temperance movement mostly died out after the repeal of the 18th Amendment in 1933, adherents to the movement continue to exist to this day.

The Woman's Christian Temperance Union still fights for social reform, though they are now considered extremely conservative in their current stance against abortion rights and same-sex marriage. The feminist movement, on the other hand, is now mainly considered a liberal cause. This strange alliance, though it lasted almost a century, died out soon after the death of prohibition as each movement went its separate way.

Radfem Graphic Tee - "Prude Is a Slur Against Any Woman With Boundaries"

This radfem t-shir...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Women's Suffrage and the Temperance Movement: Strange Allies

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
by Keri Engel It might seem like women's rights and alcohol prohibition would be on opposite sides of the political spectrum. But did you know that throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, women's suffrage and the temperance movement were both considered radical causes?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
United States presidential election of 1912

Info Print

Please select which sections you would like to print:

Cite

Feedback

Share

Alternative Title: U.S. presidential election of 1912

This article was most recently revised and updated by

United States presidential election of 1912, American presidential election held on November 5, 1912, in which Democrat Woodrow Wilson defeated Bull Moose (Progressive) candidate and former Republican president Theodore Roosevelt and Republican incumbent president William Howard Taft.

American presidential election, 1912 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

The rise of the Republican "insurgents"

Theodore Roosevelt first came to the presidency in 1901, following the assassination of William McKinley, but won election in his own right in 1904 and proved a very popular chief executive. Shortly after the election of 1904, he announced that he would not be a candidate four years later-though he was so much the idol of the masses that he could easily have gained the Republican nomination in 1908. Adhering stubbornly to his pledge, he arranged the nomination of his secretary of war, William Howard Taft, who was easily elected president in 1908.

Taft faced a restless public and a split Republican Party. National progressivism was nearly at high tide, and a large group of Republican progressives, called "insurgents," sat in both houses of Congress. These Republicans, like a majority of Americans, demanded such reforms as tariff reductions, an income tax, the direct election of senators, and even stricter railroad and corporation regulations. Taft, who thought of himself as a progressive, was more conservative philosophically and lacked the qualities of a dynamic popular leader. His troubles began when he called Congress into special session in 1909 to take up tariff reform. When the measure that emerged from Congress increased rates, Republican insurgents and a majority of Americans were outraged, but Taft signed the bill and called it the best tariff law the Republicans had ever enacted. Conflicts and misunderstandings over conservation and legislative procedure caused the rift between Taft Republicans and the insurgents to grow. By 1910 the Republican insurgents were clearly in the ascendancy in Congress. Taking control of the president's railroad-regulation measure, they added new provisions that greatly increased the Interstate Commerce Commission's authority. The following year they bitterly opposed Taft's measure for tariff reciprocity with Canada; it passed with Democratic support in Congress, only to go down to defeat at the hands of the Canadian electorate.

Taft, William Howard Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Republican insurgents were determined to prevent Taft's renomination in 1912. They found their leader in Roosevelt, who had become increasingly alienated from Taft and who made a whirlwind campaign for the presidential nomination in the winter and spring of 1912. Roosevelt swept the presidential primaries, even in Taft's home state of Ohio. But Taft and conservative Republicans controlled the powerful state organizations and the Republican National Committee, and when the Republicans gathered at their national convention in Chicago in June 1912 it proved a bitter, divisive affair. Taft, Roosevelt, and Wisconsin Sen. Robert M. La Follette, a leading reformer, sought the nomination, but so complete were Taft's supporters' control over the party machinery that delegate challenges made by Roosevelt were all beaten back-leading Roosevelt to refuse to have his name entered into nomination. In the event, Taft was nominated on the first ballot, and Vice Pres. James S. Sherman was easily renominated. Convinced that the bosses had stolen the nomination from him, Roosevelt led his followers out of the Republican convention. In August they organized the Progressive (" Bull Moose") Party and named Roosevelt to lead the third-party cause. Hiram Johnson, the reform Republican governor of California, became Roosevelt's running mate.

Get exclusive access to content from our 1768 First Edition with your subscription. Subscribe today

Meanwhile, the Democrats had swept the 1910 congressional and gubernatorial elections, and after the disruption of the Republican Party in the spring of 1912 it was obvious that almost any passable Democrat could win the presidency in that year. Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland, a week after the Republican convention, the Democrats had a number of candidates contesting the nomination, including speaker of the House Champ Clark and former president of Princeton University Woodrow Wilson, who had a progressive record as governor of New Jersey. Ultimately, Wilson secured the Democratic nomination on the 46th ballot, and Thomas R. Marshall was chosen as his running mate.

Wilson, Woodrow Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

The general election campaign

U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Edison National Historical Site

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

The Democrats emerged from their convention in strong shape, given that Wilson was, in effect, facing two Republicans. Roosevelt and the Bull Moose movement stressed its progressive, reform credentials, even backing women's suffrage. For Taft, his single objective in the 1912 campaign was to defeat Roosevelt. The real contest, however, was between Roosevelt and Wilson for control of the progressive majority. Campaigning strenuously on a platform that he called the New Nationalism, Roosevelt demanded effective control of big business through a strong federal commission, radical tax reform, and a whole series of measures to put the federal government squarely into the business of social and economic reform. By contrast, Wilson seemed conservative with a program he called the New Freedom; it envisaged a concerted effort to destroy monopoly and to open the doors of economic opportunity to small businessmen through drastic tariff reduction, banking reform, and severe tightening of antitrust laws.

Wilson, Woodrow: 1912 presidential campaign Courtesy of the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library, Staunton, Virginia

On election day, November 5, Roosevelt outpolled Taft but failed to win many Democratic progressives away from Wilson. Though Wilson captured only about 42 percent of the popular vote, he won 435 electoral votes. Between them, Roosevelt and Taft secured 7.6 million votes-1.3 million more than Wilson-but Roosevelt won only 88 electoral votes, and Taft won only 8. Taft's 8 electoral votes represented the worst performance by an incumbent seeking reelection. Wilson, born in Virginia, thus became the first Southern-born president elected since the American Civil War (1861-65).

For the results of the previous election, see United States presidential election of 1908. For the results of the subsequent election, see United States presidential election of 1916.

Results of the 1912 election

The results of the 1912 U.S. presidential election are provided in the table.

presidential candidate

political party

electoral votes

popular votes

Sources: Electoral and popular vote totals based on data from the United States Office of the Federal Register and Congressional Quarterly's Guide to U.S. Elections, 4th ed. (2001).

Woodrow Wilson Democratic
435

6,293,454

Theodore Roosevelt
Progressive ( Bull Moose)

88

4,119,207

William Howard Taft Republican
8

3,483,922

Eugene V. Debs
Socialist

900,369

Eugene W. Chafin
Prohibition
207,972

Arthur E. Reimer

Socialist Labor

29,374

Amy Tikkanen, Corrections Manager.

Learn More in these related Britannica articles:

Woodrow Wilson: Early life, education, and governorship

Prevailing at the 1912 convention after a hard struggle against better-entrenched rivals, Wilson entered into an exciting three-way race for president. Former president Theodore Roosevelt's bolt to the Progressive (Bull Moose) Party had split the dominant Republican Party, a factor that allowed Wilson to be elected with only...

progressivism: Diversity and disagreement within progressivism

For example, the progressives' 1912 presidential campaign, with the celebrated former president Theodore Roosevelt as its standard bearer, was deeply divided over whether the reform movement should attack legally enforced racial segregation in the South ( see Jim Crow laws). In the end it did not, instead accepting the right...

...candidate for president in 1908, 1912, and 1920 (he refused the nomination in 1916). His highest popular vote total came in 1920, when he received about 915,000 votes. Ironically, he was in prison at the time, serving a sentence for having criticized the U.S. government's prosecution of persons charged with...

United States presidential election of 1912

date

participants

related topics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
united states presidential election of 1912

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
United States presidential election of 1912 | United States government

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
United States presidential election of 1912 Info Print Please select which sections you would like to print: Cite Feedback Share Alternative Title: U.S. presidential election of 1912 This article was most recently revised and updated by United States presidential election of 1912, American presidential election held on November 5, 1912, in which Democrat Woodrow Wilson defeated Bull Moose (Progressive) candidate and former Republican president Theodore Roosevelt and Republican incumbent president William Howard Taft.

# data[].attributes.headline
Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

# data[].attributes.subject
Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Fourteen Points speech of President Woodrow Wilson was an address delivered before a joint meeting of Congress on January 8, 1918, during which Wilson outlined his vision for a stable, long-lasting peace in Europe, the Americas and the rest of the world following World War I.

Wilson's proposal called for the victorious Allies to set unselfish peace terms with the vanquished Central Powers of World War I, including freedom of the seas, the restoration of territories conquered during the war and the right to national self-determination in such contentious regions as the Balkans.

The devastation and carnage of the First World War grimly illustrated to Wilson the unavoidable relationship between international stability and American national security.

At the same time, he sought to placate American isolationists by stating that the world must "be made fit and safe to live in; and particularly that it be made safe for every peace-loving nation which, like our own, wishes to live its own life, determine its own institutions, be assured of justice and fair dealing by the other peoples of the world as against force and selfish aggression."

What Were the Fourteen Points?

In his speech, Wilson itemized 14 strategies to ensure national security and world peace. Several points addressed specific territorial issues in Europe, but the most significant sections set the tone for postwar American diplomacy and the ideals that would form the backbone of U.S. foreign policy as the nation achieved superpower status in the early 20th century.

Wilson could foresee that international relations would only become more important to American security and global commerce. He advocated equal trade conditions, arms reduction and national sovereignty for former colonies of Europe's weakening empires.

One of Wilson's purposes in delivering the Fourteen Points speech was to present a practical alternative to the traditional notion of an international balance of power preserved by alliances among nations-belief in the viability of which had been shattered by World War I-and to the Bolshevik-inspired dreams of world revolution that at the time were gaining ground both within and outside of Russia.

Wilson hoped also to keep a conflict-ridden Russia in the war on the Allied side. This effort met with failure, as the Bolsheviks sought peace with the Central Powers at the end of 1917, shortly after taking power following the Russian Revolution.

In other ways, however, Wilson's Fourteen Points played an essential role in world politics over the next several years. The speech was translated and distributed to the soldiers and citizens of Germany and Austria-Hungary and contributed to their decision to agree to an armistice in November 1918.

Treaty of Versailles

Like the man himself, Wilson's Fourteen Points were liberal, democratic and idealistic. He spoke in grand and inspiring terms, but was less certain of the specifics of how his aims would be achieved.

At the Paris Peace Conference, Wilson had to contend with the leaders of the other victorious Allied nations, who disagreed with many of the Fourteen Points and demanded stiff penalties for Germany in the Treaty of Versailles.

Importantly, Wilson urged the establishment of an international governing body of united nations for the purpose of guaranteeing political independence and territorial integrity to great and small countries alike. His idea gave birth to the short-lived League of Nations. The more viable United Nations would come into existence only after the conclusion of another devastating global conflict: World War II.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Fourteen Points speech of President Woodrow Wilson was an address delivered before a joint meeting of Congress on January 8, 1918, during which Wilson outlined his vision for a stable, long-lasting peace in Europe, the Americas and the rest of the world following World War I.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Treaty of Versailles, What Did the Big Three Want? 1/2

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
isolationism | imperialism |

As nouns the difference between isolationism and imperialism

is that isolationism is a national (or group) policy of non-interaction with other nations (or groups) while imperialism is the policy of forcefully extending a nation's authority by territorial gain or by the establishment of economic and political dominance over other nations.

Noun

(-)

A national (or group) policy of non-interaction with other nations (or groups).

"Before contact was initiated by the West, China employed isolationism in their policies."

Noun

(-)

The policy of forcefully extending a nation's authority by territorial gain or by the establishment of economic and political dominance over other nations.

See also

* imperialist * imperialistic

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Isolationism vs Imperialism - What's the difference?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
isolationism | imperialism | is that isolationism is a national (or group) policy of non-interaction with other nations (or groups) while imperialism is the policy of forcefully extending a nation's authority by territorial gain or by the establishment of economic and political dominance over other nations.